Learning disruptions can require school leaders to make changes quickly. In the wake of the pandemic, the Chicago Skyline Early Literacy project channeled this sense of urgency into a drive to innovate. The project team is a research-practice partnership (RPP) between Chicago Public Schools (CPS) and the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research (Consortium).
In 2021, Chicago Public Schools launched Skyline, the district’s custom PK-12 digital curriculum, to provide teachers and students with no-cost access to high-quality, comprehensive, culturally relevant curricula across seven content areas, including English Language Arts (ELA). At the time, data showed that the reading achievement of students in kindergarten through second grade in CPS was disproportionately impacted by remote learning. In an effort to address students’ unfinished learning, a core component of CPS’s pandemic recovery plan involved increasing access to high quality curriculum. In order to gauge the effectiveness of these efforts, the District partnered with the Consortium to assess the impact of the Skyline ELA curriculum in the primary grades...