While there is a growing recognition that the arts are central to a well-rounded education, schools have been slow to incorporating that into curriculum. Though the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) listed the arts and music as tenants of a “well-rounded” education, few state plans have formally included the arts in their accountability plans. 

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.