Alex Gordon is a Research Assistant for the UChicago Consortium and a graduate student at the Harris School of Public Policy. In this position, he obtains, cleans, and analyzes data for projects on teacher retention and early college credit. His research interests include the substitute teacher shortage and the political economy of interactions between teachers’ unions and school parents. Before coming to UChicago, Alex taught fifth- through eighth-grade math at the St. Bartholomew School, where he still teaches an annual summer math intensive.

Amy Arneson is a Senior Research Associate at the UChicago Consortium, leading and supporting mixed-methods research projects with advanced quantitative analysis, visualization, and modeling. She focuses on conducting rigorous, meaningful, and timely research and, importantly, making the results accessible so that they can be used by educators to improve college and career outcomes for public school students. In particular, she examines equitable access to and outcomes of early college opportunities in high school and secondary and post-secondary career and technical education programming.

“Evidence-based, research-backed, data-driven…”: our world is increasingly focused on evidence at all levels – and rightly so. Evidence is a central part of any argument and allows us to verify our hunches while laying solid ground for future action. In education, we rely on evidence to understand which programs and policies have the greatest impacts for students. In the realm of quality science education, two new pieces of evidence offer a reminder of just how far we all have to go – but also some good news about the transformational potential of strong instruction.

Bilingual educators weren’t immune to the COVID-19 burnout that hit teachers this year. For example, last October, Illinois school districts reported 98 vacancies for bilingual educators. In the early childhood setting, that dearth of bilingual teachers could hurt students in the long run.

The job participates in scientific research projects. Ensures compliance of research activities with institutional, state, and federal regulatory policies, procedures, directives and mandates. Analyzes possible solutions using standard procedures. Writes articles, reports and manuscripts. Assists in drafting presentations on research findings.

On a hot Friday afternoon, students at Lenart Regional Gifted Center dance with zest in the parking lot as a DJ plays music. They are excited to get out of their public school classrooms for a walkathon, a fundraiser for the school in Chicago’s West Chatham neighborhood on the South Side.

Three times around the school equals a mile, and for each mile students earn money for their school. So far, the kindergarten class is in the lead, pulling in $1,000 in the last hour...

Rosa is the Director of Partnerships and Engagement at the UChicago Consortium. She leads the UChicago Consortium’s strategic collaboration efforts in our research-practice partnership with Chicago Public Schools (CPS) and engages with a broad range of stakeholders to support the impact and use of Consortium research for improving practice and policy. This includes families of CPS students; teachers and school administrators; local and national education nonprofits; local, state, and national policymakers, and others.

This summary is derived from a book titled Organizing Schools for Improvement. This book is a synthesis of longitudinal research conducted by the Chicago Consortium for School Research (CCSR) and is considered its seminal publication. CCSR has been studying school reform in Chicago for more than 2 decades under a partnership between the University of Chicago and Chicago Public Schools. The results reported in this book reflect data from school surveys conducted in several hundred Chicago schools over a period of seven years.