Raising a child in 2019 is tough for a variety of reasons, but keeping them motivated at school when they’d rather be on their phone or tablet 24/7 can seem downright impossible. 

That doesn’t mean all hope is lost. In fact, there are a few things parents can do to help guarantee motivated and successful kids...

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.

Laura Davis is a Senior Research Scientist at the UChicago Consortium. Laura’s research centers broadly on the production of inequality in education, targeting intersections between teacher practice and the schooling experiences of young people from marginalized and historically underserved communities. As part of larger study of learning acceleration and pandemic recovery efforts in Chicago Public Schools, Laura’s current work explores practitioners’ experiences with the district's recently-launched Skyline curriculum in early literacy instruction.

At its first meeting last month after a changing of the guard, the Chicago Board of Education approved changes to the School Quality Ratings Policy (SQRP), the district’s accountability system. In place since 2014, the SQRP rates district and charter schools on a five-point scale (“1+” is the highest and “3” is the lowest) using a weighted system that considers a range of academic and non-academic factors. Notable among the changes is the addition of a “3–8 On-Track” measure for elementary schools—which are K–8 in Chicago—based on grade point average (GPA) and attendance.

David is a Senior Research Analyst at the UChicago Consortium on the Exposure to Community Violence team. Before joining the Consortium, David's experiences include working in applied research settings as well as teaching sociology courses and mentoring budding social researchers. His dissertation examined the role of cultural organizations on the educational pathways of first-generation Latina/o college students at predominantly white universities.

Starting in September, Chicago elementary schools will be graded under new rules, ones that measure whether elementary students are primed for high school success.

The “3-8 On-Track” metric was approved last month by the new school board along with other revisions to how the district rates its schools, despite concerns about the speed of the shift and questions about its logic...

Sitting in the breezeway of Lincoln High School in Tacoma, I asked outgoing senior Celina Le about her advice for next year’s incoming ninth grade students. She shared her thoughts without hesitation: “You’re only a freshman once. Make it count. Freshman year is the foundation of your next four years.”

Guiding students through the bold colors and statements of graffiti art. Teaching them how to blend their voices in song. Arts experiences like these can open students to new ways of thinking. But they can also offer teachers powerful opportunities to develop students’ social and emotional skills.