The Story Behind Chicago Schools' Improvement from 1987 to 2015

             In this chapter from her book describing five school districts that have broken the all-too-common correlation of race, poverty, and achievement, Karin Chenoweth (The Education Trust) tells how the Chicago Public Schools, over nearly three decades, brought about significant improvements in student performance. Citing Sean Reardon’s massive analysis of U.S. test scores from 2009 to 2015, Chenoweth says that Chicago “grew” students six academic years in five calendar years. In other words, third graders who had been more than a grade level behind were pretty much at the national average as eighth graders. Other results: 

• On the NAEP Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA), Chicago improved steadily from 2002 to 2015.
• Once far below other TUDA districts, in recent years Chicago has matched or exceeded many others and is near the national average. 
• In 2011, 48 percent of Chicago fourth graders met basic standards for reading; four years later, 67 percent of the same cohort met basic reading standards in eighth grade. 
• In 2015, only 2 percent of fourth graders read at an advanced level; in 2019, 7 percent of eighth graders were advanced (compared to 4 percent nationally). 
• From 2006 to 2018, the high-school graduation rate moved from 57 to 76 percent (counting the alternative schools, it’s 81 percent). 
• Almost half of Chicago high-school graduates enroll immediately in a four-year college and another 22 percent in a two-year college – rates higher than the rest of the nation. 
• On state assessments in 2017, Chicago’s students did better than the Illinois average. 
• In 2015, white and black students outperformed same-race students across the state. 
• An official in the Chicago Teachers Union told Chenoweth that when he arrived in the city in the late 1990s, he didn’t know a single teacher whose children attended city schools; by 2017, he didn’t know any teachers his age or younger whose children didn’t attend CPS. 

Many people are incredulous when told about Chicago’s success, but the data speak for themselves, says Chenoweth, adding, “There is an important conversation to have about why people were surprised and why, even years after [Reardon’s] analysis, you probably still haven’t heard about Chicago’s improvement.” 

            What accounts for this track record? Chenoweth says it all started in 1987 when the newly elected mayor, Harold Washington, convened a community-wide meeting and heard a torrent of complaints about the schools. Shortly after that, William Bennett, the U.S. Secretary of Education, visited Chicago and said its schools were the “worst” in the nation. The energy generated by these two events set in motion a series of reforms in governance, policy, data collection, and training. Here’s a brief summary: 

