Clarice is an AM/PhD student at the University of Chicago Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice. Clarice is an Institute of Education Sciences (IES) Fellow and a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Health Policy Research Scholar (HPRS). Before beginning her PhD, Clarice worked as an educator for five years in various areas, including teaching preschool-aged children in rural Arkansas through Teach for America and teaching English to middle school students in Madrid, Spain.

Grades and standardized test scores provide information about whether students are prepared for their future goals, but misperceptions and uncertainties can lead people to use them in ways that are counterproductive. This project provides evidence about these measures of student achievement.

This study examines the trends in teacher retention in Chicago Public Schools before, during and post-pandemic years. This work will also explore what teacher, students and school characteristics are related to teacher retention.

To address the teacher shortage, CPS developed Teach Chicago, a collection of targeted strategies to develop, recruit, and retain teachers in high-need schools. The Consortium is leading a two-year, mixed method study of these strategies, their efficacy, and the conditions that support successful implementation.

Key Takeaways

• If we look at the overall population of college-going students, students’ course grades are consistently the strongest indicators of students’ general academic preparation.
  • If you were just going to focus on one for assessing academic readiness, grades provide the most comprehensive information. Tests like the SAT and ACT provide some additional information.
• Some studies may find different conclusions, often because they’re looking at a restricted sample (e.g.

Now three years since COVID’s first classroom closures and a year before districts start to feel the true impact of the fiscal cliff, 2023 marked a pivotal moment for students and schools across America. Fresh scores revealed the stalled state of learning recovery. Educators warned about an escalating chronic absenteeism crisis that has seen students disengage and thrown off track. New political alliances formed around school choice legislation and education savings accounts. Districts became one of the preferred targets of cyberhackers, who posted sensitive student information online.

Over the last two years, after a series of physical altercations involving staff and students in early 2022 and the discovery of three nooses in a tree on school grounds, District 65 has invested lots of time and resources into improving the culture and climate at Haven Middle School.

The district beefed up its security protocols and safety staff and hired four family and community engagement liaisons at Haven. Over the past year, administrators have spoken at board meetings about turning the page to a new day at the city’s biggest public middle school...

Struggling to graduate on time or at all from a four-year university is not an uncommon experience for Chicago Public Schools graduates.

A new study from the University of Chicago’s To&Through Project showed just 30% of CPS graduates at bachelor’s degree-granting universities received their degrees in four years. The six-year graduation rate was more than 20 percentage points higher at 51%...

Most Chicago Public Schools students take five years or longer to finish college, according to a new report from the To&Through Project at the UChicago Consortium on School Research.

The report — titled “The Four Years Fallacy” — analyzed CPS students who graduated in 2015 and enrolled in college the following year. It found 30% finished their degree in four years, but when looking at college completion rates within six years, the rate climbs to 50%...

Chronic absenteeism rates have increased nationwide and at M-A since the pandemic. In the 2020-2021 school year, nearly a third of California students were considered chronically absent, three times the pre-pandemic rate.

California’s Education Code defines “chronically absent” as missing at least 10% of the instructional days in the school year, regardless of excused or unexcused absences...