PROVIDENCE — Nearly 80 percent of Providence high school students say they definitely want to attend college but only a third of those students say that schools prepare them to do so.

That’s just one of the findings gleaned from a survey conducted by a youth group in Providence called Young Voices.

Starting last spring, about 30 teenagers fanned out across the city and interviewed 913 students from eight high schools about what they want from their schools, their Police Department and their community. Some high school dropouts were asked the same questions.

Using a recognized research model, the students also held a number of focus groups with students from the training programs Year Up and YouthBuild; Youth Pride Inc., an advocacy and education organization, and AS220, an urban arts organization. Rhode Island Kids Count, a statewide advocacy organization, helped the young people design the survey. A consultant conducted the statistical analysis.

According to Karen Feldman, the founder of Young Voices, the premise behind youth action research is that young people will reveal things to their peers that they would never share with an adult.

“This approach gives adults data that they would never be able to access,” Feldman said yesterday. “We wanted to speak with students who represented the mainstream of the city — the average Providence youth.”

Young Voices will present its findings to state and local leaders on Nov. 14 in the rotunda of the Rhode Island Convention Center. Scheduled to attend the event are Mayor David N. Cicilline, School Supt. Donnie Evans, the City Council, Police Chief Dean M. Esserman and members of the Providence delegation to the General Assembly. The event will be moderated by Elizabeth Burke Bryant, executive director of Rhode Island Kids Count.

Coincidently, the demographic profile of the students surveyed mirrors the racial and ethnic breakdown of the city: more than half of the students who participated in the survey were Hispanic; 29 percent were black, 10 percent were white and 8 percent were Asian.

The single most striking finding is that 93 percent of the students expressed a desire to attend college — 79 percent fell into the “definite” category and 14 percent fell into the “probable” category. But when the same group of teenagers was asked if their high school prepared them for college, 50 percent said “a little” and 15 percent said “not at all.”

Feldman said that the students’ top concern was “being prepared to be successful in the real world.”

After analyzing the data, students met with members of the mayor’s staff, the School Department and community groups before developing a series of recommendations, called action steps, which they will ask leaders to adopt during the November forum.

Young Voices will recommend that the School Department:

•Create a curriculum that is more challenging and “hands-on.”

Students specifically asked for more Advanced Placement courses and more job internships, urged that science be taught in ways that connect theory to the real world, and asked that business leaders explain how an understanding of math and science is essential for certain types of well-paying jobs.

•Encourage a more positive school climate. Students suggested holding student-teacher conferences in addition to the ones between parents and teachers.

•Make sure that all schools have adequate resources. Students promised to lobby the General Assembly to establish a fair funding formula for all public schools.

While the research project was under way, members of Young Voices were invited to present their views to city officials through membership on various policy committees, including the mayor’s task force on poverty and the police chief’s advisory committee.

Feldman and co-director Chace Baptista, a recent high school graduate, train teenagers how to participate in the adult world, from how to address a group to how to make a cogent argument.

Too often, Feldman said, adults make the wrong decisions because there are no teenagers in the room who are able to articulate their concerns. Feldman wants it to become a matter of habit to include youth in city policy discussions that affect their education, their health and safety.

Would it make sense to exclude women from a discussion on how to urge women to get tested for breast cancer? Of course not, Feldman said.

“And yet that’s what we do with youth. We don’t consider certain avenues because youth are not at the table.”

lborg@projo.com