How Student Leadership Is Shaping a New Vision for Change
As California prepares for the 2026 legislative session, its education system stands at a crossroads.
Hybrid learning, artificial intelligence, and persistent challenges with engagement have reshaped what school looks like across the state. In the years following the pandemic, many students are still asking the same questions: Does school reflect who I am? Is it preparing me for what comes next? And does anyone hear what we’re experiencing?
No one understands these questions better than students themselves.
Yet for decades, decisions about education policy have largely been made without student voice meaningfully embedded in the process.
The initiative to envision proposed changes to California’s Education landscape began by changing that dynamic.
Student leaders from GENup, a California-based, student-led organization advocating for student rights, approached Scaling Student Success and Parsec Education with a clear goal: to build a vision for California Education shaped directly by students, and to use that collective voice to inform new proposals to the California State Board of Education during the 2026 legislative session.
Why Students Stepped Forward
GENup exists for a simple but powerful reason: students deserve a real say in the systems that shape their lives.
Founded in the wake of teacher strikes and funding crises, GENup has always been built by students, for students. Youth leaders guide every aspect of the organization, from strategy and outreach to policy development and legislative engagement. Their mission is to transform education policy by amplifying youth voice, not symbolically, but structurally.
In the 2025–26 school year, GENup’s student leadership recognized a growing gap. Too many education initiatives were being proposed without a deep understanding of what students actually want and need from their educational experience in California.
Rather than reacting to another legislative cycle shaped primarily by adults, students chose to lead.
They approached the State Board of Education with an idea rooted in a simple belief: California can do better if students help define what better looks like.
From Student Advocacy to Cross-System Collaboration
GENup knew student passion alone would not be enough to shift systems.
To increase the likelihood of real legislative impact, student leaders intentionally sought partners who could support listening at scale and connect student voice to long-term systems change.
That’s where Parsec Education and Scaling Student Success entered the work.
GENup invited both organizations into the initiative. Both Parsec and Scaling Student Success leaned in to support student leadership with the tools, infrastructure, and strategic alignment needed to translate student voice into actionable insight.
This collaboration reflects GENup’s two-pronged theory of impact: pairing grassroots organizing with evidence-based policy advocacy to create sustainable, student-driven change.
Listening as the Starting Point, Not the Finish Line
Education systems rely heavily on data: attendance rates, assessment scores, graduation numbers. Those metrics matter, but they rarely explain the full student experience.
When student feedback is meaningfully acted on, measurable outcomes follow. In a recent California case using Parsec Real, an experience redesigned based on open-ended student feedback resulted in a 51% increase in student attendance, achieved without incentives or compliance-driven tactics.
Students know when learning feels engaging and when it does not. They know when school supports their growth and when it creates distance.
GENup’s student leaders understood that meaningful policy change must begin by listening to those lived experiences at scale.
The goal wasn’t to collect another set of survey responses. It was to hear students explain, in their own words, what school actually feels like.
Designed Around How Students Actually Share
The process to create a vision and proposed changes to legislation was intentionally built to respect how students communicate best.
Before responding individually, students are invited to discuss key questions in small groups with peers they trust. These conversations allow time for reflection, clarity, and shared understanding.
Students then respond to three open-ended prompts:
- A learning experience that felt engaging and supportive
- What feels missing from their education today
- How they would redesign learning if given the opportunity
There are no word limits and no required formats. Students can respond using text, audio, or video, in the medium that best fits their voice.
This design removes barriers and creates space for honest, thoughtful input. Especially for students whose perspectives are harder to gather due to language barriers or geographical distance.
Parsec Real: Turning Voice Into Understanding
Listening at scale requires more than collecting responses.
It requires making sense of them without losing what makes them human.
Parsec Real enables this balance. Through Real, thousands of student responses across text, audio, and video can be synthesized to identify shared themes and emerging priorities, while preserving the context behind individual experiences.
Rather than flattening student voice into numbers or summaries, Real allows leaders to hear what students are actually saying and why it matters.
This approach aligns directly with Parsec’s core belief in measuring what we value. At Parsec, student success is not defined solely by traditional academic norms. But rather by a fuller picture of strengths, growth, and potential — both during school and beyond graduation.
Scaling Student Success: Connecting Voice to Long-Term Change
Student insight becomes most powerful when it informs how systems define success.
Scaling Student Success brings a long-term, equity-centered lens to this work, focused on preparing young people for college, career, and civic life. Their mission centers on redefining success across the entire student journey. From kindergarten through becoming successful, contributing community members.
By working alongside GENup and Parsec, Scaling Student Success helps ensure that student voice is not only heard, but translated into conversations about policy, leadership, and system design.
This partnership reflects a shared commitment to educating the whole child and building a community of practice across California that prioritizes meaningful, sustained change.
Students Stay at the Center, All the Way Through
Student leadership does not end once responses are submitted.
After insights are synthesized, student representatives from participating organizations will review and refine the vision itself. They will help determine which themes resonate most strongly and how the collective message should be shared.
The student curated content will then be presented to the California State Board of Education.
This work treats students not as a data source, but as leaders.
To broaden the reach of this effort, GENup is inviting high school students across California to share their perspectives directly. School systems and educators can help elevate student voice by encouraging students to participate in this Real campaign, creating space for students to reflect on their learning experiences and contribute to a collective vision for California education.
Students can participate here: https://voice.parseceducation.com/5ckLNYAQacC67enDMo8lmY-3nzcDI96XpZ0fj00JdJWCc
GENup’s student leadership will also bring this work to a broader audience at Parsec Education’s 2026 Measure What We Value Summit, where they will speak about authentic youth engagement and the importance of measuring student success beyond traditional academic outcomes. Their session reflects a shared belief that students must be active partners in shaping learning experiences. Especially in virtual, hybrid, and non-traditional settings and that meaningful change begins by listening to those most impacted.
Why This Matters for the 2026 Legislative Session
GENup’s hope is clear.
By grounding proposed changes in authentic student voice, California can develop stronger, more responsive initiatives than those introduced in earlier legislative seasons.
This effort is not about reacting to the past but rather about shaping a better future.
As student leaders bring this collective vision forward to the California State Board of Education during the 2026 legislative session, they do so with the belief that systems improve when students are trusted as partners in change.
A Different Way Forward
Too often, student voice is acknowledged but not fully integrated.
This initiative, led by students and supported by trusted partners, offers a different path. The goal of influencing the Education Code in California through student lead conversations with the State Board of Education is grounded in listening and rooted in the hope of making lasting changes.
When students are heard, systems learn and can evolve. When students help guide that evolution, education becomes something that truly serves them.
Want to know more about how your system can work towards student centered change? Check out Parsec Real and the work currently underway with school systems across the country.
