Briana is a Research Analyst who is currently studying the City Colleges of Chicago system as well as the many K-12 assessments administered to Chicago Public Schools students.  Before joining the UChicago Consortium Briana worked in New Orleans public education for nine years, serving as a middle- and high-school science teacher, school district data analyst and database architect, and policy researcher at Tulane University’s Education Research Alliance.

A coalition of students, advocacy groups and a largely black and Hispanic California school district filed suit against the University of California system on Tuesday to stop it from using standardized test scores in its admissions. The move, if successful, could shake up the testing industry and radically reshape college admissions.

Thanks to the Sun-Times for publicizing one of the most important but least-known findings in education, just confirmed by the University of Chicago’s Consortium on School Research, in the recent editorial “When Chicago schools meet immigrant families halfway, kids learn”.

As reported, the Chicago research showed that development of the child’s first language means better English and better school performance in general...

For years, the academic performance of English learners in Chicago has looked grim, with research showing they lag far behind students who entered school as native English speakers. But a new report calls into question that conventional wisdom.

Educators and policymakers have long thought that children who entered school still learning English lagged behind their fellow students—an idea backed by years of data.

But according to new research from the University of Chicago, many English learners eventually match, or even exceed, the academic achievements of their peers...

Un estudio indica que esta iniciativa, de la que hace parte casi el 20% de los estudiantes de CPS, sí funciona. El informe también revela que los alumnos bilingües suelen tener una mejor asistencia y que, en muchos casos, llegan a tener un mejor rendimiento académico...

This is good news, if you can call it news. Kids from immigrant families in Chicago who start kindergarten not knowing much English do just fine in the long run. Many don’t just catch up to the other kids — they do better.

That’s the key finding of a long-term study by the University of Chicago’s Consortium on School Research...

Chicago Public Schools students who aren’t proficient in English when they enter kindergarten tend to have better attendance and in some cases higher test scores than their peers who are native English speakers, according to a new study by the University of Chicago.

Researchers and officials in CPS, where about a third of students are identified as English learners at some point during their schooling, said the findings should help dispel misconceptions that children in English learning programs are less likely to succeed academically than their peers...

Chicago’s recipe for EL success includes providing an early intervention platform that features professional development, tutoring and its new Curriculum Equity Initiative, which focuses on ensuring that teachers have standards-aligned materials that are "free from bias; fair across race, religion, ethnicity and gender, and culturally relevant."

Wilma Milagros David knows that her bilingual students at Sandoval Elementary in Gage Park are working hard. As principal she sees them at school, improving in math or focusing on work even when they may be tired or have trouble at home. 

But the progress David sees her students make hasn’t always shown up in the research about bilingual students...