hicago students Sabeer Al-Shareef and Shameir Faulkner are looking forward to a crazy few months as they approach high school graduation. In June, they’ll walk across a creaky stage at their historic South Side neighborhood high school and then move on to college in the fall.

These are Chicago success stories, exactly the kind Chicago Public Schools CEO Janice Jackson loves to highlight — young black men getting their diplomas and taking the next step...

Steven Shewfelt joined Ingenuity as Director of Data & Research from Slover Linett Audience Research, where, as a Senior Associate, he led multiple research and evaluation projects for leading foundations and arts and culture organizations across the country. He previously served as the deputy director of the Office of Research & Analysis at the National Endowment for the Arts, where he was involved in a wide variety of research and evaluation projects.

This project, conducted in partnership with Ingenuity, consists of two components: a review of literature on this topic and an interview-based fieldwork component with educators, administrators, students, and parents in Chicago Public Schools. The authors reviewed more than 200 studies on arts education spanning six decades.

In his blog, Gates advocates the use of data that can catch struggling 9th-graders early, while they still have time to get on a better path to graduation. The importance of 9th grade has long been on Gates' radar. His foundation previously featured the issue in its publication, discussing why that year can be particularly challenging.  

When Bill Gates announced in 2017 that his foundation would begin investing in “networks” of schools, he said he wanted to replicate the success of a particular Chicago organization.

On Tuesday, Gates in a blog post heaped fresh praise on Chicago’s Network for College Success, a group housed at the University of Chicago that works with 17 Chicago high schools. Gates also posted video of his visit to North-Grand High School in Humboldt Park, a school he says uses student data to keep students on track for graduation with the network’s help...

Chicago was once called the worst school district in the United States. Today, though, high school graduation rates there are rising, as are ACT scores, GPAs, and the number of students enrolled in AP courses. And gains in elementary test scores outpace national averages.

I recently visited Chicago—and a high school that has gone from one of its worst to one of its best—to see what was behind the city’s turnaround...