Districts with expansive school choice must decide how to match students and schools. Increasingly, districts are centralizing applications on one-stop portals that feature information about schooling options, admission requirements, and a single application and deadline with the hope of increasing transparency and streamlining the enrollment…

Data on school health policy implementation are limited due to the absence of a validated measurement tool. The purpose of this study was to create and pilot a school health policy implementation survey. A modified, four-round Delphi process was used to achieve consensus on content and format of the survey. The final 76-item survey was piloted in…

Despite well-designed curriculum materials, teachers often face challenges in their implementation due to diverse classroom needs. This paper investigates whether Large Language Models (LLMs) can support middle-school math teachers by helping create high-quality curriculum scaffolds, which we define as the adaptations and supplements teachers…

School districts across the U.S. have adopted funding policies designed to distribute resources more equitably across schools. However, schools are also increasing external fundraising efforts to supplement district budget allocations. We document the interaction between funding policies and fundraising efforts in Chicago Public Schools (CPS). We…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine the backgrounds, experiences, and supports of Chicago Public School (CPS) principals as they prepared for the principalship and to identify where gaps exist so that policymakers and principal preparation programs can better support leadership development. Researchers interviewed 20 early career…

This article draws from a Cultural Political Economy framework and an abolitionist lens to examine various understandings of safety within Chicago Public Schools (CPS). We investigate how the Chicago Board of Education (BOE) uses convivial rhetoric and institutional mechanisms to erase the demands of Black and Brown students and ultimately…

This guide aims to present district instructional leaders and staff with a core set of criteria for what high-quality professional development entails. What makes this particular document different and useful is the focus on practical issues of district-level implementation in multiple teaching and learning environments. This is a guide designed…

The Chicago Public Schools (CPS) has administered the "Cultivate" Survey, a rigorously developed student voice survey that captures students' experiences of their learning conditions, twice annually (fall and spring) since the 2022-2023 academic year. "Cultivate" is grounded in extensive research on youth development, finding…

Over the last 30 years, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) has become a rare model for urban school district improvement. That success stems, in part, from an expansive network of nonprofit organizations, advocates and grassroots community leaders, business leaders, and philanthropic funders that work together -- often in partnership with the district…

Background: In 2012, Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Department of Public Health partnered together to create the Chicago School-Based Vision Program (CSBVP). This ongoing, city-wide program provides school-based vision services (eye examinations, eyeglasses provision, and eye care referrals) to students with limited access. Methods:…

Students, families, and communities across Chicago are affected by gun violence, but the levels and experiences differ greatly by location and by the racial composition of communities. In Chicago, recent rates of violence rose sharply during the COVID-19 pandemic, and then declined to pre-pandemic levels in 2022. Still, there were more than 4,000…

Purpose: As US suburbs experience profound demographic shifts, scholars have expressed concern of rising segregation among suburban public schools. We extend this work by examining exposure to poverty by race and racial differences in exposure to economic disadvantage in the wake of the Great Recession across a typology of suburban neighborhoods…

The research in this brief takes place within the context of efforts to strengthen the principalship in Chicago Public Schools (CPS). Using eight years of data from CPS, 2012-13 to 2019-20, this brief describes Chicago's principals--their demographic characteristics, their backgrounds, their trajectories into the principalship, and how long they…

Purpose: Drawing on relevant literature, we conceptualize three pathways through which responsiveness to student voice may promote academic goals. Then, we analyze panel data of students in the Chicago Public Schools to examine this relationship. We focus on the "responsiveness" of teachers and administrators to student voice, because…

In 1996, Dr. Timuel D. Black collected and archived 36 oral histories with alumni and current students and staff from DuSable and Phillips high schools, Chicago's first two all-Black high schools. Several of those interviews were with alumni who returned to their alma mater as teachers. In this study, I drew on analyses of the interview…