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Personnel evaluation systems have historically failed to identify and remediate low-performing teachers. In 2012, Chicago Public Schools implemented an evaluation system that incorporated remediation and dismissal plans for low-rated teachers. Regression discontinuity estimates indicate that the evaluation reform increased the exit of low-rated tenured teachers by 50 percent. The teacher labor supply available to replace low-rated teachers was higher performing on multiple dimensions, and instrumental variables estimates indicate that policy-induced exit of low-rated teachers significantly improved teacher quality in subsequent years. Policy simulations show that the teacher labor supply in Chicago is sufficient to remove significantly more low-performing teachers.

In 2013, the Chicago Board of Education closed 47 elementary schools, directly 16 affecting 13,000 students and 900 teachers. The closures created employment uncertainty for 17 closed-school teachers, and this paper investigates the labor market consequences for teachers. We employ a difference-in-differences approach that compares the exit rates of closed-school teachers to teachers in schools that only experienced threat of closure. We estimate that the closures resulted in a near doubling of teacher exit among teachers in closed schools, particularly low-performing teachers. We also find that, among closed-school teachers, Black teachers were more likely to return than White teachers. Given the nationwide trend of school closures for budgetary or performance reasons, this paper has implications for strategic retention of effective teachers. [This paper was published in "Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis" (EJ1262513).]

Responding to an Illinois law that took effect in 2010, the Performance Evaluation Reform Act (PERA), Chicago Public Schools (CPS) created and implemented the REACH (Recognizing Educators Advancing Chicago's Students) educator evaluation and support system. REACH was piloted in 2012-13. It is still being implemented as of the 2019-20 school year, and will continue to be implemented through June 2024, per the teachers' contract agreed upon in fall 2019. The evaluation system includes classroom observation ratings of teacher practice, as well as up to two student growth measures. The stated goal of REACH is to provide valuable feedback to improve educators' professional practice and increase student learning. As with any professional evaluation system, a secondary use of REACH is to inform personnel decisions, such as classroom assignments, retention, tenure, remediation plans, and dismissal processes. In line with nationwide trends, almost all teachers in CPS received high evaluation ratings prior to REACH, and there was concern that such high levels of teacher performance were not translating into high levels of student learning. There was the potential that a more accurate rating system could make it easier to recognize and retain strong teachers while encouraging low-performing teachers to improve or exit. In light of this context, this brief answers the following research questions: (1) What proportion of teachers received high and low ratings under REACH, and how did that change over time? (2) How many low-rated teachers exited CPS or switched schools under REACH, compared to high-rated teachers?(3) How have classroom assignments within the school changed under REACH? This brief is part of a series of three to extend previous research from the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research (UChicago Consortium) on early REACH implementation and the REACH evaluation system five years after the 2012-13 rollout. [For "Teacher Evaluation in CPS: What Makes Evaluator Feedback Useful? Research Brief," see ED608091. For "Teacher Evaluation in CPS: Perceptions of REACH Implementation, Five Years In. Research Brief," see ED608094.]

Responding to an Illinois law that took effect in 2010, the Performance Evaluation Reform Act (PERA), Chicago Public Schools (CPS) created and implemented the REACH (Recognizing Educators Advancing Chicago's Students) educator evaluation and support system. REACH was piloted in 2012-13. It is still being implemented as of the 2019-20 school year and will continue to be implemented through June 2024, per the teachers' contract agreed upon in fall 2019. The evaluation system includes classroom observation ratings of teacher practice, as well as up to two student growth measures. This brief addresses the research question: What are teachers' and administrators' perceptions and opinions of REACH after five years of implementation? It draws from teacher and administrator survey reports of whether REACH influenced instructional change and student learning, the intended end goals of the policy. This brief is part of a series of three to extend previous research from the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research (UChicago Consortium) on early REACH implementation and the REACH evaluation system five years after the 2012-13 rollout. [For "Teacher Evaluation in CPS: What Makes Evaluator Feedback Useful? Research Brief," see ED608091. For "Teacher Evaluation in CPS: REACH Ratings and Teacher Mobility. Research Brief," see ED608092.]

