In the first candidate forum on Sept. 3 for Chicago Board of Education president, the second question moderator Laura Washington asked the candidates was: “How should we measure success in Chicago Public Schools?” In essence, what are we all shooting for here? What does good look like?
In Chicago, we are on the precipice of a historic moment — the election of the first fully democratically elected school board. It is a moment of expansive democratization of public schooling in Chicago. It also is a moment of potential fragmentation and confusion, with the largest elected school board in the country poised to govern a district of roughly 305,000 students.
At the Kersten Institute for Urban Education at the University of Chicago, we released a set of issue guides this week focused on what matters most for student success. Our goal is to help every Chicagoan have key data and research at their fingertips to consider the strengths of our school system and what more is needed to truly support every student to thrive.
We focus on two key questions when we consider what success looks like in education.
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First, are schools organized for ongoing improvement? Learning and achievement in education are never static. There is never a fixed destination or end point — it is a continuous, iterative process among an ever-evolving group of people who make up a school community.
A valuable resource to CPS schools for continuous improvement is the 5Essentials Survey. The Consortium on School Research, part of the Kersten Institute, pioneered the 5Essentials Survey and framework in 1994 to illuminate the essential ingredients for a well-functioning school: Effective leaders, collaborative teachers, involved families, supportive environments and ambitious instruction. This framework and the results of 30 years of surveys have been validated in many studies and continue to hold true. Students who attend schools that are strong and improving, rather than schools with low or dropping results, learn more and do better, such as with stronger attendance, grades, test scores and even college enrollment.
More than 1.2 million students and almost 300,000 educators across the country, including students and staff in CPS, take the 5Essentials Survey each year. (Survey data is publicly available for each school in CPS and in Illinois.) The data helps school leaders understand what is happening in school that is being reflected in student and staff survey responses. School leaders use this information to consider strengths and challenges, to gauge how their improvement efforts are going, and to design new strategies to meet the current needs of their school community.
Second, how are students progressing along their educational journeys? Are they getting through elementary school prepared to do well in high school? Are they transitioning into ninth grade well and excelling in their high school classes? Are they graduating high school and entering college or strong career pathways? Are they completing college or credentials that equip them for careers and livable wages?
Consortium researchers have studied these transition points since 1999. They’ve found that whether a student is “on track” in ninth grade — which means passing all of their classes — is highly predictive of whether that student will graduate from high school. In fact, being on track is more predictive of students’ high school graduation than all other data combined, including test scores, income, gender and race/ethnicity. Consortium researchers also have found the students doing well in their classes — earning Bs or better — is highly predictive of how they will fare in college.
Another part of the Kersten Institute, the To&Through Project, has developed a first-of-its-kind data tool in partnership with CPS. The Milestones Tool provides real-time, publicly accessible data on the educational journeys of every CPS student from sixth grade through college enrollment. You can filter your search by school, community and elected school board district; find key data; reflect and consider additional questions; and consider what next steps to take.
Every Chicagoan has a rich array of tools and public resources to better understand the realities of the schools in their neighborhoods and schools across our city. It is incumbent upon each of us to educate ourselves about what it takes for every child in our city to thrive at school, and work so that our systems provide it.
We hope these tools, rooted in decades of research partnership, can help.
Paige Ponder is senior executive director of the Kersten Institute for Urban Education at the University of Chicago. She was previously CEO of One Million Degrees and officer of student support and engagement at Chicago Public Schools.
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