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...

Matt Herndon (he/him) is the Development and Engagement Associate at the UChicago Consortium. In this role, he helps plan community events, workshops, and engagement activities, and assists partner organizations and the Consortium Investor Council with the goal of supporting more equitable outcomes for students. Prior to joining the UChicago Consortium, Matt worked as a preschool teacher and at Google in various capacities surrounding the recruitment and hiring process. Matt is currently an Education Pioneers Impact Fellow.

Key Findings

• Fewer than one-third of CPS graduates completed a bachelor’s degree within four years (30%) but 51% of CPS graduates completed within six years (51%; see Figure 1).

Dania is a doctoral student in the UChicago Developmental Psychology program working with Dr. Susan Levine. Prior to graduate school, Dania worked as a research assistant in the Cognitive Development Lab at the University of Chicago. Dania’s research explores mathematical learning through a developmental lens. Specifically, she is interested in investigating the impact that different socio-emotional, cognitive, and linguistic factors have on children’s mathematical understanding.

On a hot morning in July, a sleepy John Crerar Library starts to rouse as students arrive for Introduction to Robot Programming and Design, a college-level summer course for Chicago Public Schools rising seniors. Since Crerar’s renovation five years ago, the University Library’s sciences collections, housed here since 1984, have shared the building with the Department of Computer Science. Hustling and bustling from September to June, Crerar is several notches quieter now.

New data from the Illinois Report Card reveals that chronic absenteeism rates in McHenry County schools remain higher than pre-COVID-19 levels. Chronic absenteeism is defined as missing 10% or more of school days, whether excused or unexcused. The report also highlights racial disparities in absenteeism rates, with Black and Hispanic students experiencing higher rates compared to their white peers.

Last month, this quote appeared in the New York Times Magazine. The article titled Americans Are Losing Faith in the Value of College. Whose Fault Is That? was written by Paul Tough.

Paul Tough and OneGoal go way back. In 2012, Paul published How Children Succeed and dedicated an entire chapter to the work we were doing at OneGoal. In 2019, I interviewed him in Chicago on his The Years that Matter Most book tour. Many of our champions associate Paul with OneGoal and OneGoal with Paul...