There is no neutral on racism and hate

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 Usher

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.

Too many freshmen show up to high school unprepared

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...

Jessica Thompson

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

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.

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