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Peter Piazza, research assistant professor in the College of Education’s Department of Educational Policy, Research, and Administration, has co-authored a new article in the American Journal of Education exploring the gap between student experiences and their role in shaping education policy.

The article, published in the journal’s upcoming May 2025 issue, “How Policy Positionality Helps Explain Policy That Does Not Fit Students,” examines changes to admissions policies for academically selective public high schools in a midsized, predominantly Latinx and Black urban school district.

Piazza and his co-authors compare how students and adults participated in the policy change process and highlight how students, despite being most directly affected, had limited influence. The study introduces the concept of policy positionality to explain this disconnect, showing that adults with less firsthand experience had greater power in decision-making. As a result, the final policy reflected adult priorities more than student needs, such as well-being and school climate.

The article also offers insights into how policy structures can better include and respond to student voices. The full text article, published in the American Journal of Education, is available to the UMass Amherst community through the University of Chicago Press Journals.