Can selective enrollment in Chicago Public Schools be fairer?

Chicago Public Schools is asking for feedback on two proposals that would alter the selective enrollment admissions process in a way the district says would ensure low-income students have a better chance at snagging those coveted seats.

Both district proposals would affect how seats are distributed within the tier system, which is rooted in the socioeconomic status of Chicago’s neighborhoods...

Too many Americans don’t understand what happens in their schools

PHILADELPHIA — As America enters a less acute phase of the Covid-19 pandemic, it is time to reflect upon what we lost and what we learned. America’s failure to prioritize time in school should be at the top of the list.

Major disruptions to school schedules were perhaps to be expected in the early days of the pandemic. But we allowed them to persist to a troubling degree, even though we know that time in school is not fungible — learning lost now cannot simply be made up later...

Flunking underperforming 8 and 9 year olds?

Host Karin Sconzert welcomes guest Jenny Nagaoka who discusses research from a 1997 policy in Chicago to make students repeat a grade if they did not score high enough on a standardized test. Is "flunking" 8- and 9-year-olds an effective or cost-efficient way to increase their reading ability? It's a policy under debate in a current bill in the Wisconsin State Legislature. Did it work in Chicago 25 years ago? Should we repeat it here in Wisconsin?

Chicago Public Schools and segregation

The City of Chicago and its Board of Education have a long history of perpetuating segregation, starting with an 1863 City ordinance that required Black and White students to attend separate schools. Segregation in Chicago’s public schools only intensified when Chicago’s Black population boomed due to the influx of Black Americans from the South in the first half of the twentieth century, and it has been reinforced in the twenty-first century through strategic policy decisions, privatization, and neglect.

Full-day pre-k linked to higher student attendance in Chicago, research finds

A new research summary of two UChicago Consortium on School Research studies shows that when more full-day pre-K programs were available to families, students were more likely to enroll in full-day programs, and student attendance rates increased.

Using pre-pandemic data (2013–2017), these studies used policy changes in Chicago to examine the relationship between half- vs. full-day pre-K and students’ attendance...

Research affirms full-day pre-K boosts attendance, but will Chicago make it more accessible?

Two new studies from the University of Chicago’s Consortium on School Research have confirmed what working parents already know – that when pre-kindergarten programs offer a full-day option, enrollment and attendance rates at those programs increase, especially among Black and Latinx families. 

The research comes in the midst of widespread labor shortages, with women representing a disproportionate number of those who have dropped out of the workforce since March 2020...

New study finds expanding full-day pre-k boosts enrollment, attendance

Enrollment and attendance in pre-K — especially among Black and Latino preschoolers — improves when programs operate for a full school day instead of a few hours in the morning or afternoon, a new study shows.

Enrollment more than quadrupled among Black children and tripled among Latino students when the Chicago Public Schools expanded full-day pre-K, according to researchers from the Consortium for School Research at the University of Chicago. The findings also focused on an expansion effort in the city’s North Lawndale community...

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