A panel on youth research featuring Taylor Watson, Michael Sterritt, La-Shaune Gullatt, Anne Galletta, Ph.D., Jayme Thomas, Carly Evans, and 9th grade students from the Cleveland Metropolitan School District.

1. We the Students: More than Just a Number

2. Introduction
We the Students: More than Just a Number speaks to the
complexity of students’ lives and the vast potential youth possess,
as evident in the data presented here. As suggested by the title,
this complexity and potential is not measured well in a single
number, which is frequently how students come to see themselves
and how they perceive themselves as seen by others in the current
emphasis on school accountability through testing.
This source be cited as follows:
Galletta, A., Bisesi, A., Evans, C., Giraldo-Garcia, R., Gullatt, L., Sterritt, M., Thomas,
J., & Watson, T. (2014). We the Students: More than Just a Number. Presentation at
City Club of Cleveland on August 7, 2014.
 Contact: Anne Galletta, Ph.D. a.galletta@csuohio.edu

3. Collaborative –Who are we?
Youth &
young
adults
Educators &
community
members
University
faculty &
students

4. What is
Participatory Action Research (PAR)?
 Inquiry takes place within a collective which shares relationship
to research focus
 Members may share a particular standpoint, situated within a
context or bring multiple angles of vision to study
 Those who participate in the research are often insiders in
some way and who bring lived experience to research
 Experiential knowledge is given weight (Cammarota & Fine,
2008)
 Analysis of data situates individual within context of history,
policy, and local conditions

5. What did we do?
 CSU students & faculty and 25 youth in the Cleveland
Metropolitan School District (CMSD) gathered in November
2012 and planned our action research
 Engaged 9th grade students in 7 schools - using film & poetry
 Cleveland State University (CSU) students collected data
through Survey Monkey – December 2012
 Youth & CSU students/faculty analyze survey data, identify
themes – January 2013
 Reported back to 9th grade students using creative products –
spring 2013

6. 9th Grade Survey Report
 Demographics
 Transportation
 Student Mobility and School Closure
 Student Safety and Getting Along
 Student and Teacher Relationships

7. 
Demographics

9. Study methods
 The student sample consisted of 9th grade students in 7
district schools. The sample size (N=259) is fairly
reflective of the demographics of the district and allows
us to make inferences about the district’s 9th grade
student population*
 Our collective of 25 youth from the 7 schools, a
community member, and CSU students and faculty have
analyzed the data and found there are compelling
themes to spark a discussion on the challenges and
opportunities youth experience in their early years of
high school
* further details on study methods available on request

10. 
Transportation

12. 9th grade students on transportation issues
 “Even though I might only live 2 miles away, it is still
a long walk because my parent does not have the
time to drop me off, and our car breaks down”
 “I actually like having to catch the bus, but
sometimes it takes long”
 “I was slightly scared to ride the RTA because I have
never done it before…it was a new transition”

13. Recent transportation changes
 The district announced in January 2014 that students living ½ mile or
more from their high school would get RTA transportation
 This decision was a positive step in addressing transportation problems!
 Issues remain nonetheless in terms of safety, getting to school on time,
and crowded busses taking students to school, or passing them by when
the bus is full. We creatively explored these issues through poetry and
film.
 We now share a video, When are You Safe? It was prepared as a creative
product to engage the 9th grade students in this issue. This video was
used in 9th grade classrooms in the spring of 2013 when the youth
researchers returned to report back to the 9th grade the data and key
themes

14. Video & Poem: When are you Safe?

15. Students Changing Schools
& School Closure

17. Frequently changing schools
 As noted in the previous slide, 40% of 9th grade
students taking the survey reported changing
schools somewhere between 5 and more than 9
times
 Frequently changing schools can negatively impact
students’ grades and social relationships. We found
in the survey data that students who reported
changing schools a lot also reported high levels of
verbal bullying in their school

18. Locating issue of school closure
in local history
 In 2010, 14 K-8 schools closed and several more were
closed in 2011. This occurred mostly on the district’s
east side. Given this, we looked at mobility due to
school closure on the east side high schools to
understand better the experience of 9th grade students
who may have had their elementary school closed
 As you can see on the displayed chart in the next slide,
in one east side high school 35% of the 9th graders said
their school closed, which is reported almost the same
as moving from a K-8 to high school OR changing schools
due to a family move

19. 0%
5%
10%
15%
20%
25%
30%
35%
40%
37% 35%
7%
26%
7%
37%
2%
Mobility in One East Side High School

20. Transition from closed school
into new school
 Across all the schools, among those who attended a
school that had closed, 43% reported the transition
was “hard” or “very hard”
 Some students saw the transition due to school
closure as a loss, others as an adjustment, and still
others as a new beginning
 These numbers are important to our analysis, but
they don’t tell the whole story. 9th grade student
voices are reflected in the following slide…

21. 9th grade students on school closure
 “All my friends were gone. I was expecting to graduate from
my school. It also hurt me when I went to another school
because we were all packed in the classroom...there was not
enough books to go around…It was not easy switching
schools.”
 “I felt sort of sad that I had to leave all of my friends, but it
introduced me to new things.”
 "It didn’t change my life that much, but I did feel like I lost a
part of me...”

