When the coronavirus hit Chicago, the city was approaching the halfway point of its four-year rollout of universal prekindergarten.

By the 2021-22 school year, if all went according to plan, every 4-year-old could have a spot in a free full-day, pre-K program. As classrooms were phased in, the plan sought to prioritize communities with the greatest need for full-day options...

Policy changes to Chicago’s school-based pre-k system resulted in greater equity in access to, and enrollment in, full-day, school-based pre-k, according to a new study by education researchers at NORC at the University of Chicago, Start Early (formerly the Ounce of Prevention), and UChicago Consortium on School Research. 

Key Insights

• This “neighborhood-centered” (as opposed to a “variable-centered”) method resulted in a parsimonious set of five neighborhoods groupings in Chicago that focused researchers’ attention on the characteristics of neighborhood residents rather than the geographic locale of individual neighborhoods.
• The five groupings are relatively easy to describe and are easily understood by those familiar with Chicago.

For years, the students being enrolled in Chicago Public Schools’ full-day pre-K were largely from White families living in the city’s wealthiest areas. But after reforms were made to make pre-K more accessible to all families, the number of Black students and those from the city’s lowest-income neighborhoods has tripled, according to a new study.

The single most important job of the principal is creating a school environment where students feel safe, supported, engaged, and accepted, according to many child development and school leadership experts.

The reason?

Children who are afraid of bullying or fights have less bandwidth for learning. Negative emotions, such as feeling alienated or misunderstood, make it harder for the brain to process information and to learn...