Multicultural Student Achievement Network 25th Annual Student Conference Addresses “Leaving Our Legacy”

November 13, 2024   |   By WCER Communications

The Wisconsin Center for Education Research and the Multicultural Student Achievement Network (MSAN) today announced that more than 150 high school students and their chaperones from multiracial school districts across the country are meeting this week (Nov. 13-16) in East Lansing, MI for the 25th annual MSAN Student Conference.

The students and their chaperones come from 18 U.S. school districts across eight states. The goal is to develop student leaders dedicated to ending racial disparities in achievement and opportunity.
East Lansing Public Schools will host the 2024 conference in collaboration with MSAN. The main gathering will take place at the Kellogg Conference Center and Hotel. Diana Sanchez teaches Spanish and is the MSAN advisor for East Lansing High School. "In many ways, we are a district that is making big moves when it comes to equity and social justice, so hosting the MSAN conference seems very fitting," said Sanchez. “It will be fun to show off our hometown to the other MSAN districts.”

MSAN is a national coalition of multiracial school districts that learn, grow, and work together toward improving access, opportunity, and achievement for students of color. MSAN's core values embrace student identity, leadership, and voice and elevate the importance of research, inquiry, and meaningful partnerships with students to improve schools. Headquartered in Madison as a project of the UW School of Education’s Wisconsin Center for Education Research since 2007, MSAN is led by Executive Director Latoya Holiday and a Governing Board of district superintendents.

Before the conference, the student delegates read, watch and listen to materials that prompt them to reflect on the 2024 conference theme of "Leaving Our Legacy,” ultimately examining how their school improvement and social justice efforts can create lasting change. The scholars will study civil rights activist and congressman John Lewis’ message of ‘causing good trouble’ and discuss how this message is relevant today.

The MSAN Student Conference will kick off with a keynote presentation by 16-year-old youth activist Amariyanna “Mari” Copeny, whose letter to President Obama in 2016 sparked national awareness and action to address the water crisis in Flint, Michigan. Copeny, known globally as Little Miss Flint, raised almost $1 million to date for social justice and environmental causes. “At the age of eight, Mari sparked a huge conversation. We want to showcase her as a young activist because of how much she was able to do at such a young age. She’s an inspiration to many people,” said Sanchez.

The students will also participate in a guided campus tour of Michigan State University (MSU) and attend a panel discussion by MSU students.

Data-Based Action Planning To Promote School-Level Change

A highlight of the conference includes working sessions, where the young scholars engage in action-planning activities aimed at amplifying their voices, building their leadership skills, and developing impactful solutions to school challenges. In these sessions, the scholars meet with their district teams to discuss district and school-level data on various measures including graduation and retention rates, achievement data, discipline and suspension, extracurricular participation, school climate, and attendance. The purpose of this data analysis is to better understand the outcomes and experiences of students of color within their districts, the disparities that exist, and to begin identifying potential plans of action they can implement to affect meaningful change.

At last year’s student conference, Chloe Vickers, a junior at East Lansing High School, and her team studied data from a culture and climate survey conducted at their school. They identified a pattern of disconnection between how staff and students viewed each other. Then, they devised an action plan to address the perceived problem and presented it to the other conference teams.

It's more than simply planning – after, students are instrumental in putting their plans into action. “We made a podcast focused on belonging, called The Humanization Station. We talked about different subjects—race, gender, likeability—to inform our school and community,” said Vickers.

Action plans developed by students at last year’s conference included

• creating a student-led panel to market rigorous classrooms to students, and a pre- and post-survey to elicit what students of color know about Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate, and dual enrollment classes
• establishing a school-wide, bi-weekly broadcast to provide updates on multicultural student achievements and events.

Vickers has met weekly with her peer delegates in East Lansing to help plan this year’s conference activities. In addition to the working sessions and speaker presentations, scholars will get to know each other through conference traditions such as the opening night Roll Call of MSAN districts, late-evening snack sessions, a talent show and a dance on the last night of the conference.

Sanchez, the MSAN advisor for the East Lansing district, emphasized the importance of involving the high school students as conference hosts. “It’s such a cool, unique experience for them to be able to walk away and say, ‘I helped plan a conference, I attended the conference, and I was a leader at that conference.’”

About MSAN

MSAN is a national coalition of multiracial school districts learning, growing, and working together toward the goal of improving access, opportunity, and achievement for students of color. MSAN districts have student populations between 3,000 and 33,000 and are most often located in first-ring suburbs or small/mid-size cities. Since 1999, MSAN has worked to achieve the parallel goals of eliminating disparities while ensuring all students have the opportunity to reach their highest potential. Learn more at msan.wceruw.org.