case study voices of youth in chicago education (voyce)

Youth Transforming School and Community Safety Through a Holistic Approach

Voices of Youth in Chicago Education

Convened by Communities United, Voices of Youth in Chicago Education (VOYCE) is a youth organizing alliance led by students of color from across Chicago. Through VOYCE, young people have been leading a movement to transform what safety means in schools and communities, advancing a vision for healing-centered schools and communities.

Through organizing efforts and by lifting up their narratives, VOYCE youth leaders have made significant progress in shifting the narrative on what safety should look like for communities of color, making sweeping changes to end zero-tolerance practices and expand the use of restorative justice, and helped paved the way to the reinvestment over $3.2 million from police in schools into holistic approaches to school safety. 

PROGRESS MADE

Created the nation’s most comprehensive statewide school discipline reform, SB100, ending zero tolerance at all publicly-funded schools in Illinois.  

Youth-led research and organizing work led to key changes in Chicago Public Schools Student Code of Conduct to approach student drug and alcohol use through a public health approach.  

Along with our allies: Community Organizing on Family Issues (COFI), The ARK of St. Sabina, BUILD Inc, and Mikva Challenge, VOYCE partnered with CPS to lead the district’s community engagement process leading to a reinvestment of over $3.8 million from police toward holistic approaches to school safety in the third-largest school district in the country.

Derion Smith is a VOYCE youth leader and a recent graduate of Mather High School. Derion has been a part of the Whole School Safety Initiative which is leading the engagement of CPS schools to re-evaluate what it means for students to be safe in schools and use a holistic approach to the issue. In his work, he has felt powerful moments that have helped him advance his journey to heal and strives to lead his fellow young people in their own journey of healing. “I believe in the power of...

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School resource officers are under scrutiny again in CPS as dozens of high schools reconsider the controversial police program

Forty-one high schools will once again evaluate their safety plans and decide by June 15 if they will continue in Chicago Public Schools’ controversial school resource officer program.

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Chicago Public Schools said it expects to begin publishing student discipline and safety data in the coming weeks, a year after dozens of high schools voted to reduce or eliminate their school resource officer (SRO) programs.

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The decision to respect schools' wishes comes after the district's safety chief initially said two cops would temporarily remain at the high schools that voted to keep only one officer.

For more information or to get involved, please contact Maria Degillo at [email protected] or at 773-583-1387

Chicago’s VOYCE Coalition Uses Disaggregated Data to Pass Landmark School Discipline Reform Bill

Voices of Youth in Chicago Education (VOYCE), a youth-led alliance for education and racial justice in Chicago and greater Illinois, has been lifting up the stories of young people of color who experience overly harsh and racially biased discipline in schools to advocate for more equitable and safer schools for everyone.

Zero tolerance policies that mandate suspension or expulsion for certain offenses emerged in the 1980s, largely in response to rising juvenile arrest rates. The passage of the Gun-Free Schools Act in 1994 required states that wanted access to federal education funding to pass laws mandating yearlong suspensions for students who brought firearms to school. While the original intent of zero-tolerance policies was to make schools safer with a tough-on-crime approach to major offenses, over time, minor violations of school codes of conduct became grounds for suspension or expulsion. One young person from VOYCE reported getting suspended for skipping one class—an extreme disciplinary response that resulted in a disruption of the student’s learning.

Zero-tolerance policies have not only failed to make schools safer but also encouraged punishment practices that prevent youth—especially youth of color—from succeeding at school and being prepared to enter the workforce. 

These practices are not simply ineffective; they have harmful repercussions. School suspensions can disrupt young people’s lives and increase the likelihood that they will be arrested. Even more troubling, the increased likelihood of arrest is highest among youth who do not have significant criminal histories. And youth who do have prior criminal histories are more likely to recidivate while suspended from school. This phenomenon of schoolchildren being channeled into the criminal justice system has been referred to as the school-to-prison pipeline . The suspension of young people—like the member of VOYCE who was suspended for skipping a single class—increases their likelihood of arrest or recidivism, when they should be the classroom.

Recognizing that school suspensions should be the last resort rather than the first response, VOYCE lifted up city- and state-wide data on suspensions, expulsions, and youth arrests to successfully advocate for and pass state legislation mandating the implementation of more fair and effective disciplinary practices instead of zero-tolerance.   

