The New Jersey Urban Youth Research Initiative

The New Jersey Urban Youth Research Initiative (UYRI),  initially made possible by a grant by the Schumann Fund for New Jersey, involves participatory action research with Abbott District high school students and community partners across three cities: Jersey City, Newark and Paterson. The purpose of this project is to investigate and report on “opportunity to learn” issues raised by the new graduation recommendations of the NJ High School Redesign Steering Committee (http://www.state.nj.us/education/ser/). Included is an examination the districts’ feasibility to prepare their students for these proposed changes. Research, educator and community partners include: Henry Snyder High School and ASPIRA from Jersey City, the Education Law Center, Abbott Leadership Institute and Project Grad from Newark, the NJ Community Development Center in Paterson,  CUNY Graduate Center in New York City, Montclair University and Saint Peter's College.

The new graduation recommendations, released in April, 2008 and recently passed in June, 2009, proposed "a fundamental change in public education in the state that will affect students in all grades” including significant increases in high school graduation requirements and up to six new end-of-course exams that would be required to earn a diploma.

As part of this project, high school youth worked with adults in three youth research camps focusing on framing the issue, examining existing data, studying research methods, collecting data, analyzing the results and creating products based on these results. Between camps, youth researchers met with community partner facilitators and collected data from their respective high schools to determine students’, teachers’ and community views of the new graduation requirements. This included interviews with parents, peers, graduates, teachers and administrators and equipment inventories of their school’s math and science facilities. In addition, a state-wide survey was created and distributed widely at educational meetings and on the internet, to determine adult evaluations of the new graduation requirements. The results of their work, including the survey data, are being prepared in a report entitled: The New Jersey Urban Youth Research Initiative: Report on The Statewide Survey on New Graduation Requirements. At the completion of the project, high school youth researchers earn three Saint Peter’s College credits through our Special Programs for Credit.