Theorizing Back: An Approach to Participatory Policy Analysis

In February 2006 I co-founded a New York City-based research collective of high-school-aged youth, the Collective of Researchers on Educational Disappointment and Desire (CREDD). Though initially founded to conduct research on New York City public high school practices that push students toward the GED rather than the high school diploma, the group has decided to continue working as a collective, filling a gap in New York City’s terrain of youth activists and organizers, researchers, and policy advisors. Now having completed our first research endeavor, the Gateways and Get-aways Project, CREDD is in the design stage for our next study while also training and collaborating with other youth participatory research collectives, and offering community workshops to share our findings and our methods.