Uncovering racial inequities in school discipline

To reach legislators, VOYCE advocates needed compelling data to communicate the urgency of the harmful outcomes and disparate impact of these punishment practices in their communities. They launched the Campaign for Common Sense Discipline , and analyzing data disaggregated by race and ethnicity was a critical first step of their work.

The coalition analyzed 2012-13 Chicago Public Schools (CPS) and Chicago Police Department data and found alarming disparities in suspensions and expulsions and widespread criminalization of students of color. Black students were more than 30 times more likely to be expelled and had six-and-a-half times more suspensions than their White peers. Students of color were also far more likely to be criminalized: 96 percent of all arrests were of Black and Latino students.

VOYCE also analyzed U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights data and Illinois State Board of Education data and found that state-wide there were over 272,000 out-of-school suspensions of Illinois students, more than 2,400 expulsions, and more than 10,000 arrests in just one school year. About 13 percent of all students enrolled in Illinois public schools had been suspended, but VOYCE knew that actual suspension rates were much higher because charter schools are not required to report suspension numbers.

VOYCE’s analysis also found that suspensions, expulsions, and arrests added up to a significant loss of time in the classroom for Illinois students: more than one million instructional days per year . This was the data point that really captured the attention of decision-makers, according to Jose Sanchez of VOYCE, because it showed how exclusionary discipline was disrupting student learning and creating an enormous barrier to student success.

Data underpins policy wins for safer and more equitable schools in Illinois

Using data and organized public action to get the attention of local and state decision makers, VOYCE was able to advocate for and successfully pass two bills that will curb the devastating impacts of these discriminatory policies and make public schools safer and more inclusive for all Illinois students. 

SB 100 is the most comprehensive attempt by any state to address the causes and dire consequences of the school-to-prison pipeline, and youth advocates from VOYCE played a key role in securing its passage. VOYCE youth drafted a version of the bill in 2012 and sent youth representatives to all legislative hearings about the bill. SB100 passed on May 20, 2015, with broad bipartisan support. It mandates that suspensions and expulsions become the last resort in school discipline, not the first response. The bill also works to make schools more equitable by holding public and charter schools to the same disciplinary standards and by providing academic and behavioral support to struggling students. Instead of excluding students by expelling or suspending them, SB 100 is working to put students back on the road to graduation and a future in the workforce.

Credit: VOYCE Coalition.

With these two victories under their belt, the advocates of VOYCE are currently focusing on developing guidelines for the implementation of SB100. They want to ensure that the resources being shifted away from zero tolerance policies are shifted toward practices that make schools more equitable and safe. Their recommendations will be released in Spring 2016.

The VOYCE coalition’s policy wins exemplify the power of equity data—in the hands of active, engaged communities—to drive positive change in public school systems. The majority of public school students in the United States are now students of color, and their success is critical to the success of their communities and the economy as a whole. Reforming the overly harsh disciplinary policies that have adversely affected students of color for 25 years is a critical step toward ensuring all children can succeed at school and build a strong 21 st century workforce. If America’s schools are to open doors of opportunity for everyone, they must have zero tolerance for discriminatory practices. 

Voices of Youth in Chicago Education (VOYCE)

Https://voyceproject.org/.

Voices of Youth in Chicago Education (VOYCE) is a youth organizing alliance for education and racial justice led by students of color from across the city of Chicago and Illinois.

Voices of Youth in Chicago Education

• Post author By Adam F.C. Fletcher
• Post date April 13, 2015
• No Comments on Voices of Youth in Chicago Education

Voices of Youth in Chicago Education , or VOYCE, is a youth organizing collaborative for education and racial justice led by students of color from community organizations across the city of Chicago. VOYCE works to increase Chicago’s graduation rate by using youth-driven research and organizing to advance district-level policies that support student achievement.

VOYCE’s work is driven by the belief that young people who are most directly affected by educational inequity are in the best position to develop meaningful, long-lasting solutions. To lay the foundation for VOYCE’s campaign, more than a hundred youth conducted an in-depth, year-long Participatory Action Research study on the root causes of the city’s 50% graduation rate. The students found that to increase graduation rates, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) must build a foundation for student success through district- and school-level policies and practices that foster trusting and supportive relationships with peers and school staff.

Today, VOYCE’s organizing focuses on three priority areas:

• Ending the use of harsh discipline policies that push students out of school and into prisons
• Implementing the use of restorative discipline practices
• Limiting the use of high-stakes testing and creating high-quality learning environments

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Family Leadership Design Collaborative

“our stories are powerful”: the use of youth storytelling in policy advocacy to combat the school-to-prison pipeline.