Chicago Public Schools (CPS) offers many options when it comes to high school enrollment. In fact, since the 2015-16 school year, about three out of every four incoming ninth-graders have chosen to attend a high school other than their assigned neighborhood school. Despite the widespread engagement in school choice, the high school application process was complicated. In an effort to simplify and streamline the process, the Chicago Board of Education voted on April 2017 to adopt a common application across all high school choice programs for incoming ninth-grade students with one deadline and a single best offer. The district expected that this common application would make the process simpler, more transparent, and more equitable for students and families. At the time when Chicago passed this measure, similar systems had already been approved and were in use in a number of other urban districts. Beginning in fall 2017, all high school program applications were moved to an online platform known as GoCPS. This new application system eliminated the need to apply school-by-school and program-by-program. In addition, all high school programs had a common deadline for applications and acceptances of offers. Importantly, the selection system alleviated the problem of some students accepting multiple offers to competitive programs while others remained on multiple waitlists with no offers. This report analyzes the first year of GoCPS implementation for students who enrolled in ninth grade in the fall of 2018. [Funding provided by the Consortium Investor Council.]

In the 2015-16 school year, 75 percent of Chicago Public Schools (CPS) ninth-graders opted out of their assigned high school. These students could choose from more than 300 programs at 138 public high schools. Selective enrollment high schools (SEHSs) were among the most high-profile and most sought-out options. SEHSs aim to provide high-achieving students with a challenging academic experience and admit students based on prior academic performance. While many of the SEHSs are consistently ranked as the top schools in Illinois by U.S. News and World Report, criticisms about these schools include concerns that they disproportionately serve affluent students and drain resources from neighborhood schools. This research asks two questions: (1) How does the admission policy in CPS affect the profile of SEHS students in Chicago? and (2) What effects do SEHSs have on students? Results find that applicants tend to prefer the same selective enrollment high schools. CPS uses multiple academic performance metrics and a proxy for students' SES for SEHS admissions, in part to create more diverse selective enrollment high schools. Although the common perception is that SEHSs benefit all students who attend them, the picture is more complicated, particularly for students who live in low-SES neighborhoods.

Across the country, urban school districts are opting to close under-enrolled schools as a way to consolidate resources. Motivated by a reported $1 billion deficit and declining enrollments in depopulating neighborhoods, the Chicago Board of Education voted in May 2013 to close 49 elementary schools and one high school program located in an elementary school--the largest mass school closure to date. In order to accommodate the nearly 12,000 displaced students, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) designated specific "welcoming" schools for each of the closed schools. In this report, the authors provide evidence of the short-term and multi-year impacts of the 2013 CPS school closures on students' academic, behavioral, and other relevant outcomes. Using a mixed methods design, they sought to answer two primary questions: (1) How did staff and students affected by school closings experience the school closings process and subsequent transfer into designated welcoming schools? and (2) What effect did closing schools have on closed and welcoming schools students' mobility, attendance, suspensions, test scores, and core GPAs? In answering these questions, they illuminate the voices and experiences of the staff and students most directly affected by closures across six welcoming schools. [Included are commentaries by Eve L. Ewing and Douglas N. Harris. Additional support for this report was provided by the Consortium Investor Council.]

