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The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted every aspect of education in the state and across the nation, irrevocably impacting the lives of students, families, and educators like no crisis before it. Educators, families, and leaders responded to the crisis with extraordinary resilience. In the face of an unprecedented threat to public health, the state leveraged stay-at-home orders to limit the spread of COVID-19 and prevent as many deaths as possible. Programs and schools leapt to launch online programs, to provide emotional and material support to students and, later, to reopen with new safety protocols. Students and families navigated virtual services and remote learning, even while grieving for loved ones lost to the pandemic and grappling with job loss, illness, and isolation. This report outlines the impact this global event has had on Illinois learners from early childhood education through higher education. The report also highlights a few of the valiant efforts of state and local leaders, who worked to address critical issues--expanding access to laptops, finding ways to expand internet and broadband access, taking steps to stabilize the state's system of early childhood education and care, and investing in efforts to support staff and student wellbeing. [For the last report in this series, "The State We're In: 2019. A Report on Public Education in Illinois," see ED602870.]

This report presents key findings from "Learning in the Fast Lane: The Past, Present, and Future of Advanced Placement," by Chester E. Finn, Jr. and Andrew E. Scanlan, and published by Princeton University Press in 2019. American education has long been plagued by excellence gaps among the young people who make it into the highest levels of academic performance. Disadvantage, race, and gender matter far more than they should. Narrowing such gaps is imperative for a K-12 system that seeks both excellence and equity, and the Advanced Placement (AP) program is already making a major contribution, albeit one that could and should become even greater. Drawing on Finn's and Scanlan's important new book, this report--prepared for the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation--examines AP's role in helping students from underserved populations achieve high levels of academic success. It looks closely at differences in AP participation and exam success by geography, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status, as well as AP's contribution to and potential for narrowing troubling gaps. Where students live is strongly correlated with successful AP participation. Rural high school seniors, for example, are only two-thirds as likely to take an AP exam as their suburban and urban peers, and more than half of high-poverty rural schools do not even offer any AP classes. Socioeconomic status makes a big difference, too. Whereas AP once focused on top students in elite private and public high schools, in recent decades it has sought to help capable disadvantaged youngsters master college-level coursework before graduating. Although they're still underrepresented, we've seen a dramatic increase in their AP participation. Yet students from lower-income families are less successful on the end-of-year AP exams. Though nearly half of low-income graduates who take an AP exam during their time in high school receive scores of 3 or higher, nearly two-thirds of their non-low-income peers earn similar scores. As for race, AP's cohorts have become markedly more diverse as participation by black and Hispanic students has grown faster than that of white and Asian students over this period. Yet here, again, we see that students of color do not fare as well on the exams. The report lauds the gains in AP participation among poor and minority youth while urging greater attention both to further gains on that front and to strengthening their AP performance. Given AP's capacity to help students prepare for college, gain admission, and succeed upon arrival there, expanding access to it remains an important national endeavor. States, school districts, philanthropies, and education reformers should redouble their efforts to ensure that students from all backgrounds have access not only to AP coursework but also to the preparation and supports needed to succeed on the exams. To do otherwise would wall off an important path to upward mobility, sustain societal inequalities, and constrain opportunities. [For "Learning in the Fast Lane: The Past, Present, and Future of Advanced Placement," see ED599694.]

School and neighborhood segregation are recognized as pernicious and persistent problems across the United States, originally developed through intentional government policies, and perpetuated today by both public policy and private markets that have adapted to segregated systems of housing, education, and transportation. Housing and school segregation function as mutually-sustaining phenomena that limit perceived housing and school choices, constrain social networks, and curb employment and educational potential. Despite the link between housing and school segregation, however, many initiatives combating segregation tend to focus on one or the other instead of recognizing their inherent connectedness. This research brief highlights innovative programs across the United States that consider school and housing segregation in tandem, representing an array of approaches ranging from grassroots community processes that connect housing and schools, to structural approaches seeking to build integration into community structures, to solutions focusing on access to transportation, and removal of transportation barriers to increased mobility.