• Radical decentralization – In 1988, the Illinois legislature passed the Chicago School Reform Act, which created local school councils in every one of the city’s 542 schools. Each council’s elected members (six parents, two community members, two teachers, and a student member in high schools) had the power to hire and fire the principal, approve the school improvement plan, and allocate the school’s Title I budget and any grant money. This move to hyperlocal control of schools was an attempt to break the grip of the central office, stop patronage appointment of principals, and focus funds on each school’s needs. 
• Journalistic accountability – Two local foundations were persuaded to fund Catalyst Chicago, a new publication devoted entirely to covering the schools, and it published for 25 years, at which point it was folded into the Chicago Reporter, published by a faith-based organization. “Catalyst was brutal,” says Chenoweth. “It documented dirty buildings and professional malfeasance, drooping test scores and staff turnover, teacher shortages, exclusionary discipline, and overcrowding.” The fact that it covered bad news so honestly gave it real credibility when it reported good news. Catalyst became required reading for many parents, community members, principals, teachers, and district leaders. 
• University brainpower – The University of Chicago Consortium on School Research, led by Anthony Bryk, began a long-term study of the impact of the 1988 Reform Act. Funded by a major grant from the MacArthur Foundation, and subsequently by other benefactors and the Annenberg Foundation, Bryk and his colleagues (“a set of education research superstars,” says Chenoweth) were able to dig deeply into the details of the schools and document efforts to improve teaching, leadership, and learning. Catalyst Chicago covered the researchers’ reports on an ongoing basis, bringing key insights to educators and the broader community. “None of this was quick or easy,” says Chenoweth. “There were fits and starts and difficult conversations with district officials who weren’t always happy with the Consortium’s findings. They rarely made for good press releases.”
• Strong and consistent central leadership – In 1995, Chicago mayor Richard Daley Jr., impatient with the slow improvement in test scores, convinced the state to enact a second reform bill that gave him more control over the school board and superintendent. The district now had a governance structure that was at once radically decentralized and highly centralized. Daley appointed Paul Vallas as CEO – a man with no school experience but great management skills – and he proceeded to straighten out the finances, begin a massive building and renovation project, and reform the bureaucracy. In 2001, Vallas was succeeded by Arne Duncan, who served until 2009, so Chicago had energetic, steady central leadership for eleven years – rare in an urban district. 
• New schools – Duncan partnered with the business community (including several hedge fund managers) to foster the creation of 100 new schools, both charter and non-charter. Their performance was similar to that of other Chicago public schools. 
• Improved instruction – A respected chief education officer, former CPS principal Barbara Eason-Watkins, led a major effort to improve classroom teaching, including the Chicago Reading Initiative led by literacy expert Timothy Shanahan. He revamped the literacy curriculum and sent reading specialists to 114 schools. Chicago’s K-8 structure necessitated another major staff development effort – training and certifying middle-school teachers who didn’t meet No Child Left Behind “highly qualified” standard. This ten-year investment in pedagogy was funded by the Chicago Community Trust, one of the city’s biggest philanthropies. 
• Research insights – In 1998, Bryk’s team published a study of how decentralization was working. It raised big concerns about equity – the poorest schools weren’t making as much progress as those in more-affluent neighborhoods – and dug deeper into the data to identify the characteristics of successful schools in all parts of the city. The two most notable findings were: (a) “relational trust” among educators, parents, and the community was a key success factor; and (b) identifying several key indicators of ninth graders not on track for graduation and urging early intervention. These and other research findings gave Chicago principals a clear path forward, focusing their leadership on factors that actually improved student success. One result was educators fretting less about test scores and addressing the antecedents in classrooms that ultimately drive better scores. The Consortium continues to track multiple streams of data and report to the community on progress and problems. 
• Tuning in on key school effectiveness factors – In 2010, the Consortium published another study comparing 100 schools that improved and 100 that didn’t. The two sets of schools had similar demographics and other characteristics, including principals who worked hard and cared deeply about improvement. What made some schools more effective than was a set of organizational characteristics that greatly amplified impact of teachers’ daily work with students. Those elements, updating the effective schools research of Ronald Edmonds and Michael Rutter et al., were:
• Principals focused on results and school improvement; 
• A safe and supportive school culture with high expectations; 
• Engaging teaching pointed toward challenging, worthwhile objectives; 
• Teachers collaborating and striving for excellence; 
• Partnering with families and the community. 

“When schools had all five essentials firmly in place,” says Chenoweth, “they were ten times as likely to improve than if they didn’t.” These, along with test scores, became the elements of the district’s accountability efforts, and still are today. 

• Transforming school leadership – University and district leaders realized that principals were the key to individual teachers’ success with students, and ramped up efforts to train and recruit effective school leaders. Training programs at the University of Illinois/ Chicago and New Leaders for New Schools used selective enrollment, a cohort model, paid internships, and ongoing coaching to launch more than 350 principals. Subsequent research confirmed that the new principals were more successful at building the five key correlates of good schools, with test scores, a lagging indicator, following along. An important part of this effort was convincing local school councils to hire the new wave of school leaders who didn’t follow the traditional route of serving for many years as assistant principals. District leaders also had to persuade principals not to leave for greener pastures. 
• High standards and a guaranteed and viable curriculum – At one point a few years ago, a reporter pushed Chicago superintendent Janice Jackson on the ambitious goals being set for students. Was she trying to “impose middle-class values” on Chicago kids, the reporter wanted to know. “At the core of what I heard,” said Jackson, “is why are you expecting low-income, predominantly black and Latino kids in Chicago to do what everybody else is doing throughout the United States? That’s what I heard. I believe everybody wants to learn, everybody wants a good education and access to the American Dream, however you define that.” 

            Chicago’s steady progress has plateaued in the last few years, with instability in district leadership, teacher strikes, and the impact of the pandemic. But what the city’s schools accomplished over thirty years provides key insights for other districts, says Chenoweth: “a community-wide commitment to improving the lives of children by improving schools; a willingness to seek out facts in order to make better decisions; and an agreement that the job of school districts is to help principals organize their schools in ways that help kids get smarter.”  

“The Work of a Generation” by Karin Chenoweth, a chapter in her book, Districts That Succeed (Harvard Education Press, 2021, pp. 27-59); Chenoweth can be reached at kchenoweth@edtrust.org.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #928 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.