Alicia (She/Her) is a Research Analyst I with the UChicago Consortium. In this role, she supports the career-connected learning project while simultaneously cleaning and updating databases and documentation for data needed for new projects. Having been raised in the Chicago area in a very tight-knit community has driven her to come back and make a positive impact on the same community. She is passionate about learning new quantitative methods to investigate existing educational programs to highlight the positive outcomes or the need for change.

New data from Stanford’s Educational Opportunity Project confirms what close observers already knew: America’s test scores are slipping. The pandemic worsened the decline, but the slide began years before. In one-third of school districts, students are reading a full grade level lower than they were in 2015.

Key Findings:

• Leaders in many schools allocated resources to expand organizational capacity around adoption and implementation of the Skyline ELA curriculum in grades K-2.  
• Through strategic investments across five domains, leaders strengthened organizational capacity to support teachers’ engagement with the Skyline ELA curriculum.

In this video Dr. Heidy Moran, the Principal of Schurz High School in Chicago, shares insights on how the Cultivate Survey and framework was used to center student experience and drive improvement at Schurz.

Findings from mixed-methods research studies by the UChicago Consortium on School Research offer important lessons and considerations for K-12 leaders considering closures in their district.

In 2013, Chicago Public Schools closed 47 elementary schools—the largest round of school closures to date in the country.

Iris is a Research Assistant at the UChicago Consortium, working on the Pathways and Cultivate Revalidation projects. In this role, she primarily provides data support for quantitative research conducted by the Consortium. She is passionate about exploring how data supports decision-making, particularly at the intersection of data science, statistics, and financial risk management.

Bethany Elston is a doctoral candidate at The University of Chicago Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice, and an IES Pre-doctoral Fellow. She is a Research Assistant for the Teach Chicago project at the Consortium. Prior to her PhD program, Bethany worked with education researchers at Northwestern University and the DREME network researching district organizational learning, and continuity and alignment in PreK-3 math instruction.

Ryan Durbin is the Data Liaison for the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research. He is primarily embedded in the Chicago Public Schools central office to facilitate collaboration between CPS and University of Chicago research institutions. Ryan supports technical cross-organizational communications and coordinates data extractions and transfers between Chicago Public Schools and University of Chicago research organizations, including the Inclusive Economy Lab, UChicago Consortium, Education Lab, and the UChicago To&Through Project.

Jiara Luna is an undergrad Research Assistant at the UChicago Consortium on School Research as a Lewis-Sebring fellow. In this role, she helps the Senior Researchers with their project on the learning environment of Chicago Public Schools within the Learning and Development Group. Before working with the Consortium, Jiara started nannying with her mother. She later began working at another non-profit organization called Jubilee Park and Community center in Southeast Dallas as a summer school counselor and student nutrition researcher.