Milwaukee's system of K-12 public education is distinct from many other urban school systems in the degree of educational choices offered to students and their families. This range of options has fostered intense competition among Milwaukee's K-12 schools over the past decade. While enrollment in traditional Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) has fallen overall since 2009-10, charter schools have seen more stability, and private schools accepting vouchers have grown substantially. Because enrollment is the primary driver of Wisconsin's system of funding K-12 schools, a shrinking student population is one of the foremost financial challenges MPS faces. The district's efforts to establish or expand charter schools have faced occasional opposition from both internal and external MPS stakeholders. This resistance has stemmed, in part, from perceptions regarding the manner in which MPS funds its charter schools. The intention of this report is to provide clarity and lend an objective voice to the facts surrounding the financial relationship between Milwaukee's charter schools and their authorizers. Specifically, the authors seek to answer the following questions: (1) What is the process and methodology under which schools chartered by MPS receive their funding, and how does this compare to the process employed by Milwaukee's two other charter school authorizers -- University of Wisconsin--Milwaukee (UWM) and the City of Milwaukee?; (2) What are the financial impacts for both MPS and its charter schools when they elect to contract with each other?; (3) What are the legal, fiscal, and administrative frameworks surrounding charter schools in comparable states and school districts?; and (4) What potential policy changes should policymakers in Milwaukee and Madison consider to improve charter school funding policies? [For the executive summary, see ED612749.]

In recent years, competition for K-12 enrollment in Wisconsin among traditional public schools, charter schools, and private schools using the state's voucher programs has intensified. Because elementary and secondary education finance in the state primarily is driven by enrollment, this has presented increasingly difficult fiscal conditions for school districts. In no district is that more the case than in state's largest district, the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS). This report seeks to clarify the financial relationship between Milwaukee's charter schools and their authorizers. Specifically, it explains the charter school funding process used by Milwaukee's three charter authorizers -- MPS, the University of Wisconsin--Milwaukee (UWM), and the City of Milwaukee; and it analyzes financial impacts for both MPS and its non-instrumentality charter (NIC) schools when they elect to contract with one another. [For the full report, see ED612748.]

This study examined rural-nonrural differences in postsecondary educational expectations and the attainment of expectations for grade 10 students attending rural and nonrural high schools in the Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Midwest region and how these differences compare with rural-nonrural differences in the rest of the nation. For grade 10 students who indicated that they did not anticipate attaining more than a high school education, the study also examined rural and nonrural students' reasons for not expecting to continue their education past the secondary level. Analyses drew on data from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 using descriptive statistics, chi-squared tests of association, and multinomial regression models with students nested in schools. The baseline model included only school locale, an indicator for region, and their interaction as predictors; subsequent models added student predictors, family characteristics, teacher expectations, and school contextual variables. Analyses reveal that rural students in the Midwest had lower educational expectations than their nonrural peers, yet similar levels of educational attainment after taking into account student, family, teacher, and school characteristics. For two-thirds of rural and nonrural students, educational attainment fell short of expectations. Importantly, participation in rigorous coursework, parent aspirations, and teacher expectations were more predictive of educational expectations and attainment than whether students grew up in rural areas in grade 10 in 2002. For grade 10 students who did not expect to go to college, both rural and nonrural students perceived financial barriers as the primary reason. Policymakers and other stakeholders in Midwestern states and the rest of the nation can use the results of this study to inform efforts to improve the educational attainment of rural students.

