How a City Learned to Improve Its Schools: Chicago's Story

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

It is fitting that Chicago will host the place based AERA 2023 meeting as Chicago has experienced significant and historic progress in student outcomes over two decades (pre-pandemic). Through a joint effort of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research (Consortium), we propose a Spotlight on Chicago Symposium based on our forthcoming book How A City Learned to Improve Its Schools (Harvard Education Press). Our book is in essence an account of consequential education research—we have a strong evidentiary claim that the work of the Consortium had large-scale positive consequences on the evolution of student outcomes in Chicago. So as this year’s AERA encourages expansive thinking about this issue to better inform future work, which we take to be Rich Milner’s hope, the “Chicago case” provides much grist for understanding how research-informed, broad-based changes can evolve within large public school systems. Central to this account is the work of the Consortium and the distinctive social organization for conducting the work—stakeholder agenda settings, ongoing engagement of a diverse steering committee, and use of multiple methods deliberately designed to bring diverse voices into explanations. Then there is the social learning architecture, or how this knowledge comes to be more broadly shared and viewed as authoritative across the city (at least part of what Rich means by the phrase “in pursuit of truth”).
There also were citizen-researcher roles taken on by many, who engaged in the direct work of improvement out in schools, ongoing professional learning around instructional improvement, roles within the Central Office, and engagements with organizational boards and funders. This is a design for the social fabric of a civic learning enterprise. This is the “how” in how a city came to learn to improve its schools. Whatever new and more ambitious aspiration may arise for schooling in the future, education leaders would be well served to interrogate this proof case of large-scale change wrought through a vitalized school system and its citizenry.
The story begins In 1987 when Chicago was declared the worst public school system in America; 30 years later, research documents it as one of the most improved school systems anywhere. Our account explores how an extraordinary community of institutions and individuals made this happen. Participants came from every walk of life—advocacy groups, the business and philanthropic communities and the media, citywide educational organizations and the academy, local and national foundations, and included parents, community members and educators from local school communities.

Sub Unit

• Spotlight on Chicago and the Region

Chair

• Penny B. Sebring, UChicago Consortium on School Research

Papers

• Decentralization and Three Sources of Power - Anthony S. Bryk, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching; Sharon Greenberg, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching

• The Exoskeleton Spawns Innovative Institutions - Timothy Knowles, Urban Education Institute, University of Chicago

• Transformation of the Educator Workforce, Aided by Parallel Change in Schools of Education - Al Bertani, University of Illinois at Chicago; Steven E. Tozer, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Fundamental Changes in Teaching and Learning - Sharon Greenberg, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching

• Social Learning–Powered Improvement - Al Bertani, University of Illinois at Chicago