Overview
Actionable research focused on Chicago Public Schools,
answering questions that are relevant nationwide.
Policymakers have called for broadening access to Algebra in eighth grade. In partnership with AIR, the UChicago Consortium is examining whether longer-term course taking and achievement outcomes associated with taking eighth-grade Algebra differ for average and lower-performing students, who may be less prepared than their more advanced peers to take Algebra in eighth grade.
The UChicago Consortium is contributing to a book whose working title is Chicago School Reform: How a City Learned to Improve its Schools. The six authors are Tony Bryk, Sharon Greenberg, Al Bertani, Steve Tozer, Penny Sebring, and Tim Knowles. Publisher: Harvard Education Press (2022).
Consortium researchers facilitate, document, and share learning across the BELE network and develop measures of student classroom experience and staff organizational conditions for deep, equitable work and learning.
A two-year developmental study in partnership with Teach for America Chicago/NW Indiana to study and support the implementation of UChicago Impact's Cultivate for Coaches survey tool to improve students’ classroom experience.
High school EL students graduate at far lower rates than their English-proficient peers and are less likely to enroll in college. This has negative implications for their economic mobility. This study examines active ELs, former ELs and never-ELs academic trajectories and experiences during the high school years.
What might the next system of education look like, and how might people collaborate to bring this into being? Consortium researchers help to reimagine public education for deep, joyful, transformational, community-sustaining learning.
This mixed-methods study examines the experiences CPS students have in Early College (dual credit and dual enrollment) and Advanced Placement (AP) courses and investigates how they shape their post-secondary outcomes.…
The UChicago Consortium is conducting a multi-year, mixed methods research project exploring the work of educators and schools serving students who live in Chicago communities experiencing high levels of violent crime. The project combines administrative data from the Chicago Public Schools (CPS), publicly available crime data from the Chicago Police Department (CPD), student and teacher…
This is a multi-method study of the school leadership pipeline in Chicago Public Schools and the State of Tennessee. The study examines how leaders are identified and recruited; critical pre-service experiences; preparation and development; and aspects of the hiring process. The researchers study expect to identify processes that lead to stronger school leadership and improved student…
Algebra is often regarded as gateway for later academic success. Double-Dose Algebra, introduced in 2003, showed some success in improving post-secondary attainment for students with median math skills. We are currently examining the policy impact on students with very low math skills and impact variation across schools to understand the most effective implementation strategies.
The UChicago Consortium, jointly with the UChicago Poverty Lab, has established a new partnership with CCC. Its first project examines different methods to measure success for CCC students beyond what has been collected by the U.S. Department of Education.
This study explores the relationship between access to Pre-K enrollment sites, actual enrollment in Pre-K, and later academic outcomes. It describes Pre-K enrollment by student and neighborhood characteristics in great detail. Finally, it explores whether changes in CPS enrollment policies have helped achieve the goal of providing Pre-K opportunities to more students who are most likely…
In collaboration with Steve Rivkin at the University of Illinois at Chicago, this series of studies examines the degree to which principals have effects on students’ achievement and long-term outcomes. It further examines the effects of different policies around hiring and rewarding principals on principal retention and their effectiveness.
This two-year study examines the validity and use of 5Essentials data in school improvement. Our longitudinal validation work will include CPS elementary and high schools across six different outcomes. We will also conduct qualitative interviews in six schools to explore practitioners’ experiences with using 5Essentials data.
To support learning acceleration post-pandemic, and ensure all teachers have access to high-quality instructional materials, Chicago Public Schools developed an all-inclusive system of online curricular resources, called Skyline, as well as related professional learning (PL). The Consortium is conducting a three-year mixed-methods study examining the ongoing implementation of Skyline+PL.
Students in CPS, and in many other districts, take a variety of standardized tests. When results from these tests are reported publicly, they send very mixed messages about how well students in CPS are performing. This study explains why there are differences and shows how the district is performing in a consistent way relative to state and national averages.
To address the teacher shortage, CPS developed Teach Chicago, a collection of targeted strategies to develop, recruit, and retain teachers in high-need schools. The Consortium is engaging stakeholders throughout the teacher pipeline to plan a rigorous mixed-methods study of these strategies, their efficacy, and the conditions that support successful implementation.
Our new 5Essentials study looks at how school climate has changed in CPS schools over time. We’ll also examine how subgroup differences in the experience of school climate can affect student performance and school improvement.
In partnership with NORC at the University of Chicago, the UChicago Consortium is using available administrative datasets and data from surveys of college alumni to understand what the college-to-career transition looks like for graduates of Chicago area two-year and four-year institutions, particularly for first-generation, Pell eligible college students.
This study examines differences across teachers in the course grades they assign to students, discerning the degree to which there are short- and long-term effects of teacher grading practices on student outcomes, and whether teachers’ grading practices become more consistent with others in their school over time.
Read our 2020-25 Research Agenda to learn more about the big-picture questions we seek to answer through our research.