Prior research shows that rural students' education expectations and aspirations, as well as their postsecondary enrollment and persistence rates, tend to be lower than those of nonrural students. However, much of that prior research may not apply to today's students because it uses old data or focuses on individual states or purposive samples. Meanwhile, recent policy initiatives at both the national and state levels have emphasized increasing college-going rates. Moreover, because of the rise in online learning options, high school students have more opportunities to take college preparatory courses and pursue college education without leaving home. The Rural Research Alliance partnered with Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Midwest to examine more recent postsecondary education expectations, attainment, and realization of expectations of rural and nonrural grade 10 students in the REL Midwest Region and the rest of the nation. The study also examined the reasons that rural and nonrural students in the REL Midwest Region reported for not expecting to pursue postsecondary education. It used the most recently released data from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002, which surveyed a nationally representative sample of grade 10 students in 2002 and then administered follow-up surveys of the same individuals in 2004, 2006, and 2012, eight years after expected high school graduation. The study used data from 2002 and 2012. It aims to support policymakers and other stakeholders in the REL Midwest states by informing policy recommendations for improving postsecondary attainment among rural students in the region. Key findings include: (1) Approximately 90 percent of both rural and nonrural grade 10 students in REL Midwest Region states in 2002 expected to attend college, but the percentage who expected to attain a master's degree or higher was higher among nonrural students than among rural students; (2) The reason that both rural and nonrural students reported most frequently for not expecting to pursue postsecondary education was financial concerns; (3) Rural and nonrural students had similar levels of postsecondary educational attainment by 2012; (4) Almost two-thirds of both rural and nonrural students had fallen short of their grade 10 postsecondary education expectations by 2012; and (5) Student characteristics, and to a lesser degree family characteristics and teacher expectations, rather than school locale, accounted for much of the variation in education expectations and attainment. The following are appended: (1) Literature review; (2) Data and methodology; and (3) Additional findings.

"TAP"™: "The System for Teacher and Student Advancement (TAP™)" is an educator effectiveness program that aims to improve student achievement through supports and incentives for teachers. Based on the research, "TAP"™ teachers were found to have no discernible effects on student achievement in science, English language arts, or mathematics for students in grades 4 through 8 during the first year of implementation. The following are appended: (1) Research details for Glazerman & Seifullah (2012); (2) Outcome measures for each domain; (3) Findings included in the rating for the science achievement domain; (4) Findings included in the rating for the English language arts achievement domain; (5) Findings included in the rating for the mathematics achievement domain; (6) Supplemental quasi-experimental design findings for the science achievement domain; (7) Supplemental quasi-experimental design findings for the English language arts achievement domain; and (8) Supplemental quasi-experimental design findings for the mathematics achievement domain. WWC Rating Criteria and a Glossary of Terms are also incuded. [See ED530098 to view the study (Glazerman et al., 2012) that met WWC group design standards with reservations.]

In the first comprehensive analysis of Illinois' statewide survey of school climate and learning conditions, this report finds systematic differences among schools in the degree to which students and teachers report strength in the five essential supports. Previous University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research (UChicago CCSR) research has linked strength on the five essentials--effective leadership, collaborative teachers, involved families, supportive environments, and ambitious instruction--to engaging instruction and learning and ultimately to improvements in test score gains and attendance trends. This report analyzes data from the 2013 survey administered by the Illinois State Board of Education and the University of Chicago Urban Education Institute to all teachers and students in grades six through 12. The goal of the survey was to help schools across the state better identify their strengths and weaknesses. Nearly 90 percent of schools responded. The report finds a higher proportion of urban and suburban schools are strong in supportive environment and ambitious instruction, compared with schools in towns and rural areas. Meanwhile, teachers in rural schools are more likely to report having effective leaders. Small elementary schools are more likely to have strong essentials than are large schools, and schools serving more socioeconomically advantaged students are more likely to show strength in the essential supports than those serving students living in poverty. One notable exception is Chicago, which has a relatively high proportion of schools with strong effective leaders, supportive environments, and ambitious instruction despite serving student populations with very high levels of poverty. The report also considers whether the essential supports are related to student outcomes in contexts beyond Chicago, where the original research was conducted. The report finds that in general this is the case though some of these relationships are stronger than others depending on the school context and the outcome being considered. In elementary/middle schools, the essential supports are strongly related to ISAT gains in math and reading. In fact, the relationship between the essential supports and reading gains is even stronger than the relationship between reading gains and poverty. At the high school level, strength in the essential supports is modestly related to better student outcomes (attendance rates, ACT scores, graduation rates). [Additional support for this study was provided by Priscilla and Steve Kersten and Patricia O. Cox.]

