In spring 2005, nearly 130,000 students, teachers, and principals across the Chicago public school system participated in the UChicago Consortium's 2005 Improving Chicago's Schools survey. Students told us about their school experiences, attitudes, and activities. Teachers and principals told us about instruction in their classrooms, their professional development experiences, and answered our questions about the conditions under which they work.
The UChicago Consortium prepares school-specific reports of survey responses for every school in which at least 42 percent of teachers or 50 percent of students participate in the survey. These reports paint a picture of the type of learning climate, quality of instructional program, nature of student-teacher relationships, and kind of leadership that exists in each school. They also say something about the professional environment within the schools, and the nature of the school's relationships with parents and others in the community. Because Chicago public schools have participated in the UChicago Consortium's surveys for the past 10 years, these reports also show how these things have changed over time, and how schools compare to a set of demographically similar schools and schools system wide. Taken together, this information about where a school is and how it is developing can help the school assess its progress and plan for the future.The summary reports show how a school's teachers and students responded on survey measures over several years. The details reports show how respondents answered specific survey questions. A school's responses are compared to other schools across the school system.
