This article is written primarily for individuals leading or engaging in continuous improvement work in schools who are interested in student-led networks. If you’re new to improvement and don’t understand terms or concepts here, we recommend you start with either “How to Plan and Implement Continuous Improvement Schools” by Katrina Schwartz for a brief introduction, or “Improvement as a Journey” by Amanda Meyer for a deeper dive.
So you want to involve students in your improvement work. Where do you start? Naturally, most improvers will begin by conducting empathy interviews. This leads us to sit down with a student, invite them to do the talking, thank them for their willingness to share their lived experience, hopes, and fears, and we return to our work feeling informed and inspired. Then what?
In my improvement experience, I find that we immerse ourselves in CI work, we look at data for equity, conduct a root cause analysis, ask chain of why’s, generate change ideas, and complete improvement cycles of inquiry to address a problem of practice. As equity-minded improvers, we take equity pauses throughout our processes to consider who isn’t at the table and to check in on how we are considering the perspectives of those we seek to serve. Equity pauses and empathy interviews are critical…and they aren’t enough. Once we conduct that empathy interview, when and how do we involve students in our improvement work? How do we stress test our strategies and ideas with our intended audience to see if we’re on the right track? The CARPE College Access Network has some ideas.
The CARPE Network has brought together 30 schools across Southern California to increase the number of Latinx, Black, Indigenous, and low-income students who apply, enroll, and matriculate to colleges they are most likely to graduate from. Our driver diagram (figure 1) outlines our network aim, our drivers, and high leverage practices from across our network.
Figure 1: CARPE Driver Diagram
While our drivers are college-going culture, financial access, college applications & enrollment, and sense of belonging, we have also doubled down on student engagement. Why? Because those most impacted by the system are best positioned to improve it. As one 12th grade CARPE student fellow shared, “We think that adults know what’s best for us but the reality is we know what’s best for us too.”
Our CARPE Student Fellowship Program format has evolved over the past two years, but the aim has remained constant: to advance equity by elevating student voice. In 2020-21, our Hub team worked directly with 12 students across four high schools on an improvement project. Our CARPE student fellows designed informative workshops for students across the network which led to impressive increases in college knowledge among 9th-11th grade attendees. In 2021-22, our Hub’s student engagement goal was to improve the sustainability of student partnership by adding school site fellowship advisors to the CARPE Fellowship Program. We focused on building the fellowship advisor’s improvement capacity using this workbook. And in the spirit of continuous improvement, we started small to learn from successes and challenges before making this a part of our network strategy.
All Fellowship program participants (advisors & students) convened virtually every two months (five times total) for “Fellowship Forums.”
Prior to each action period & forum, we walked advisors through an improvement protocol from their Advisor Workbook, which they would facilitate directly with their student fellows. Our collective problem statement was rooted in the steep nationwide decline among high school graduates matriculating directly to college in 2021 compared to 2019 (pre-pandemic). Motivated by the worrisome postsecondary enrollment data, the CARPE student fellows sought to help their peers feel connected to their school and supported with their college and career goals. We followed the improvement method outlined below and students completed the improvement activities highlighted at the bottom of each column (figure 2).
Figure 2: CARPE Improvement Method
Once they looked at data to understand the problem, excavated root causes, and generated change ideas, students and advisors engaged in an initial improvement cycle, which informed changes to their second PDSA. This culminated in a conversation during our last forum with school administrators and their CARPE team in which students shared what they did, outcome measures they achieved, and what they learned. Students, advisors, and CARPE teams ultimately considered how this work can be sustained beyond this year.
We used “an iterative approach guided by authentic student involvement, leadership, and facilitation,” according to a CARPE Fellowship Advisor. As one of our advisors shared, “[Students] aren’t just involved, they are it.” For example, Lawndale High fellows chose to focus on our sense of belonging driver and sought to cultivate a stronger college-going culture by gathering each teacher’s major & college to create classroom signs that read: “Ask me about studying ______ at ________.” Meanwhile, Santa Monica High (SAMOHI) fellows were trained by counselor Ernesto Flores and provided peer support during financial aid and college application support sessions. SAMOHI fellows also facilitated FAFSA/CA Dream Act lessons in Government & Economics classes, which led to a completion rate increase from 59%-75% among their entire student body and over 90% among their equity group. This increased Cal Grant awards by 14%, which translates to over $2 million in aid. They went on to present a session on Meaningfully Engaging Students in Continuous Improvement at the 2022 Carnegie Summit as high school seniors…and they rocked it.
To understand the effectiveness of the fellowship program and to measure the degree to which we met our program goals, we conducted a pre- and post-survey about the degree to which students felt they had agency, were confident using their voice, and had an impact at their school. When asked the extent to which students agreed with the following statement: “My input matters when it comes to decision-making at my school,” 75% of CARPE Fellows agreed or strongly agreed before start of fellowship program compared to 95% at the conclusion of the program.