A four-year college degree increases a student's employment prospects and earning potential. Given this importance, it is not surprising that 75 percent of Chicago Public Schools (CPS) high school students aspire to obtain at least a four-year college degree. Yet, prior research showed that few achieved this goal: a 2006 University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research (UChicago CCSR) report estimated that--based on high school graduation rates, college enrollment rates, and college graduation rates--just 8 percent of CPS ninth-graders would earn a bachelor's degree by the time they reached their mid-twenties. This number was shockingly low to many people and served as a rallying cry to drastically improve the college success of Chicago's students. It also provided a baseline for examining changes in the educational attainment of CPS students over time. This brief updates that statistic, which the authors refer to as the "degree attainment index" and describes the changes in the key milestones that comprise it--high school graduation, four-year college enrollment, and bachelor's degree completion--that have occurred since the 2006 report. It also shows how CPS graduates' qualifications for college--high school GPAs and ACT scores--and the colleges they attend have changed during this time period. Three appendixes are included: (1) Changes in Four-Year High School Graduation, Four-Year College Enrollment, and College Match Rates by Achievement; (2) Data and Methods; and (3) Bachelor's Degree Completion by ACT and High School GPA.

Preparation for college and careers begins when students are young, yet, it can be difficult for middle grade educators to know how best to prepare these students for future success. Middle grade practitioners need to know what to pay attention to and who needs additional support. Without knowing how to identify students who are on-track for high school or college graduation in the middle grades, it can be difficult to set appropriate performance goals, or intervene when students struggle. The study "Looking Forward to High School and College: Middle Grade Indicators of Readiness in Chicago Public Schools" shows how students' middle grade (grades five through eight) performance can be used to determine students' likelihood of graduating from high school and leaving high school with a strong probability of success in college. This brief summarizes 5 key findings relevant for schools serving students in the middle grades. [See the full report in ERIC at ED553149 and the brief "4 Key Findings for High Schools" at ED553150.]

The transition from eighth grade to high school results in a substantial drop in course performance for many students. These declines in performance lead students to fall off-track for obtaining high school and college degrees. By using data on students' middle grade performance, high school staff can set goals for their students to help them meet their potential and provide support before students fall off-track for either high school graduation or college success. This brief highlights 4 key findings from the study "Looking Forward to High School and College: Middle Grade Indicators of Readiness in Chicago Public Schools" that have implications for how high schools support their incoming ninth-grade students. [See the full report in ERIC at ED553149 and the brief "5 Key Findings for Middle Grades" at ED553151.]

It appears that schools and families are at a crossroads when it comes to testing. High-quality assessments generate rich data and can provide valuable information about student progress to teachers and parents, support accountability, promote high expectations, and encourage equity for students of color and low-income students. But it is important to acknowledge that for some children, testing exacts an emotional toll in the form of anxiety and stress. In undertaking this study, two goals were established: (1) to obtain a better understanding of how much time students spend taking tests; and (2) to identify the degree to which the tests are mandated by districts or states. Key findings from this study include: (1) Despite the perception that federally mandated state testing is the root of the issue, districts require more tests than states; (2) Students are tested as frequently as twice per month and an average of once per month; (3) Actual test administration takes up a small fraction of learning time; (4) There is a culture of testing and test preparation in schools that does not put students first; (5) District-level testing occurs more frequently and takes up more learning time in urban districts than in suburban districts; and (6) Districts are not transparent about testing practices or purposes.

Significant attention is currently focused on ensuring that children are enrolled in preschool. However, regular attendance is also critically important. Children with better preschool attendance have higher kindergarten readiness scores, this is especially true for students entering with low skills. Unfortunately, many preschool-aged children are chronically absent. They often miss preschool for health reasons, but many families also face a range of logistical obstacles in getting their children to preschool every day. This report outlines some key findings from this study such as: (1) the extent of absenteeism among preschool students, (2) a comparison of absenteeism among students in kindergarten through third grade, and (3) examining the relationship between preschool absenteeism and learning outcomes, both during preschool and in second grade. The report also explores reasons why preschool students miss school. This report includes Appendices: (A) Data Sources, Description of Samples, and Analytic Methods, (B) Development of the Kindergarten Readiness Tool Rasch Subscales, (C) Relationship between Preschool Attendance and Growth on Woodcock-Johnson III, Endnotes and About the Authors.

