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Student involvement in school improvement, even strategic planning, is not a high school only proposition. Younger kids can participate as well.

Teachers know that making lessons relevant helps motivate students. The most frequent approach is to link curriculum to learner interests. Two educators, Mario Fantini and Gerry Weinstein, in two now out-of-print books, Making Urban Schools Work and Towards Humanistic Education, pointed out that it would be more effective to link curriculum to the concerns of learners. (You can find used copies of both through Book Finder.) What do kids worry about? What anxieties sometimes keep them up at night? What peer interactions churn up their emotions? How do they deal with their fears about the future, college admissions, employment or bullying?

The John W. Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities (JGC) at Stanford University partners with communities to develop leadership, conduct research and effect change to improve the lives of youth.

Making Mastery Work: A Close-Up View of Competency Education highlights the work of ten schools participating in the Proficiency-Based Pathways Project (PBP). 

"The authors highlight the dynamics in which "Teacher leadership provided considerable momentum in the institutionalization of competency education practices.""