Policy Practicum: Roses Talk: Elevating At-Promise Student Voices in San Jose Unified

Catalog description

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 those challenges--those whose experiences most clearly reveal where systems are failing. The Roses Talk Project (https://law.stanford.edu/stanford-center-for-racial-justice/projects/roses-talk-elevating-student-voice-in-policy-practice/) aims to counter this oversight through a novel research-practice partnership model that draws on the unique experiences of marginalized students to shed new light on policies and practices that harm or support marginalized students to inform education decision-making. With around 25,000 students, SJUSD is the largest school district in Santa Clara County, the county where Stanford University is located. District leaders and administrators at Gunderson--a Title I high school in South San José--have identified a collective need to better understand how to support "at-promise" students (a positive reframing of "at-risk" that is reflected in California education law). Building on a successful pilot that resulted in a first-of-its-kind set of recommendations (https://law.stanford.edu/2026/02/24/roses-talk-san-jose-unified-rethinking-education-policy-through-at-promise-student-voices/) for SJUSD and Gunderson grounded in marginalized student voices, the next phase of the project aims to: (1) validate initial findings through additional data collection and engage in comparative analysis between Phase I and Phase II; (2) evaluate the implementation of Phase I policy recommendations for their effectiveness in responding to…