Years of developmental psychology research links traumatic experiences to long-term student externalizing problems (Bingenheimer et al. 2005; Denese & McEwen, 2012; Osofsky 1999; Pynoos et al. 1987; Raver, Blair & Willoughby, 2013; Shonkoff et al., 2012). A related body of work relates negative life outcomes with exposure to high-poverty, high-crime neighborhoods during childhood (Harding 2003; Sampson, Sharkey, and Raudenbush 2008; Wodtke, Harding and Elwert 2011), although randomized housing experiments have yielded mixed evidence (Burdick-Will et al. 2011; Ludwig et al. 2009; Rubinowitz and Rosenbaum 2000). Recent work by Sharkey and co-authors (2010, 2012, 2014) has examined more immediate outcomes of exposure to community violence, finding causally credible evidence that students score lower on both low- and high-stakes assessments for 7-10 days after a violent crime occurs on the block where they live. This study uses a similar approach to examine two dimensions of student behavior in the immediate aftermath of a violent crime on their block: attendance and the incidence of disciplinary infractions. The data for this study combines discipline, attendance, and residence data from the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) with publicly-available crime data from the Chicago Police Department (CPD). In initial work, the authors find evidence that students are "less" likely to have reported behavioral problems at school in the immediate aftermath of exposure to violent crime in their community of residence. Consistent with prior work suggesting younger children are more responsive to community violence, the impact is concentrated among younger children. [SREE documents are structured abstracts of SREE conference symposium, panel, and paper or poster submissions.]

A substantial body of descriptive work documents large correlations between suspension and a variety of negative future outcomes, both for suspended students and for students who are never suspended but attend schools with high suspension rates (Balfanz, Byrnes, & Fox, 2015; Davis and Jordan, 1994; Dawson, 1991; Fabelo et al., 2011). Furthermore, numerous recent studies document substantial inequality in the ways suspension policy impacts students by race/ethnicity, gender, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) orientation, special needs, home language, and socioeconomic status. (Fabelo et al., 2011; Himmelstein & Brückner, 2010; Losen & Gillepsie, 2012; Losen & Martinez, 2013; Losen, Hewitt, & Toldson, 2014; Osher et al., 2010; Porowski, O'Conner, & Aikaterini, 2014; Stevens et al., 2015). However, while the correlational evidence is suggestive, the existing literature has made little progress in producing causally credible estimates of the impact of suspension policy due to the endogeneity of punishment, risk of reverse causation, and data limitations. This paper seeks to expand the understanding of the causal impact of suspension policy on individual students and schools overall. [SREE documents are structured abstracts of SREE conference symposium, panel, and paper or poster submissions.]

School districts across the US have adopted funding policies designed to distribute resources more equitably across schools. Concurrently, schools are increasing external fundraising efforts to supplement district budget allocations. We document both funding policies and fundraising efforts in Chicago Public Schools. We find that adoption of a weighted-student funding policy reallocated more dollars to schools with high shares of students eligible for free/reduced-price lunch, creating a policy-induced per-pupil expenditure gap. Further, almost all schools raised external funds over the study period, with most dollars raised concentrated in schools serving relatively affluent populations. We estimate that external fundraising offset the policy-induced per-pupil expenditure gap between schools enrolling the lowest and highest shares of FRL-eligible students by 23-35 percent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an era of expansive school choice, families and students make many comparisons when they consider schools. Policies encourage families to seek out options where average test scores are high or where value-added indicators are strong. When students choose schools with high-performing peers, they often may be at a lower place in the achievement distribution in their cohort than if they had attended their neighborhood school. The purpose of this study is to understand how a student's place in the achievement distribution of incoming ninth graders affects his/her outcomes. If high schools assign students to classes or tracks based on prior test scores, then students might have very different high school experiences based on their own achievement but also the achievement level of their ninth-grade peers. In this study, the authors specifically answer the following questions: (1) What is the relationship between a student's place in the achievement distribution of his/her high school cohort of ninth graders (i.e., incoming class rank) and high school and college academic outcomes? (2) Does the effect of incoming class rank vary for different types of students? At schools with varying levels of performance? This study uses data on four cohorts of students enrolling as first-time ninth graders in Chicago public high schools from fall 2008 to fall 2011, totaling 72,613 students. The sample is limited to students who attended CPS in eighth grade and enrolled in CPS for ninth grade. The authors use administrative data from CPS, a survey measure of student self-reports of study habits in middle school, and college-going information from the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC). Student data are linked across administrative data sets and years using a unique student-level identifier. Being at the top of the class appears to have benefits in terms of test score gains and slightly higher grades, as well as a higher likelihood of enrolling in and persisting in college. There were small negative attendance and high school graduation effects. Two tables are appended.

