Edith Barrett

CLAS Associate Dean

Program Director, Urban and Community Studies

Professor, Public Policy

Primary Research Theme

People and the City

Secondary Research Themes

Economic and Community Development, Healthy Cities

Recent Cities-related Projects

• Reducing Education Inequality: Urban Students’ Voices in Education Reform: Reforms to public education have taken many forms: from charter and magnet schools to teacher accountability and common core curricula. Rarely do policy makers seek input from the students themselves. Scholars have shown that allowing students a voice in school-level decision making can have a number of positive outcomes, including improving the school climate and increasing student achievement. Given the knowledge and experiences of students and the importance of a quality education to their future, it would seem both reasonable and just to include students’ voices when making broader education policy decisions as well. Using qualitative data collected through interviews with teenagers and supplemented with data from the 2016 Monitoring the Future survey, this project explores how urban high school students describe their school experience and what recommendations they would give to policy makers seeking to improve urban schools. This paper concludes with recommendations for ways to include youth in policy discussions.

Selected Urban-Related Publications

Barrett, E.J. (2020). Defining their Right to the City: Perspectives from Lower-Income Youth. Urban Affairs Review. Available Online First, 6 Dec 2019.

Barrett, E.J. (2018). The Changing Media and Adolescents’ Political Engagement in the Digital Era. In Hüseyin Gül, Murat Okcu, and Gökhan Turhan (eds.), Public and Urban Administration and Policy in the Digital Age. Lap Lambert Academic Publilshing, Mauritius.

Barrett, E.J. (2016). Dismantling Public Housing, Reconstructing the Lives of Children. Children & Society, 30(2016), 96-106.