Chicago high school dropout rate hits all-time low, CPS says

A smaller percentage of Chicago high school students dropped out last year than ever before, the city announced Thursday.

The all-time low 6% dropout rate touted by Mayor Lori Lightfoot and CPS CEO Janice Jackson happened during the 2018-19 school year, under former Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration. Students last year dropped out of school at almost half the rate they did in 2011...

There is no neutral on racism and hate

Last year, my colleague LaShawn Routé Chatmon and I wrote this piece in EdWeek — “5 Steps for Liberating Public Education From Its Deep Racial Bias.” We made the case that in order to support the social and emotional well being of our students, we need to acknowledge and confront the legacy of racism and exclusion in our schools and communities — and its continued impact on all of our students.

Alexandra Usher

Alexandra is an Associate Director of the To&Through Project and a Senior Research Analyst at the Consortium on School Research. Alexandra leads the research and data processes that inform the To&Through Project, which aims to increase the percentage of Chicago Public School students who graduate from high school and earn a college degree, and to share the learning from Chicago with education stakeholders across the country.

Too many freshmen show up to high school unprepared

After spending four weeks of his summer at Freshman Connection, a support program for Chicago ninth graders, Jacob says he’s ready to start high school at Roberto Clemente Community Academy.

Acquiring that drive and energy is especially important for students like Jacob — at 15 and having failed eighth grade, he can’t go back to elementary school. Now he’s got to make it through high school...

Exposure to Community Violence

The UChicago Consortium is conducting a multi-year, mixed methods research project exploring the work of educators and schools serving students who live in Chicago communities experiencing high levels of violent crime.  The project combines administrative data from the Chicago Public Schools (CPS), publicly available crime data from the Chicago Police Department (CPD), student and teacher survey data from CPS elementary and high schools, and qualitative data from a selected sample of six CPS high schools in order to explore and understand the challenges and highlight the successes of educat

High School GPAs and ACT Scores as Predictors of College Completion

A working paper is a work in progress intended to contribute to current conversations in research, policy, and practice in a timely manner. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed herein are preliminary thoughts solely of the author(s) and shared with permission of the author(s). These preliminary findings, interpretations, and conclusions may change upon further interrogation and collaboration with UChicago Consortium colleagues and other stakeholders in our work.

Jessica Thompson

Jessica Thompson was a Project Manager for the Equitable Learning and Development Project (ELDP), a three-year collaborative project between the UChicago Consortium, CASEL, and the National Equity Project. As the ELDP Project Manager, Jessica worked to strengthen the work and impact of the ELDP’s equity-based investigation of the tools and policies needed to create more equitable learning environments for students.

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