School districts across the country are shifting away from their traditional management paradigm--a central office that directs its schools through uniform mandates and policies--toward a new vision where district leaders support autonomous schools while holding them accountable for student performance. The advent of new governance mechanisms between districts and schools that have come with the rise of charter schools, contract schools, and various systems that allow district-managed schools greater freedom of action in hiring, budgeting, and instructional planning has transformed the command-and-control relationships that were long the hallmark of public school management. As a consequence, school-district leaders increasingly recognize that greater school autonomy requires rethinking their models of district-level management and support. In 2006, New York City pioneered the transformation of the relationship between the central office and its schools by launching an initiative that gave autonomy to all schools regardless of their performance. Today, New York City's public schools are affiliated in networks based on a common interest: a similar type of school, such as an all-elementary-school network; a common instructional approach; or a similar target population, such as English language learners. This report describes the current state of school networks in New York City and outlines the successes and challenges the city has faced in implementing school networks. It also explores how networks have been implemented in other cities--Baltimore, Maryland; Chicago, Illinois; and Denver, Colorado--to show how the school-network concept has been adapted to a variety of local contexts. Educational researchers note that few, if any, urban public school districts consistently provide their schools with effective supports to improve instruction for disadvantaged children. As districts struggle to improve their supports for schools, especially those serving large numbers of disadvantaged students, school networks show promise as an emerging strategy to help schools improve student learning and to solve the operational problems that can suck time and energy away from a focus on instruction.

In 2007, spurred by University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research (UChicago CCSR) research reports, leadership at the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) began a new targeted approach to reducing course failure in the ninth grade. The research suggested that the transition between eighth and ninth grade played a critical role in shaping students' long-term outcomes, and demonstrated that students' attendance and course performance in the ninth grade year were highly predictive of high school dropout. The district initiative promoted the use of data to monitor students' level of dropout risk throughout the ninth-grade year, allowing teachers to intervene before students fell too far behind. The report offers key findings, endnotes, and about the authors.

Students' ability to succeed academically in the school setting depends heavily on factors that students face outside of the school walls. One such contributor is the presence of a safe environment for students to travel to and from school. Unfortunately, for many students in urban and economically depressed environments, the daily commute to and from school represents a risky undertaking riddled with potential violence and crime. The presence of such low-safety environments around schools has the potential to result in increased absenteeism as well as increased levels of stress among students, both of which contribute to decreased academic performance. The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of the Safe Passage program on crime around Chicago public schools. Specifically, the author seeks to answer the following research questions: (1) What is the effect of the Safe Passage program on the number of criminal incidents within the vicinity of CPS schools?; (2) Does the impact of the Safe Passage program on criminal incidents differ by crime type?; and (3) Does the Safe Passage program reduce criminal incidents around schools or redistribute criminal incidents within the vicinity surrounding schools? The Chicago Safe Passage program operates with the goal of increasing the safety of students as they travel to and from school. The data utilized for this study are drawn from both public data sources in addition to data generated uniquely for the purposes of this study. Data on crimes were acquired through the City of Chicago's Data Portal. Utilizing a difference-in-differences methodology, the author found that the Safe Passage Program reduces total crimes by approximately 0.15 standard deviations in the vicinity of a Safe Passage School. In the context of educational interventions, this effect size represents a reasonably large effect. Additionally, given the societal cost associated with crime, even small reductions in crime can produce reasonably large economic returns. Consistent with the location of the intervention, he found the largest reduction in crime to be among those occurring outside. A table is appended.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), in partnership with the National Assessment Governing Board and the Council of the Great City Schools (CGCS), created the Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA) in 2002 to support the improvement of student achievement in the nation's large urban districts. The TUDA focuses attention on urban education and measures educational progress within participating large urban districts. TUDA results are based on the same mathematics and reading assessments used to report national and state results, thus allowing students' performance in the 21 participating districts to be compared to the performance of their peers in the nation's large cities as well as their home state. The NAEP mathematics assessment measures students' knowledge and skills in mathematics and students' ability to apply their knowledge in problem-solving situations. The NAEP reading assessment measures students' reading comprehension by asking them to read selected grade-appropriate materials and answer questions based on what they have read. Student performance is reported as average scores on separate 0 to 500 scales in mathematics and reading, and as percentages of students performing at or above three achievement levels (Basic, Proficient, and Advanced). Changes in students' performance over time are noted only if the differences in scores or percentages are determined to be statistically significant (p less than 0.05). This report provides the results of the 2013 assessments in mathematics and reading at grades 4 and 8 in the following areas: (1) performance of large cities; (2) performance of urban districts; (3) progress of urban districts; and (4) progress of various student groups in urban districts. (Contains 2 tables and 5 figures.) [This report was prepared for the National Center for Education Statistics under Contract No. ED-IES-13 C-0017 with Educational Testing Service. For the executive summary, see ED544546.]

