CHICAGO (WLS) -- After first discovering some practically empty virtual classrooms this spring, the I-Team has been tracking school attendance data to try to get a sense of student engagement during pandemic related remote learning across the Chicago area.

As a second round of remote learning gets underway, using the Freedom of Information Act, the I-Team sought attendance data from local school districts as schools try to meet the challenges of remote learning...

Understanding how and why students disengage or are starting to slide academically is especially important, given emerging findings from last spring’s national experiment with remote learning. In surveys, educators reported falling levels of engagement last spring the longer remote learning went on. 

In Chicago and many districts around the country, sophomore year is a forgotten year, a time sandwiched in between high school’s more momentous milestones: freshman year is focused on ensuring a smooth transition to high school; junior year on preparing for post-secondary entrance exams; and senior year on applying to college. Amidst turbulence from a global health crisis and increased economic insecurity and health challenges, protests over racial injustice, and virtual learning, sophomores are both more vulnerable than ever and even more likely to be forgotten.

Kelsey Berryman is a Research Assistant at the UChicago Consortium on the Exposure to Community Violence Project and a policy student at the Harris School of Public Policy. She has also worked on the To&Through Project and with the Equitable Learning and Development Project. Kelsey specializes in qualitative research and project management for the Exposure to Community Violence Project. Her interests lie in trauma-informed practices, education policy, juvenile justice, and child welfare.

It’s a prospect that was almost unimaginable just months ago: Hundreds of thousands of Washington children won’t return to school buildings this fall.

With the summer’s rise in coronavirus cases, the state’s top leaders said it’s unsafe for the vast majority of students to learn in a classroom. Now, a new semester of school — at a distance — begins in a few weeks and districts are just beginning to send families details about what to expect...

Isn’t there enough to worry about in American education? Why are people like me so bothered by the growing rejection of the SAT and ACT?

More than 60 percent of all U.S. four-year colleges and universities have now made the traditional entrance tests optional next year, a long-term trend boosted by the pandemic...

Following a chaotic spring semester and extended school closures brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, many students will require additional academic support as instruction resumes this fall.

A new policy brief, coauthored by the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research‘s Elaine Allensworth and the Annenberg Institute‘s Nate Schwartz, offers some research-backed strategies for schools attempting to address student learning loss in the months ahead...

Hasnain is an intern for the UChicago Consortium's communications team, where he is responsible for helping to expand awareness of the UChicago Consortium's research among target audiences through the creation of engaging, visual content. He has spent much of the past few years studying education and working directly with students to better understand the field and his passion for teaching; in the future, Hasnain hopes to implement problem-based curriculum as an early ed.

Sam Adams is a Research Assistant on the Equitable Learning and Development team at the UChicago Consortium and a student at the Harris School of Public Policy. Before coming to UChicago, he was a teacher and administrator for Promise Schools, a small, non-profit CMO in Detroit, MI.