In response to the statement, “I am confident using my voice to influence decisions at my school,” only 37% strongly agreed at the start of the program compared to 80% by the program’s end. Student fellows reflected on their improvement journeys through the fellowship program. According to one student, “The experience has changed so many things for me…I’ve gained a lot more confidence sharing what’s on my mind. I used to think it wasn’t my place to share what’s on my mind…but CARPE helped me branch out and say what’s on my mind and create the change I want to create.” This is illustrative of the influence that putting students in a position to lead can have on the students themselves.
And when we asked students about their influence on their school’s college access work, 95% of CARPE Fellows said they had an impact on their school’s college access work this year. And all fellowship participants felt they were able to address challenges within the college application process at their school as a result of being a CARPE Fellow. That’s a major win in our book! Another CARPE fellow offered a meta reflection of their own college access experience by being involved in an equity initiative:
It’s helped me understand the problems that I’m experiencing too. It’s not too often you think about why you are having a problem…like missing support for college applications. You don’t really think about it because that’s the way it is. But thinking about what might help has not only helped other people but helped me identify areas where I might need support too.
We were moved by the outcomes reported by the students. We also discovered that there were some unintended (but awesome) outcomes as a result of this work. During our forums, we noticed something organic start to occur: connections between students (same school and cross-school) who did not know each other before. While students collaborated on tasks, they occasionally asked each other about various components of the college application process, sometimes exchanging tips and resources. When asked about this in the post-survey, 95% of student fellows indicated that they supported one another through the college process. While we did not design for this, we learned that setting up the conditions for students to connect is just as important as collaborating toward a shared goal. It cultivates community, belonging, and support.
We also noticed a spillover effect from working closely with fellowship advisors. By further scaffolding improvement protocols and helping advisors become more comfortable with CARPE’s improvement methodology, one advisor decided to continue her improvement journey in her classroom. Antonia Guzman, ELA teacher at International Studies Learning Center, designed a semester-long project on creating awareness of social injustices, promoting advocacy, and affecting change. In groups, students crafted a problem statement, conducted empathy interviews with individuals directly connected to the problem, conducted a root cause analysis, set an aim, generated change ideas, and fleshed out an action plan. Antonia elaborates on the impact that using CI in her classroom had on creating meaningful learning experiences for her students:
When I was first introduced to CI via CARPE I knew it was a valuable tool for the classroom, particularly when it comes to project-based instruction. Last year I decided it was time to use it because I believe it is a tool rooted in advocacy and change. It allows teams to have productive conversations around problems and really focus on what causes those problems in order to become active members in our society. My ultimate goal as a teacher is to help students become active and influential citizens who advocate and bring about change. Through my use of CI in the classroom, I was excited to see how much engagement, critical thinking, and problem solving was happening in my classroom and going beyond the walls of our school. Students took ownership over their own learning and accomplished projects they never thought they could get done. The use of these tools helped me empower my students and allowed them to apply what they learned in the classroom to their world outside of school.
So where do we go from here? We have learned that having students at the center (literally – students having a seat at the table) can help us be more responsive to the needs of those we seek to serve and elevate our collective work. As one fellowship advisor explained:
A lot of the time we deal with the symptoms that we see but it’s always surface level so by having the students as part of this work you can get to the roots of the problems. It may not be perfect but we are on our way to getting to the roots of the problems.
While we experienced success through our fellowship program, we sought to incorporate students into our network activities. As a result, we are taking student integration network-wide! We kicked off the 2022-2023 school year with a session for our entire network on partnering with students. Each team learned about Hart’s Ladder of Participation, created norms for working alongside students, and identified prospective student ambassadors from their equity aim. There is a difference, however, between involving students in our work when it is convenient or when it makes for a nice addition to our agenda versus truly engaging them as consultants, thought partners, and co-conspirators in our strategizing and change efforts. Our goal is to integrate students onto CARPE teams, which will mean that students will soon be joining CARPE meetings, providing feedback on PDSA, contributing their own change ideas based on their lived experience, and offering student perspective throughout their team’s improvement journey.
We by no means have student engagement in continuous improvement figured out, but we are really good at constantly learning from our successes and challenges. You might walk away wondering, where do I start?! While we can provide you with numerous resources, the starting place is trust, relinquishing some control, and embracing the idea of failing forward. As a CARPE fellowship advisor shared, “Trust them. When you understand their why you realize it’s the same why.”
Thank you Community Design Partners for interviewing student fellows and fellowship advisors to learn more about their experiences and for providing quotes embedded throughout this article.
