Voices of New Orleans Youth 2022: How are our city's children doing after three unusual years?

An essen­tial com­po­nent of any school sys­tem that is com­mon­ly left out in pol­i­cy dis­cus­sions is the thoughts and opin­ions of the stu­dents. We can eas­i­ly access test scores and grad­u­a­tion rates, but the way stu­dents feel about their teach­ers, schools, neigh­bor­hoods, and them­selves isn’t pub­licly avail­able infor­ma­tion. Gath­er­ing such insights is essen­tial to cre­ate ini­tia­tives that help New Orleans’ youth suc­ceed. In this report, we dis­cuss the find­ings from the sec­ond New Orleans city­wide youth sur­vey, com­plet­ed in 2021 – 2022. In par­tic­u­lar, we sum­ma­rize the results from mid­dle and high school stu­dents in the pub­lic schools of New Orleans. Where pos­si­ble, these results are com­pared to those of the 2018 – 2019 city­wide youth sur­vey. As the first sur­vey was con­duct­ed pri­or to the pan­dem­ic and greater atten­tion to sys­temic racism, our research pro­vides an oppor­tu­ni­ty to com­pare stu­dents’ views of their schools, neigh­bor­hoods, and them­selves before and after the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic began. We can also iden­ti­fy any dis­par­i­ties in expe­ri­ences among dif­fer­ent races/​ethnicities. Our key take­aways are as fol­lows: Good News In 2022, stu­dents report­ed bet­ter teach­ing qual­i­ty, greater social sup­port, and a feel­ing of being treat­ed more fair­ly in school com­pared to 2019. Areas for Con­cern Since 2019, New Orleans stu­dents report valu­ing edu­ca­tion less, exert­ing less self-con­trol, and attend­ing school less often. Since the onset of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, rough­ly 40% of stu­dents have report­ed height­ened con­cerns about their aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance and men­tal well-being. There are dis­par­i­ties in how stu­dents of dif­fer­ent races view their schools and neigh­bor­hoods. Black stu­dents report expe­ri­enc­ing worse school and neigh­bor­hood envi­ron­ments and hav­ing few­er men­tal health resources in schools than white stu­dents. The sur­vey pro­vid­ed us with a wealth of data about what stu­dents were think­ing and feel­ing. We grouped these data into six main top­ics: teach­ing qual­i­ty, stu­dent aca­d­e­m­ic beliefs and behav­iors, school cli­mate, neigh­bor­hoods, per­son­al well­be­ing, and COVID-19. In this report, our aim is to ampli­fy the voic­es of New Orleans stu­dents by inform­ing com­mu­nal and edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions about the issues that impact them. We want to advo­cate for poli­cies and prac­tices that ele­vate New Orleans stu­dents and help them to reach their poten­tial in life.

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