• Families & Change-Making , Research
• September 2, 2020

FLDC member Mark Warren , along with Jeffrey S. Moyer and Andrew R. King, are the authors of, “‘Our Stories Are Powerful’: The Use of Youth Storytelling in Policy Advocacy to Combat the School-to-Prison Pipeline” in the Summer 2020 Harvard Educational Review . 

Abstract: The use of narratives and storytelling has become an increasingly common strategy in grassroots organizing and advocacy efforts to influence policy change. Drawing on qualitative interviews and observations, Jeffrey Moyer, Mark Warren, and Andrew King present a case study of the successful campaign by Voices of Youth in Chicago Education (VOYCE) to pass SB100, a progressive Illinois law aimed at ending the school-to-prison pipeline. The authors show that personal storytelling, when combined with other approaches, constitutes an effective strategy for youth organizing groups in low-income communities of color to achieve racial equity and educational justice policy goals. In this case, youth leaders involved in VOYCE told legislators their personal stories of the harm done to them and their friends by zero-tolerance school discipline and spoke to the racial inequities they faced. In doing so, they countered previously held narratives of youth of color as troublemakers and violence-prone and created a moral urgency for legislators to act. Youth leaders used storytelling and data to build a larger alliance of supporters, which contributed to the passage of a bill that limited harsh discipline, promoted restorative justice alternatives, and took steps to close racial gaps in suspensions and expulsions.

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Is Chicago’s shift to restorative justice and fewer school police working? Some say yes.

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the city’s public school system and statewide education policy.  

Youth organizer Maria Paula Degillo used to protest in downtown Chicago against the high rates of suspensions and expulsions for students of color. 

Now, she collaborates with Chicago Public Schools to create safe school environments without harsh discipline and over policing. 

Today, Degillo, with the group Voices of Youth in Chicago Education, is joining the district’s Chief of Safety and Security Jadine Chou at a City Club of Chicago event to highlight the partnership forged between the district and community organizations over the course of the last decade to improve school safety. 

The event comes as Chicago says it has made significant progress disrupting the school-to-prison pipeline. Suspensions have plummeted from nearly 50,000 in 2013-14 to less than 10,000 in 2021-22.  And the number of police officers on campus has been more than cut in half . 

What’s more, new research released by the University of Chicago Education Lab earlier this month found student arrests dropped at schools where restorative practices were implemented and students said they felt a stronger sense of safety and belonging. 

Degillo, Chou, and others who have been working on this issue for more than a decade say Chicago’s approach to school safety could be a blueprint for other schools across the country. 

“When we talk about safety in schools,” Degillo said, “it’s about young people and their parents being able to be at the decision making table so that they can decide what they feel makes them safe.”

Chicago makes slow shift to restorative discipline

Chicago’s work to disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline started years before national debates around school safety and the presence of police in schools heated up in 2020. 

When Chou took the job as safety and security chief 12 years ago, she said she was the first person not from the police department to fill the role. 

“It was not easy at first,” she said. “I think a lot of people were stuck in that same paradigm that, you know, if we go to restorative practices, bad things will happen.”

Early in her tenure, the school board approved several changes to the student code of conduct that activists, such as Degillo, pushed: limiting the use of automatic suspensions and redefining what behaviors deserved out-of-school punishment. And the state of Illinois passed legislation , at the urging of groups like VOYCE, to limit the use of suspensions and expulsions in public schools. 

During the 2013-14 school year, 22 Chicago high schools and 34 elementary schools began implementing restorative practices focused on building relationships and conflict resolution.  

Researchers at the University of Chicago Education Lab studied what happened in the years that followed. In a report issued earlier this month , they found that suspensions declined at schools that implemented restorative justice, student arrests in-school fell by 35%, and out-of-school arrests dropped by 15%. 

Anjali Adukia, an assistant professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and one of the report’s authors, said changing how schools approach student discipline doesn’t happen overnight. 

She recalled talking to a teacher who saw restorative practices as “fluffy duffy stuff” that was going to take up too much time. But after trying some of the strategies, the approach  made their job easier. That teacher is now a restorative practices coach, Adukia said. 

Chou, with CPS, said the research confirmed what she felt she already knew: This was actually working.  It also “refutes the myth” that restorative practices lead to “no consequences” and everything being “out of control.” 

“The research actually shows that you do good both by keeping children in the classroom through these restorative practices,” Chou said. “And in fact, the climate is calmer.” 