This article is written primarily for individuals leading or engaging in continuous improvement work in schools who are interested in student-led networks. If you’re new to improvement and don’t understand terms or concepts here, we recommend you start with either “How to Plan and Implement Continuous Improvement Schools” by Katrina Schwartz for a brief introduction, or “Improvement as a Journey” by Amanda Meyer for a deeper dive.
So you want to involve students in your improvement work. Where do you start? Naturally, most improvers will begin by conducting empathy interviews. This leads us to sit down with a student, invite them to do the talking, thank them for their willingness to share their lived experience, hopes, and fears, and we return to our work feeling informed and inspired. Then what?
In my improvement experience, I find that we immerse ourselves in CI work, we look at data for equity, conduct a root cause analysis, ask chain of why’s, generate change ideas, and complete improvement cycles of inquiry to address a problem of practice. As equity-minded improvers, we take equity pauses throughout our processes to consider who isn’t at the table and to check in on how we are considering the perspectives of those we seek to serve. Equity pauses and empathy interviews are critical…and they aren’t enough. Once we conduct that empathy interview, when and how do we involve students in our improvement work? How do we stress test our strategies and ideas with our intended audience to see if we’re on the right track? The CARPE College Access Network has some ideas.
The CARPE Network has brought together 30 schools across Southern California to increase the number of Latinx, Black, Indigenous, and low-income students who apply, enroll, and matriculate to colleges they are most likely to graduate from. Our driver diagram (figure 1) outlines our network aim, our drivers, and high leverage practices from across our network.
Figure 1: CARPE Driver Diagram
While our drivers are college-going culture, financial access, college applications & enrollment, and sense of belonging, we have also doubled down on student engagement. Why? Because those most impacted by the system are best positioned to improve it. As one 12th grade CARPE student fellow shared, “We think that adults know what’s best for us but the reality is we know what’s best for us too.”
Our CARPE Student Fellowship Program format has evolved over the past two years, but the aim has remained constant: to advance equity by elevating student voice. In 2020-21, our Hub team worked directly with 12 students across four high schools on an improvement project. Our CARPE student fellows designed informative workshops for students across the network which led to impressive increases in college knowledge among 9th-11th grade attendees. In 2021-22, our Hub’s student engagement goal was to improve the sustainability of student partnership by adding school site fellowship advisors to the CARPE Fellowship Program. We focused on building the fellowship advisor’s improvement capacity using this workbook. And in the spirit of continuous improvement, we started small to learn from successes and challenges before making this a part of our network strategy.
All Fellowship program participants (advisors & students) convened virtually every two months (five times total) for “Fellowship Forums.”
Prior to each action period & forum, we walked advisors through an improvement protocol from their Advisor Workbook, which they would facilitate directly with their student fellows. Our collective problem statement was rooted in the steep nationwide decline among high school graduates matriculating directly to college in 2021 compared to 2019 (pre-pandemic). Motivated by the worrisome postsecondary enrollment data, the CARPE student fellows sought to help their peers feel connected to their school and supported with their college and career goals. We followed the improvement method outlined below and students completed the improvement activities highlighted at the bottom of each column (figure 2).
Figure 2: CARPE Improvement Method
Once they looked at data to understand the problem, excavated root causes, and generated change ideas, students and advisors engaged in an initial improvement cycle, which informed changes to their second PDSA. This culminated in a conversation during our last forum with school administrators and their CARPE team in which students shared what they did, outcome measures they achieved, and what they learned. Students, advisors, and CARPE teams ultimately considered how this work can be sustained beyond this year.
We used “an iterative approach guided by authentic student involvement, leadership, and facilitation,” according to a CARPE Fellowship Advisor. As one of our advisors shared, “[Students] aren’t just involved, they are it.” For example, Lawndale High fellows chose to focus on our sense of belonging driver and sought to cultivate a stronger college-going culture by gathering each teacher’s major & college to create classroom signs that read: “Ask me about studying ______ at ________.” Meanwhile, Santa Monica High (SAMOHI) fellows were trained by counselor Ernesto Flores and provided peer support during financial aid and college application support sessions. SAMOHI fellows also facilitated FAFSA/CA Dream Act lessons in Government & Economics classes, which led to a completion rate increase from 59%-75% among their entire student body and over 90% among their equity group. This increased Cal Grant awards by 14%, which translates to over $2 million in aid. They went on to present a session on Meaningfully Engaging Students in Continuous Improvement at the 2022 Carnegie Summit as high school seniors…and they rocked it.
To understand the effectiveness of the fellowship program and to measure the degree to which we met our program goals, we conducted a pre- and post-survey about the degree to which students felt they had agency, were confident using their voice, and had an impact at their school. When asked the extent to which students agreed with the following statement: “My input matters when it comes to decision-making at my school,” 75% of CARPE Fellows agreed or strongly agreed before start of fellowship program compared to 95% at the conclusion of the program.
