NCAN members and other regular readers of this blog are routinely inundated with new research, white papers, policy briefs, and data points. It is easy to get buried under the relentless advance of academia and policy research wanting to convince you to pay attention to this, then this, then this, and then, finally, that.

But within any field some research stands out and withstands the test of time, and the college access and success space is no different. I started thinking about what some of the top pieces of research are for our field...

Keeping freshmen on track may be the key to moving the needle up on graduation rates, experts say. This fact seems especially relevant for black males. In CPS, the graduation rate of African American males rose from 43% in 2005 to 71% in 2013. The research also found that freshmen who pass all their classes have a 90% chance of graduating from high school, compared to 70% of those who failed a class during 9th grade.

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...

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 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.

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...

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 e

As thousands of incoming high school freshmen fret about the start of a new chapter, some California schools are relying on summer bridge programs to help students adjust to the new academic environment.

Researchers have found that freshman year can be one of the most critical in a student’s academic journey...

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).