The nation's largest school districts have increasingly turned to building closures to address budget deficits, demographic shifts, and the movement of students to charter schools. Over the past decade, 70 large or mid-sized cities closed schools--averaging 11 buildings per closure. This trend shows no signs of slowing. Washington, D.C. closed 23 buildings in 2008. Officials are currently considering another 15 closures. New York City closed more than 140 schools since 2002; leaders recently announced plans to shutter 17 more, beginning in 2013-14. Chicago closed 40-plus buildings in the early 2000s. The district recently released a list of 129 schools to be considered for closure. In Pennsylvania, Philadelphia's School Reform Commissioners are expected to vote in early March on a plan to close 29 schools, more than 10 percent of the district's complement. Pittsburgh, the state's second-largest district, has halved its building capacity since 1997. With school administrators in nearly 100 districts statewide expecting to experience financial distress within three years, closure--and other approaches to cost-savings--hold relevance for the entire Commonwealth. This brief, presented in Q&A form, is designed to inform school closure debates and decisions with a summary of rigorous research on large-scale school closings and the experiences of major districts nationwide.

Mayoral control and accountability is one of very few major education reforms that aim at governance coherence in this nation's highly fragmented urban school systems. A primary feature of mayoral governance is that it holds the office of the mayor accountable for school performance. As an institutional redesign, mayoral governance integrates school-district accountability and the electoral process at the system-wide level. The so-called education mayor is ultimately held accountable for the school system's performance on an academic, fiscal, operational, and managerial level. While school board members are elected by fewer than 10 percent of the eligible voters, mayoral races are often decided by more than half of the electorate. Under mayoral control, public education gets on the citywide agenda. This report examines the effects of mayoral governance on two specific areas--resource management and student achievement. In analyzing multiple, longitudinal databases on student achievement and financial management, this report found that mayoral governance has improved urban school districts. The findings will be useful to current and future mayors who may consider taking a greater role in public education. The following are among the report's key findings: (1) Mayoral-led districts are engaged in strategic allocation of resources; (2) Over the past decade, mayoral-control school districts have generally improved district-wide performance relative to average school district performance statewide; (3) There were 11 districts that were governed by some degree of mayoral leadership toward the end period of the authors' database on state assessment results. Among these 11 districts, five made substantial improvement in narrowing the student achievement gap within their states. These districts include New York; New Haven, Connecticut; Chicago; Philadelphia; and Baltimore; (4) Mayoral control in New York City appears to have had significant positive effects on both fourth- and eighth-grade student achievement; and (5) In Boston and Chicago, achievement improvement was strong during the initial period of mayoral governance, but there has been a relative tapering of performance in recent years. An appendix contains: Methodology on statistical analysis.