In response to the statement, “I am confident using my voice to influence decisions at my school,” only 37% strongly agreed at the start of the program compared to 80% by the program’s end. Student fellows reflected on their improvement journeys through the fellowship program. According to one student, “The experience has changed so many things for me…I’ve gained a lot more confidence sharing what’s on my mind. I used to think it wasn’t my place to share what’s on my mind…but CARPE helped me branch out and say what’s on my mind and create the change I want to create.” This is illustrative of the influence that putting students in a position to lead can have on the students themselves.
And when we asked students about their influence on their school’s college access work, 95% of CARPE Fellows said they had an impact on their school’s college access work this year. And all fellowship participants felt they were able to address challenges within the college application process at their school as a result of being a CARPE Fellow. That’s a major win in our book! Another CARPE fellow offered a meta reflection of their own college access experience by being involved in an equity initiative:
It’s helped me understand the problems that I’m experiencing too. It’s not too often you think about why you are having a problem…like missing support for college applications. You don’t really think about it because that’s the way it is. But thinking about what might help has not only helped other people but helped me identify areas where I might need support too.
We were moved by the outcomes reported by the students. We also discovered that there were some unintended (but awesome) outcomes as a result of this work. During our forums, we noticed something organic start to occur: connections between students (same school and cross-school) who did not know each other before. While students collaborated on tasks, they occasionally asked each other about various components of the college application process, sometimes exchanging tips and resources. When asked about this in the post-survey, 95% of student fellows indicated that they supported one another through the college process. While we did not design for this, we learned that setting up the conditions for students to connect is just as important as collaborating toward a shared goal. It cultivates community, belonging, and support.
We also noticed a spillover effect from working closely with fellowship advisors. By further scaffolding improvement protocols and helping advisors become more comfortable with CARPE’s improvement methodology, one advisor decided to continue her improvement journey in her classroom. Antonia Guzman, ELA teacher at International Studies Learning Center, designed a semester-long project on creating awareness of social injustices, promoting advocacy, and affecting change. In groups, students crafted a problem statement, conducted empathy interviews with individuals directly connected to the problem, conducted a root cause analysis, set an aim, generated change ideas, and fleshed out an action plan. Antonia elaborates on the impact that using CI in her classroom had on creating meaningful learning experiences for her students:
When I was first introduced to CI via CARPE I knew it was a valuable tool for the classroom, particularly when it comes to project-based instruction. Last year I decided it was time to use it because I believe it is a tool rooted in advocacy and change. It allows teams to have productive conversations around problems and really focus on what causes those problems in order to become active members in our society. My ultimate goal as a teacher is to help students become active and influential citizens who advocate and bring about change. Through my use of CI in the classroom, I was excited to see how much engagement, critical thinking, and problem solving was happening in my classroom and going beyond the walls of our school. Students took ownership over their own learning and accomplished projects they never thought they could get done. The use of these tools helped me empower my students and allowed them to apply what they learned in the classroom to their world outside of school.
So where do we go from here? We have learned that having students at the center (literally – students having a seat at the table) can help us be more responsive to the needs of those we seek to serve and elevate our collective work. As one fellowship advisor explained:
A lot of the time we deal with the symptoms that we see but it’s always surface level so by having the students as part of this work you can get to the roots of the problems. It may not be perfect but we are on our way to getting to the roots of the problems.
While we experienced success through our fellowship program, we sought to incorporate students into our network activities. As a result, we are taking student integration network-wide! We kicked off the 2022-2023 school year with a session for our entire network on partnering with students. Each team learned about Hart’s Ladder of Participation, created norms for working alongside students, and identified prospective student ambassadors from their equity aim. There is a difference, however, between involving students in our work when it is convenient or when it makes for a nice addition to our agenda versus truly engaging them as consultants, thought partners, and co-conspirators in our strategizing and change efforts. Our goal is to integrate students onto CARPE teams, which will mean that students will soon be joining CARPE meetings, providing feedback on PDSA, contributing their own change ideas based on their lived experience, and offering student perspective throughout their team’s improvement journey.
We by no means have student engagement in continuous improvement figured out, but we are really good at constantly learning from our successes and challenges. You might walk away wondering, where do I start?! While we can provide you with numerous resources, the starting place is trust, relinquishing some control, and embracing the idea of failing forward. As a CARPE fellowship advisor shared, “Trust them. When you understand their why you realize it’s the same why.”
Thank you Community Design Partners for interviewing student fellows and fellowship advisors to learn more about their experiences and for providing quotes embedded throughout this article.
