Cornelius, the young people you are about to meet — identified by pseudonyms they chose for themselves — are not the kinds of students generally looked to for answers on how to improve schools. Too often, they are cast as the very problems. The data points that drag schools down, the disciplinary actions, the truancy numbers, the failure rates, the call-outs, the walk-outs, the kick-outs.
These students are telling us in every way they know how that our schools are not working for them. And they are exactly the young people from whom we need to be seeking advice about how to draw them back in.
Similarly, the schools I met them in, which also remain unidentified to protect student privacy, are not the kinds that districts and traditional schools generally look to for exemplar practices. These are the schools of second chance: an alternative school, a comprehensive GED program, and a high school in a secure juvenile detention facility.