Another Chicago education institution is celebrating its 25th Anniversary this year: the University of Chicago’s Consortium on Chicago School Research. The UChicago Consortium is a unique institution that has long produced rigorous, technical research that is accessible and useful to practitioners and policy-makers, and which is broadly used by the school reform community. Formed as the school system was being decentralized, the UChicago Consortium examines the day-to-day implications of the policies and practices it researches, e.g. the five essentials that matter most for school improvement, and then works to build capacity to implement solutions. Data sharing with CPS has resulted in one of the most comprehensive longitudinal data archives of public school data for a single city. As a non-political group that sticks by its research without being swayed by those in power, it has enviable credibility...