Laura McGuinn is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Chicago, specializing in environmental epidemiology. Her research focuses on the individual and joint impacts of air pollution and other environmental and social factors on mental and physical health outcomes throughout the life course, with a particular focus on child and adolescent life stages. Her work also addresses how green space can help to mitigate the impacts of climate change and improve overall well-being, particularly for youth and other vulnerable populations.

Esta información se ofrece a continuación en español.

How are Chicago students doing? 
What helps Chicago students succeed?

These questions are especially important today, as Chicago fully elects its school board for the first time.

There is a lot of information swirling across the city, and lots of opinions, too. But what matters most?

Tasnim is a Data Analyst I at To&Through, where she provides analytics support and helps maintain the data tool. She's passionate about improving education outcomes and believes deeply that equity in data can meaningfully shape the policies and decisions that affect children's lives.

Medicaid offers a significant funding opportunity for schools to address the mental health needs of students. In 2023, Illinois expanded Medicaid to cover more services for more students. In this study, we examine school-based mental health service use before and after expansion in CPS, where more than half of students are enrolled in Medicaid.

Key Findings

This landscape study found that district leaders focused on two key strategies to evolve CCL:

Strengthening existing high school CTE programs, in which participation has been relatively stable over time.

Chicago Public Schools principals and staff this week will begin training as the district is set to implement its holistic safety plan citywide — more than two years after police officers were removed from district campuses.

CPS and its partner organizations last week published a new implementation guide for the Whole School Safety plan as the district this year is set to implement that model across all schools citywide...