When Chicago officials were closing Henson Elementary in North Lawndale, Archie Hayes was sad that he might never see his friends or teachers again. But he assumed his next school would be a big improvement.

“If there’s not that many students here or enough going on in this school, what [can] the next school do better?” Hayes remembers wondering in fourth grade...

Thien Vo, a senior at Uplift Community High School on Chicago’s North Side, became the first in his family to earn a college degree this month, leapfrogging his older brother who attends DePaul University.

That milestone made Vo the first and — so far — only Uplift student to earn an associate degree before high school graduation...

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot will exit office Monday after presiding over the city’s most tumultuous era in generations, one marked by enormous strain on every element of civic life and the twin crises of COVID-19 and civil unrest.

On a March 2013 episode of “PBS Newshour,” then-Chicago Board of Education Vice President Jesse Ruiz voiced frustration that Chicago Public Schools had repeatedly shut down more and more school buildings each year.

Student motivation is a challenge to teachers, especially during this time of the year.

Here, two educators share their ideas on how we can encourage it to grow...

Many instructors have observed variability in students’ motivation to learn and grow. How can we, as educators, enable engagement, persistence, and improved performance in the classroom? In other words, can we foster greater motivation?

The Chicago school board unanimously approved a new system for evaluating campuses that district leaders vowed will make the city a national leader in rethinking how to size up school quality.

The new policy, named “Continuous Improvement and Data Transparency,” formally replaces the district’s controversial school ratings system, which had long come under fire for overemphasizing standardized test scores and unfairly labeling high-poverty campuses...

In 2013, the Chicago Board of Education voted to close 50 schools due to underutilization — 49 elementary schools and one high school. This was the single largest school closure in the history of America’s public education system.

Rousemary Vega gets emotional when she walks down Augusta Boulevard in Humboldt Park. It's hard for the mother of five to see the former Lafayette Elementary School with its signs now touting the Chicago High School for the Arts.

"They closed Lafayette School and gave it to another school. Do you know how fucked up that is?" she asks. "Me and my children have to walk past it every day. And now that building is not open to the community. They have great programs in there that the community cannot benefit from. How unfair is that?"

The Chicago school board Wednesday will consider a new policy formally doing away with a longstanding and controversial system that rated schools on a scale of 1+ to 3.

The new draft policy for sizing up schools’ performance, in the works since 2019, would expand the metrics used to evaluate campuses — and aims to place greater emphasis on how schools promote students’ social and emotional development...