An interdisciplinary team of University of Chicago Consortium on School Research (UChicago Consortium) researchers designed the Becoming Effective Learners Student Survey (BEL-S)* to illuminate relationships among important student, classroom/instructional, and academic outcome variables.

BENTON HARBOR — Poverty and race and the impact they have on education will be explored in November when Lake Michigan College puts on a play about a fictional Chicago high school that is facing closure at the end of the school year.

“Exit Strategy,” written by Chicago playwright Ike Holter, was first performed in May 2014 at Jackalope Theater in Chicago – a year after the Chicago School Board voted to close 49 elementary schools and one high school...

The AWG’s series of framework briefs is designed to help practitioners better understand and grapple with the challenges and opportunities multiple SEL frameworks can present.

Chicago Public Schools (CPS) students who began kindergarten as ELs, on average, progressed to eighth grade with academic achievement similar to or better than their peers who began kindergarten proficient in English.  Nearly 80 percent of CPS ELs achieved English proficiency by eighth grade, with the majority (76 percent) becoming proficient by fifth grade.

Chicago’s high school admissions window opened this week. For thousands of students and their families, so began a process marked by anxiety, questions, deadlines, and, yes, educated guesswork. 

If you’re the parent of a CPS middle school student, you’ve already heard the rumor: It’s tougher to get your kids into a public selective enrollment high school than it is to get them into a good college.

It’s a thorny bit of folk wisdom that has been hammered into the collective, worried consciousness of Chicago parents for years. It’s so well known, suburban friends can recite chapter and verse: Boy, are they thankful they decided to leave the city and raise kids where high school is a foregone conclusion, not a rat race! Phew!

Walk by some Chicago schools with plain brick or stone buildings, and you’d barely know they’re places meant for kids.

But at others, you’ll see colorful, artistic touches that make them worthy of being a symbol of pride for a community...

As a new sixth-grade teacher in Chicago Public Schools, I created an “A’s and B’s Because I Tried” Club to recognize every student who achieved a top grade on a project. I had come to my classroom in 2004 the same way most teachers do: with an unwavering belief that students can achieve academically, with the goal of creating a classroom where every student felt valued and with the confidence that, if students tried hard enough, they would succeed.

More of Chicago’s students continue to graduate after five years, with this year’s numbers showing a small uptick, but the rapid pace of increase has slowed.

Almost 79% of Chicago’s seniors graduated in five years this spring, compared with closer to 78% the year prior, the district said Thursday...