One of the most persistent and urgent problems facing education policymakers is the provision of highly effective teachers in all of the nation's classrooms. Of all school-level factors related to student learning and achievement, the student's teacher is consistently the most important (Goldhaber 2002; Rockoff 2004; Rivkin, Hanushek, and Kain 2005). Even with substantial within-school variation in teacher effectiveness (Rivkin, Hanushek, and Kain 2005; Aaronson, Barrow, and Sander 2007), historically teacher evaluation systems have inadequately differentiated teachers who effectively improve student learning from lower-performing teachers. In Chicago from 2003 to 2006, for example, nearly all teachers (93 percent) received performance evaluation ratings of "Superior" or "Excellent" (based on a four-tiered rating system) while at the same time 66 percent of CPS schools failed to meet state proficiency standards under Illinois' accountability system (The New Teacher Project 2007). This study seeks to answer the following research questions about two waves of teacher evaluation reform in Chicago, a pilot (Excellence in Teaching Pilot or EITP) focused on rigorous classroom observations (2008-10) and a fully implemented evaluation system (REACH) that incorporates information from classroom observations and student assessment (2012-13 to present): (1) What does experimental evidence say about the effect teacher evaluation can have on school-level performance in mathematics and reading in elementary schools? and What does experimental evidence say about how teacher evaluation can differentially impact schools with different characteristics (for example, are there greater impacts in lower- or higher-achieving schools)? Findings from the first wave showed: (1) at the end of the first year of implementing EITP, schools improved student achievement in reading; and (2) more advantaged schools (i.e., schools that were high achieving prior to implementation, schools with lower rates of student poverty) tended to benefit the most from EITP. This finding suggests that an intervention such as teacher evaluation requires high levels of capacity in the school building in order to affect student learning. Analysis of the REACH data is still ongoing. Five tables and one figure are appended.

To support new teachers during the challenging transition to the profession, schools and districts across the country often establish induction supports such as professional development, mentorship, and coaching. This report describes the findings of a research study designed to examine how the Chicago implementation of the New Teacher Center (NTC) induction model supports teachers who are new to the profession. As part of this model, CNTC provides beginning teachers in Chicago Public Schools with an individual coach who acts as an expert colleague. This study looks specifically at the ways in which coaches supported beginning teachers toward becoming autonomous professionals. The study was designed as a formative evaluation to inform the organizational knowledge and decision making at the Chicago New Teacher Center; as such, the findings are meant to be reflective and descriptive. Appended are: (1) Sample, Data Collection, and Analytic Methods; and (2) Summary of the Coaching Log Analysis. (Contains 6 figures, 5 boxes and 15 footnotes.)

Researchers have raised a number of questions about whether student achievement data can be used fairly or accurately for purposes of teacher evaluation. Others have noted that achievement data alone cannot provide teachers with the information they need to improve their practice. Recognizing these limitations, the federal government and many states have specified that student test score data should be just one of a variety of measures used to evaluate teachers. Other measures would likely include some form of classroom observation, which in turn has generated new demand for tools that principals and others can use to judge whether effective teaching is taking place. The Charlotte Danielson Framework for Teaching, which attempts to delineate the observable components of effective teaching, is perhaps the most well-known example of such a tool. Districts including Chicago, Cincinnati, and Las Vegas have adopted the Framework to structure teacher evaluation. A team of researchers from the Consortium on Chicago School Research (CCSR) at the University of Chicago is studying the implementation of the Danielson Framework in Chicago Public Schools (CPS) and providing real-time, objective feedback to the district on its new pilot teacher evaluation program, the Excellence in Teaching Project. This policy brief describes the first year of implementation in CPS and highlights key early findings and policy implications from the study. The findings presented are relevant for policymakers contemplating how best to support the design and development of effective teacher evaluation systems. They are particularly important for districts seeking valid, reliable ways to measure and evaluate the complex activity of teaching. (Contains 12 footnotes.)