Chapter 21: Student-Led Solutions To The Dropout Crisis: Key Findings from a Report by Voices of Youth in Chicago Education

Voices of Youth in Chicago Education (VOYCE) is a youth organizing collaborative led by students of color from seven community organizations and twelve public high schools throughout the city of Chicago. The organizations and schools that comprise VOYCE are:

VOYCE builds on these community-based organizations’ histories of organizing both parents and students around school reform issues such as creating a policy change granting in-state tuition for undocumented students, securing the construction of new schools to relieve overcrowding, developing schools as community learning centers, and more.

As student and parent leaders from these organizations continued to be impacted first-hand by the dropout rate, VOYCE was created with the goal of impacting teaching and learning at the high school level in order to keep students engaged in school and increase graduation and college enrollment rates.