Removing police from schools is just one piece of the puzzle

In addition to its work to reduce suspensions and expulsions, Degillo’s organization Voices of Youth in Chicago Education, or VOYCE, was on the forefront of the movement to remove police officers from schools.

This was before a 2019 federal consent decree over the city’s police department pushed the district to rethink the role of police in schools and before the racial unrest in 2020 after the police killing of George Floyd. 

Around that time, the district began to collaborate with community organizations, including VOYCE, on an effort known as Whole School Safety . The approach also gave local school councils the ability to vote on whether or not to keep school-based police officers, commonly referred to as SROs. 

An initial wave of schools removed police in 2020, but the momentum has slowed more recently, with just two schools voting to remove officers last school year. 

In June, the school board approved a $10.3 million contract with the police department to station 57 officers at roughly 40 high schools that have voted to keep them. It’s a fraction of the 140 stationed at district-run high schools in 2019, which cost roughly $33 million that year. 

Chicago initially faced some criticism for pushing the decision about whether to keep police in schools down to local communities. But the ground-up approach may prove to be more sustainable, Chou said, noting other districts who removed police in 2020 only to return them more recently.  

That was the case in Denver, where the school board voted in 2020 to phase out police from schools only to reverse that decision in a divided vote this past June after a shooting in March at one of the district’s high schools. 

Although Degillo said VOYCE would still like to see police removed from schools altogether, she said allowing communities to decide is just as important. 

“The goal is to create a process in which people are not relying on knee-jerk reactions to safety, “ Degillo said.  “There’s so much more to school safety. The goal is to create that safe, healthy, equitable learning environment.”

Becky Vevea is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Becky at [email protected] .   

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Voices of youth in chicago education.

VOYCE (Voices of Youth in Chicago Education) is a youth organizing collaborative made up of high school students from seven community based organizations. VOYCE was formed to address the problem of high drop out rates and low college enrollment rates of students of color within Chicago Public Schools from the ground up. Over the four year period between 1999-2002, 51.3 % of CPS high school students dropped out resulting in 64,057 youth without high school diplomas while only 48.7% or 60,814 students graduated. VOYCE convenes high school students, parents, teachers, principals, and community members to analyze the causes of high drop out rates, craft solutions which answer real needs, and organize to gain support for policy and school-based reforms from public officials and Chicago Public Schools.

VOYCE (Voices of Youth in Chicago Education) is a youth organizing collaborative made up of high school students from seven community based organizations. VOYCE was formed to address the problem of high drop out rates and low college…

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Chicago Students to Play Lead Role in Dropout Project

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A group of student leaders in Chicago has persuaded the city school system to launch a pilot program designed to reduce the dropout rate by making high school more relevant and responsive to teenagers’ needs.

Students from 12 high schools and seven community groups banded together to form Voices of Youth in Chicago Education, or VOYCE, and conducted a yearlong research project to find out why so many young people leave school and don’t attend college.

One of their findings was that students blame themselves, rather than their schools, for the high dropout problem. They also discovered that students disengage from school because they see no connection between their studies and their own lives and futures.

Based on those and other findings, the 409,000-student Chicago school district announced last week that it has agreed to start the first phase of a pilot project in 12 high schools. In eight of those schools, freshmen will develop personalized graduation plans, and those who are having difficulty will have a chance to participate in “guidance retreats” to get them back on track. The district will also set up a process to allow students to have a say in curriculum reform and teacher training.

At some of the schools, VOYCE leaders will help build student-led leadership teams with teachers and administrators and start a leadership academy to train other students how to bring about positive change in their schools. They will also have “community orientations” for teachers to better acquaint them with the neighborhoods they teach in.

Hennessy Williams, 18, who took part in the research enterprise, said the project sends a message to teenagers everywhere.

“They can change things if they want to,” said Mr. Williams, a junior at Kenwood Academy. “But who you talk to about it, and how you do it, matters. You could start a group. You don’t just try to change things, but you do the research first. That can make a big difference.”

Chicago schools Chief Executive Officer Arne Duncan said in a statement that the district “recognizes that students have an important role to play in their education” and that the pilot represents “the first step in a potential series” of programs to better engage high school students.

Details of the project and research are online .

A version of this article appeared in the November 19, 2008 edition of Education Week

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VOYCE Staff Maria Degillo , VOYCE Coordinator [email protected] | 773.240.9612