The study reviewed in this paper examined whether the Chicago Public Schools' Teacher Advancement Program (Chicago TAP), which provides mentoring, leadership opportunities, and financial incentives to teachers, improved student academic achievement and teacher retention. The study used two designs to answer distinct research questions. Under the first design, a randomized controlled trial, the authors examined the academic achievement of more than 7,600 students in grades 4-8 from 34 public schools in Chicago. In the spring of 2007 and again in the spring of 2009, groups of schools were randomly assigned either to participate in Chicago TAP during the coming school year or to serve as a comparison group for a year and participate in Chicago TAP during the following school year. The effect of Chicago TAP on academic achievement after one year of implementation was estimated by comparing the spring math, reading, and science achievement of students in Chicago TAP schools to the achievement of students in schools that had not yet implemented the program. Using the second design, a quasi-experiment, the study examined teachers' retention rates, defined as remaining in the same school from year to year. The effect of Chicago TAP on teacher retention was assessed by comparing the retention of teachers in Chicago TAP schools with the retention of a matched sample of teachers in non-TAP Chicago public schools (sample sizes varied across years). After one year of implementation, students attending Chicago TAP schools did not score significantly differently in math, reading, or science achievement, as measured by the Illinois Standards Achievement Test (ISAT), than students attending comparison schools. Sixty-seven percent of teachers who were employed in schools that first implemented Chicago TAP in the fall of 2007 were still teaching in the same school in the fall of 2010. In contrast, 56% of teachers employed in non-TAP public schools were retained during the same period. This 12 percentage point difference in three-year teacher retention rates between the original cohort of Chicago TAP and non-TAP schools was statistically significant. The analysis of student academic achievement meets the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) evidence standards with reservations. The analysis of teacher retention meets WWC evidence standards with reservations. Appended are: (1) Study details; (2) Outcome measures for each domain; (3) Study findings for each domain; and (4) Supplemental findings by domain. A glossary of terms is included. (Contains 3 endnotes.)

In experimental studies, researchers are often interested in secondary research questions that explore important aspects of main findings, such as whether or not program effects vary according to the level of fidelity in which the program has been implemented; or according to the dosage received by individuals participated in the program. In this evaluation, stakeholders questioned whether higher fidelity of implementation was related to greater impact of the intervention on student outcomes. This paper addresses this question and compares the methodology and results of three approaches for linking implementation fidelity to impacts. Exhibits are appended.

The consequences of failing core academic courses during the first year are dire. In Chicago, over a quarter of students fail at least one semester of algebra in their ninth grade year, and only 13% of students who fail both semesters of Algebra I in ninth grade graduate in 4 years. Offering credit recovery options is one strategy to deal with high failure rates. The primary goal of credit recovery programs is to give students an opportunity to retake classes that they failed in an effort to get them back on track and keep them in school (Watson & Gemin, 2008). It makes theoretical sense to try to get students to recover their algebra credits early, in the summer after ninth grade--before they take geometry or Algebra II and chemistry, and to put them back on track towards graduation. But there is little evidence about the extent to which expanding credit recovery leads to substantive improvements in student progression and outcomes. Using a population of all first-time ninth grade students who entered regular neighborhood high schools in Chicago between 2008-2012, this study examines the benefits of offering expanded credit recovery options for ninth grade algebra, relative to business as usual (i.e., the summer programming schools would offer in the absence of efforts to expand credit recovery). Some CPS high schools in the study received funding to implement at least two Algebra I credit recovery courses during the summer sessions of 2011 and 2012--at least one online and one face-to-face section. Fifteen schools participated in 2011; in total they offered 18 pairs of sections (36 total). Thirteen schools participated in 2012; in total they offered 20 pairs of sections (40 total). Preliminary findings suggest that participation in this study did significantly expand access to credit recovery options. It sets the stage for the analyses of the effects of expanding credit recovery on school- and student-level outcomes that will be reported in full in this paper along with additional forthcoming results of the study. All analyses will be completed by January 2013. Three figures and two tables are appended.