22. 
Student Safety & GettingAlong

24. Students getting along with each other
 76% of 9th grade students who took the
survey reported that they get along with
other students in their school
 BUT:
 52% said they experienced verbal bullying
“sometimes” or “many times”

25. Students report “getting along” but also
note bullying
 Some possibilities in terms of interpreting the data
– these were shared with 9th grade students:
 Students feel safe and get along with those who are
their friends, often people who share a common
background. However, when students are in a
situation with someone different from them, they
may bully or be bullied
 Conditions in the school can increase the likelihood
of bullying, such as crowded hallways, students who
are strangers to each other and to their teachers,
and pressures outside the school in the home and
neighborhood

26. 
Teacher and Student Relationships

27. How students and teachers get along
 59% of 9th grade students report that students and teachers
do not get along very well
 At the same time,
 68% reported that teachers “make me think deeply about
ideas”
 70% reported teachers “challenge me to work hard”
 The data appear to reflect negative as well as positive
dimensions in student-teacher relationships
 In our analysis, we considered ways teachers and students
come to know each other better: through advisories, through
meaningful and challenging curriculum, through classroom
resources and reasonable class sizes

28. Question on classroom practices
impacted by state policy
 More than half of the students (60%) indicated that
their teachers focus only on the Ohio Graduation
Test (OGT)
 Those who reported getting along with their
teachers were more likely to also report their
teacher focused only on the OGT
 Have students begun to equate good teaching with
OGT prep?

29. 
Engagement in Inquiry and Action

30. Why did we conduct a survey?
 Survey plays the role of a “social mirror” (Martín-
Baró, 1994) through which youth can see their
experience reflected
 Our use of critical theory guides us in embedding
the experience analytically within broader systems
of relationships
 More on the meaning we give to this work as a
collective of university faculty and students, youth,
educators, and community members in the next
slide…

31. CSU student engagement
 Moving beyond university classroom walls
 Utilizing participatory action research in the study of policy
and of educational change
 Teacher candidates play a role in PAR collectives
 Youth bring knowledge of the problems they experience on a
daily basis in schools and their neighborhoods
 Youth knowledge coupled with university resources in terms
of faculty and students
 Youth and community members critically analyze alongside
members of the university

32. 
Policy Implications

33. Locating themes in broader
national and local context
 Historically, legislative action intended to address school
improvement and educational equity: No Child Left
Behind, Race to the Top competitive grants, Ohio House
Bill 525
 Survey themes of transportation issues, changing
schools, and school closure have implications for the
implementation of the district’s Portfolio System,
consisting of seven principles, including school choice
 Within this arrangement, waiting lists have emerged,
seen by some as a sign of successful reform
 Waiting lists suggest that some students will gain access
to resources, and others will not

34. Attending to Equity
 The quality of student-student relationships and
teacher-student relationships is influenced by what
happens inside and outside the classroom in the
policy decisions put in place in the name of school
reform
 Careful attention must be given to ways in which
legislative action in education may lead to
inequitable policies and practices

35. Summing up
 Transportation challenges, concern about students
getting along, frequent changing of schools, and the
need for students and teachers to get to know and
respect each other make transitions a challenge for 9th
grade students
 These themes reflect the data from the 9th grade survey.
 What do you think? What do you think should be done?
 Discussion!

36. References
 Butler, A., Mitchell, A., & Pitmon, N. (2013). When are
you Safe? Poem and video produced at Participatory
Action Research session at Cleveland State University.
 Cammarota, J., & Fine, M. (Eds.). (2008). Revolutionizing
Education: Youth Participatory Action Research in
Motion. New York, NY: Routledge.
 Martín-Baró, I. (1994). Writings for a liberation
psychology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

37. Acknowledgments
A special thanks to the parents of the youth
researchers, who have supported their sons and
daughters through this project. To the educators
embarking on a new academic year, hold close to your
passion, curiosity, and fearlessness.

38. We the Students: More than Just a Number