OUR STORY
In 2019, YTACD and SVC merged to form Students & Educators for Equity. The purpose of SEE is to advocate for policies and practices that eradicate disproportionality impacting historically marginalized communities. We believe in a youth-driven authentic decision-making process in our ultimate pursuit of liberation.
In 2010, with hopes of generating a wave of student-led school improvement, the NYC DOE launched the Student Voice Collaborative (SVC) program. SVC brought together public high school students from 10 north Brooklyn high schools to effect the sorts of change they wanted to see in their schools and support one another along the way.
As part of the program, SVC members conducted comprehensive studies of their schools, identified relevant challenges, and implemented student-led school improvement programs in partnership with staff and students. Through the process, they built more democratic systems and structures that ensured youth voice. Participating schools also paired up, based upon common needs and interests, and took part in a series of inter-visitations through which they learned and grew with and from one another.
In 2018, the NYU Technical Assistance Center on Disproportionality (TACD) partnered with two NYC DOE Borough Offices to form the Youth Technical Assistance Center on Addressing Disproportionality (YTACD), the youth component of TACD. In the spirit of Freire, TACD realized it was not enough for only adults to be at the table to do this important work in disrupting educational disparities among youth. Through a Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) framework, students took the lead in their own liberation and interrogated their positionality within dominant structures.
YTACD has carefully analyzed nationwide, statewide, and district level data on achievement and discipline, while interrogating the concepts of race, culture, socioeconomic status, educational equity and more, in order to understand the parts that make up disproportionality and inequity.