The school closures and consolidations proposal for Philadelphia schools that were announced in January were not surprising. The district, like many districts across the country, has signaled that it is grappling with declining enrollment, underutilized buildings, and tight budgets. The issue is so pervasive that the consulting firm Bellwether published a full report about it last fall called “Systems Under Strain: Warning Signs Pointing Toward a Rise in School Closures,” warning that many districts would soon face similar decisions.

Melody Zhou is a third-year undergraduate student at the University of Chicago, majoring in Data Science and Economics.

Even in the freezing air, Romian Crockett stood outside Chalmers STEAM Elementary with a boombox blaring ’90s music. Swaying to the beat, the principal hugged or high-fived each student who walked through the door. He knows all 218 by name. 

“Terrence, good morning,” Crockett told a young boy bundled in layers...

"My dream would be that we, as a board, come up with a statement of clear, shared vision," says school board member Ellen Rosenfeld...

We spend tens of billions of dollars each year on K-12 public education in Illinois. We argue endlessly about how best to invest that money to improve student outcomes, and we despair when those investments don’t produce an adequately literate and numerate student population. But our fixation on budgets and balance sheets may be obscuring something just as essential to learning — and far harder to buy. 

Trust...

Marisa de la Torre, Managing Director and Senior Research Associate at the UChicago Consortium, joins John Williams to talk about a study she co-authored that breaks down how students’ absence rates have changed since the pandemic...

Elaine Allensworth speaks with The Chicago Report about Connection, Trust, and Learning Student Attendance in the Middle and High School Grades Following the COVID-19 Pandemic...

CHICAGO (WLS) -- Absenteeism increased dramatically not only at Chicago Public Schools, but school districts around the country following the COVID-19 pandemic. A new University of Chicago study has some surprising results on what drives attendance. 

Students at the Back of the Yards César Chavez Elementary School show up. The attendance rate at the CPS school is over 96%...

Event overview: 

Student attendance: why it matters and what schools can do about it 
New research insights and perspectives from the field. 

Low attendance and high rates of chronic absenteeism are raising concerns across the country about students’ learning, development, and well-being. 

New research from the UChicago Consortium and IWERC provides important insights on students’ attendance, grades, and test scores—and how they are connected to schools’ culture/climate: