Key Insights

• This “neighborhood-centered” (as opposed to a “variable-centered”) method resulted in a parsimonious set of five neighborhoods groupings in Chicago that focused researchers’ attention on the characteristics of neighborhood residents rather than the geographic locale of individual neighborhoods.
• The five groupings are relatively easy to describe and are easily understood by those familiar with Chicago.

For years, the students being enrolled in Chicago Public Schools’ full-day pre-K were largely from White families living in the city’s wealthiest areas. But after reforms were made to make pre-K more accessible to all families, the number of Black students and those from the city’s lowest-income neighborhoods has tripled, according to a new study.

The single most important job of the principal is creating a school environment where students feel safe, supported, engaged, and accepted, according to many child development and school leadership experts.

The reason?

Children who are afraid of bullying or fights have less bandwidth for learning. Negative emotions, such as feeling alienated or misunderstood, make it harder for the brain to process information and to learn...

Key Findings

• Pre-policy, enrollment rates in any CPS pre-k was higher for students who lived closer to schools with pre-k and had more pre-k classrooms near where they lived.
• Pre-policy, the associations of likelihood of enrollment in full-day pre-k with 1) distance to a school with a full-day pre-k classroom, and 2) number of full-day pre-k classrooms close to home were strongest for

In the United States, bilingual education in schools has been an afterthought for decades. But demographic changes in the student population, and new research out of Chicago, demand that it occupy a more meaningful role in how we measure success in serving these students, as well as other groups of learners. Today, as a policy analyst with decades of experience, I am encouraging a new approach to accountability that places a value on bilingual skills.