This study provides a summary of what happened in one district—Chicago Public Schools (CPS)—as district staff and educators worked to promote change in instructional practices in math and science aligned with the new standards.  Researchers used districtwide student and teacher surveys; interviews with educators, school leaders, and district officials; and student achievement data between 2014–15 and 2017–18.

While CCSS-M and NGSS standards were the focus of this study, the findings are broadly relevant to standards-driven instructional change.

Micah has diligently worked toward promoting equity and centering student voice. With a background in working closely with both students and administrators, Micah has sought to reach specific goals aimed at enhancing school systems. Her work includes continuing the development of the Cultivate survey, a tool designed to gather critical student perspective data to inform decision-making and drive improvements in classroom learning conditions and outcomes.

Chicago Public Schools is asking for feedback on two proposals that would alter the selective enrollment admissions process in a way the district says would ensure low-income students have a better chance at snagging those coveted seats.

Both district proposals would affect how seats are distributed within the tier system, which is rooted in the socioeconomic status of Chicago’s neighborhoods...

Chicago Public Schools is poised to make a significant change to the admissions process for its coveted test-in elementary and high schools in an attempt to award more seats to low-income students.

PHILADELPHIA — As America enters a less acute phase of the Covid-19 pandemic, it is time to reflect upon what we lost and what we learned. America’s failure to prioritize time in school should be at the top of the list.

Major disruptions to school schedules were perhaps to be expected in the early days of the pandemic. But we allowed them to persist to a troubling degree, even though we know that time in school is not fungible — learning lost now cannot simply be made up later...

Click below to view a 90-second episode of GO FIGURE, with Vanessa Gutiérrez explaining Table 1 of this research (October 31, 2023).

Host Karin Sconzert welcomes guest Jenny Nagaoka who discusses research from a 1997 policy in Chicago to make students repeat a grade if they did not score high enough on a standardized test. Is "flunking" 8- and 9-year-olds an effective or cost-efficient way to increase their reading ability? It's a policy under debate in a current bill in the Wisconsin State Legislature. Did it work in Chicago 25 years ago? Should we repeat it here in Wisconsin?

The City of Chicago and its Board of Education have a long history of perpetuating segregation, starting with an 1863 City ordinance that required Black and White students to attend separate schools. Segregation in Chicago’s public schools only intensified when Chicago’s Black population boomed due to the influx of Black Americans from the South in the first half of the twentieth century, and it has been reinforced in the twenty-first century through strategic policy decisions, privatization, and neglect.