Educational or Social Reform? Students Inform the Debate Over Improving Urban Schools

The educational community is divided over which is the best approach for improving urban schools: focus on teaching and learning or underlying social inequity? This article argues that the students who attend urban schools can inform the debate. The study draws on interviews with fourteen urban youth about their participation in a community-based program that supports school activism. In the program, the students selected a surprising, and seemingly trivial, set of school problems as their top reform priorities. Yet findings reveal that from the students’ vantage point, these concrete changes will enhance engagement and the perceived fairness of the educational environment. Urban students therefore bridge current policy debates by posing recommendations pertinent to both educational and social reform advocates. The study concludes with reflections on students’ contributions to the content and process of urban educational reform.