Guiding students through the bold colors and statements of graffiti art. Teaching them how to blend their voices in song. Arts experiences like these can open students to new ways of thinking. But they can also offer teachers powerful opportunities to develop students’ social and emotional skills.

The sigh of relief that ricocheted through Chicago Public Schools (CPS) last month was audible beyond district boundaries. New Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced she would retain CEO Janice Jackson, whose 18-month tenure had earned her widespread support. Her December 2017 appointment came on the heels of years of brutal battles over school closures, sex abuse allegations, and bitter budgetary and teacher contract disputes.

Arts education affects students' social-emotional development—for good or ill, concludes a new report by the Consortium for Chicago School Research and the nonprofit Ingenuity.

The groups analyzed 60 years of research on arts education and conducted interviews with Chicago students, parents, and arts educators...

“Social-emotional learning is not frou-frou, it matters.” This impassioned statement from Desmond Blackburn, and many others like it from his colleagues, impressed upon their audience the importance of supporting social and emotional learning (SEL) in our schools. Mr. Blackburn, the Chief Executive Officer of New Teacher Center (NTC) was a panelist, along with Dr. Elaine Allensworth the Director of the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research (hereafter the Consortium) and LaTanya McDade the Chief Education Officer of Chicago Public Schools (CPS), at the Forefront and W.

Paloma Blandon is a second-year undergraduate student majoring in public policy with a specialization in education and minors in Latin American studies and statistics at the University of Chicago. She is currently working at the UChicago Consortium as one of the summer research assistants. Previously, she tutored Chicago high school students in financial literacy through the UChicago chapter of Moneythink.

Social-emotional skills are an integral part of arts education, and arts instruction is a vehicle for addressing social-emotional learning (SEL) in schools, according to a report released Tuesday from the Consortium on School Research at the University of Chicago and Ingenuity, a nonprofit organization.

ENGLEWOOD — Perkins Bass Elementary is the school that love built.

You can see it in the murals that adorn the walls, in the students who proudly show off their class projects, in the way Principal Carolyn Jones talks about her team. It is an enduring love, one that fills every nook and cranny of the building at 1140 W. 66th St...

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.

As graduation approached last year, the list of often-absent students at Albert Einstein High School in suburban Maryland was long. More than 175 seniors repeatedly missed classes, many in courses required for their diplomas.

Most students at the Montgomery County school graduated anyway...