Roses Talk: Elevating Student Voice in Policy & Practice
Student voice is essential to education policymaking. Too often, those most impacted by inequality are excluded.
Efforts to elevate student voice in education decision-making have grown over the past decade—through state legislation, district governance structures, and school-based student groups. Leaders increasingly recognize that student perspectives are critical to improving outcomes amid persistent challenges in K–12 education. Yet existing student feedback mechanisms rarely capture the voices of students most impacted by education inequality—those whose experiences most clearly reveal where systems are failing.
The Roses Talk Project seeks to remedy this exclusion by deliberately elevating these students’ voices in education policymaking—translating their experiences into actionable, evidence-based recommendations for school and district leaders.
Through interviews and focus groups with marginalized students, our research-practice partnership model identifies persistent challenges faced by young people and ideas for policy change that could meaningfully improve their educational trajectories.
“We started brainstorming ideas of how Stanford could support San José Unified. And that led to this project.” —Jodi Lax, Associate Superintendent of Instruction, San José Unified School District
The Project
Coined by Tupac Shakur, the “rose that grew from concrete” is a metaphor for young people who often experience the most challenging environments but nonetheless show unmatched determination to overcome their circumstances. If these “roses” are given opportunities to talk, what would they tell us about what they need from school to succeed?
Research Insights
As part of their coursework in the Law and Policy Lab, students author a series of independent blog posts that offer insight into their research experiences. These reflections not only document their learning but also contribute to an ongoing dialogue about education in the U.S., particularly by amplifying the voices of the young people they work with.
News & Media
New Research Brings High School Student Voices to the Forefront of Education Policy
Stanford Center for Racial Justice Launches Policy Lab to Elevate the Voices of Marginalized Students in San José Unified
Stanford Center for Racial Justice Project Chosen as Stanford Community Engagement Project
For partnership inquiries, please reach out to Hoang Pham at hgpham@law.stanford.edu.
This project is generously supported with funding from the Stanford Office of Community Engagement, the Haas Center for Public Service, and the Stanford Law and Policy Lab.