The evidence was clear: enrollment in full-day preschool had long-lasting benefits for students, especially students who started off the farthest behind. Beginning in 2013, Chicago Public Schools officials invested in new policies and programs that resulted in quadrupling full-day programs, most notably on the West and South Sides of Chicago in primarily Black neighborhoods with the lowest income levels. Full-day preschool enrollment became more equitable, and preschool daily attendance rates rose to their highest levels ever.

Enrollment in Chicago Public Schools is flat for the first time in more than a decade, according to preliminary data obtained by Chalkbeat.

New preliminary numbers for this school year show just over 322,500 students are registered at CPS schools. The data represents enrollment as of the end of the day Monday, the 20th day of the school year, when the district traditionally takes its official count. On the 20th day of last school year, 322,106 students were enrolled according to official data...

While releasing new standardized test scores Tuesday, Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez celebrated elementary students’ gains in reading and math scores that, according to the district, constitute a partial rebound from learning loss due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

About six years ago, Lori Zaimi’s daughter told her mom that another longtime friend was leaving their elementary school in Edgewater on the North Side. The friend’s apartment building, she explained, had been sold to someone who was going to renovate it.

Zaimi recognized the familiar story of gentrification, when higher-income families move into a working class neighborhood and drive up property values. She’d seen property demolitions and pricey single family housing go up across Edgewater, the formerly working class neighborhood where she grew up...

Key Findings

• Principals had immediate influence on student learning and school culture, and they also had lasting impacts on students’ outcomes into young adulthood.
• CPS’s principal residency program appeared to increase principal effectiveness at improving achievement in the first two years of the principalship.
• The slow pace at which residency completers became CPS principals dampens the potential benefits of the residency program to the district.
• CPS’s principal merit pay program led to improvements in student achievement, but there were some

JEFFERSON PARISH, La. — The school year ended at Washington Elementary at 2:35 p.m. on a hot Tuesday afternoon in May, but one hour later, 9-year-old Malaysia Robertson lingered outside.

The Chicago Public Schools Data Liaison provides strategic administrative support to the CPS External Research Office and its key Collaborative Research Partners. The role serves two main functions: managing the provision of CPS data for external research and providing guidance and support to the Collaborative Research Partners in their use of CPS data across their research project portfolios.

Key Findings

• Students were more likely to be retained if they lived in census tracts with high rates of unaffordable housing, high rates of neighborhood poverty, low rates of home ownership, or limited access to green space.
• Students were more likely to be retained in grade if they attended elementary schools with high poverty rates and high suspension rates, even when comparing students with similar achievement.
• Overage students who attended high schools with a great racial equity climate were twice as likely to graduate high school in four years as overa

Key Findings

• Teacher impacts on Black students varied widely.
• The teachers that were more effective for Black students often were also more effective for non-Black students, but not always.
• Race-specific value-add scores were predictive of teachers’ subsequent effects on students.
• Experienced teachers and teachers with a master’s degree tended to be highly effective overall, but much less effective for Black than non-Black students.
• Incorporating teachers’ revealed comparative advantage into policy decisions has the potential to increas