This fall, Chicago voters will elect a fully representative school board for the first time in the city’s history — a long-awaited step toward greater community voice and, hopefully, accountability.

Key findings:

Study 1: The malleability of school climate: Lessons from the 5Essentials Survey in Chicago Public Schools

School leaders can use this guide to consider how to engage in conversations about Cultivate data with their school community, opening the door for thought partnership around ways to improve student experience. Understanding the data ensures school stakeholders can recognize the central role students' experiences play in school improvement, more effectively advocate for students, and make more informed governance decisions.

Our April 2026 newsletter features:

Student-athletes are less likely to skip school than other students, even in the offseason, new research finds, supporting an emerging consensus that connections to activities, teachers and peers are critical to combating the absenteeism crisis.

Interim Chicago Public Schools CEO Macquline King, who will become the district’s permanent leader in July, has major challenges ahead of her.

The district is facing a projected budget deficit of at least $520 million next school year. At the same time, enrollment is declining, and the chronic absenteeism rate — when kids miss at least 10% of school days — has remained around 40% for the past few years...

At the start of her junior year, Arianna Brandt’s high school counselor urged her to go all out on dual credit — courses taught on her West Side Chicago campus that would earn her free college credit.

If Brandt pushed herself, she could even graduate high school with a two-year associate degree and shorten her path to a four-year college diploma...

School attendance is down, chronic absenteeism is up, and concern for students’ learning is growing. On March 6, 200 cross-sector experts and practitioners who are taking a holistic view of students’ experiences and outcomes in school gathered at an event hosted by the Crown Family School’s Kersten Institute for Urban Education and the Illinois Workforce and Education Research Collaborative (IWERC) to discuss how to address the troubling trend across the city and state.