Sophomore year is a powerful time. 

Key data points in tenth grade can help educators better understand which sophomore students may need additional support to be successful in tenth grade and beyond. 

Importantly, these categories are not "destiny." With proper supports from adults, students can move between these categories, which can greatly impact their outcomes.

Prospective high school students in Chicago have many options. Chicago Public Schools (CPS) offers more than 250 choice programs and 11 selective enrollment programs (SEHSs) in 132 high schools. This handout was published with our first GoCPS report in 2018 -- and the key takeaways are still important! 

Did you know that dance instruction can improve reading? And acting out stories can improve academic skills? In fact, arts education has been shown to build the academic and soft skills our kids need to succeed in college and in life. 

Learn about four reasons why arts education is central to students' long-term success, including preparing for college and careers.

Learn about 7 School-Family Communication Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic that are still useful today.

 The insights shared by parents and educators of K–12 students from Chicago’s south, west, and south-west communities are summarized on page 1, followed by a comparison of 3 different approaches to school-family engagement. 

Together, these insights can help strengthen communication and collaboration between schools and families across Chicago—and across the country.

GO FIGURE is a series of straightforward ~90 second videos in which research authors break down and explain a figure, table, or graphic in a Consortium report for busy educators want to know how this work applies to their everyday lives. These vidoes are great starting points to learn about some of the most important insights from the UChicago Consortium.

Explore topics like attendance, school-family engagement, getting to and through college, and more.

By helping students improve their GPAs and attendance, elementary and middle school educators can have a powerful impact on students’ long-term success. 

This guide shares a Condensed Elementary On-Track (EOT) metric to help elementary and middle school educators analyze school-wide trends, diagnose adultcentered problems of practice, match 3rd- through 8th-grade students with interventions, and monitor progress over time. The framework and findings are meant for educators: we do not recommend using it and discussing it with students.

Key Findings

• The experience of living in close geographical proximity to homicide varied considerably for students across Chicago. 
• Living in close geographical proximity to homicide negatively affected students’ academic performance. 
• Some schools mitigated typical negative effects of living in proximity to homicide on academic performance.
• Schools that mitigate the negative effects of living in close geographic proximity to homicide on students’ academic outcomes were characterized by strong, positive school climates across a range of measures, includi

LOS ANGELES—In a huge city awash with tiny schools, few are smaller than the Hilda L. Solis Learning Academy. 

The public high school, housed in a former hospital in East Los Angeles, is down to 170 students from the surrounding Latino neighborhoods. On a hallway bulletin board, handwritten hearts display reasons students love the school, including, “how everyone knows each other” and “the fact that school is small.”

In partnership with Chicago Public Schools, the University of Illinois, Lurie Children's Center for Childhood Resilience, and four community-based organizations, we are working to understand how school communities implement CPS's Whole School Safety process and the impacts of removing school resource officers on students and schools.