<p>Sixteen years ago, high school students in Chicago Public Schools (CPS) were almost as likely to drop out as they were to graduate; today they are three times as likely to graduate as drop out. What is driving this remarkable increase? A new report from the UChicago Consortium on School Research addresses the extent to which various factors could account for the changes in graduation rates, including changes in student performance and student demographics, increasing numbers of charter and selective enrollment high schools that serve Chicago students, and changes in school practices around improving attendance and course performance. The study uses age cohorts – following students from freshman year in CPS until they turn 19. This allows the cohorts to be comparable over time, regardless of changes in grade promotion criteria. It finds graduation rates have increased by 22 percentage points over the last 16 years, from 52.4 percent among students who turned 19 in 1998, to 74.8 percent in 2014, with the most rapid increase occurring in the last six years. Freshman on-track rates have also risen during the same period, from 48 percent among students who were 19 years old in 1998 to 81 percent for students who will turn 19 in 2017, suggesting graduation rates will continue to rise. While changes in student demographics account for some of the increase in graduation rates, improvements in student performance in high school —compared to similar students who started high school in the past—accounts for most of the change; students are passing more classes and earning more credits in ninth grade. Not only are more students graduating, but they are leaving high school with higher achievement than graduates in prior years.</p>

High School Graduation Rates through Two Decades of District Change: The Influence of Policies, Data Records, and Demographic Shifts

Education & Teaching

Allensworth, Elaine M.

Healey, Kaleen

Gwynne, Julia A.

Crespin, René

Schools & Teaching

Consortium On Chicago School Research

<p>This study—the Consortium’s first in-depth look at charter high schools—examines four key dimensions of charter high schools in Chicago Public Schools (CPS): school organization and policies; incoming skills and characteristics of charter high school enrollees; school transfers; and student performance. It expands the existing research base on charter schools in important ways by moving beyond test scores to look at a range of outcomes, and by examining variation among charter high schools. This study finds differences between charter and non-charter high schools in CPS in terms of students' incoming characteristics, performance in high school, and performance on post-secondary outcomes. It also finds variation on outcomes across charter schools. The study finds charter high schools in Chicago enroll students with higher eighth-grade attendance but similar or lower eighth-grade test scores than non-charter high schools. Once enrolled, students in charter high schools reported more challenging instruction, had higher attendance, and had higher test scores, on average, compared to students in non-charter high schools with similar attendance and test scores in the middle grades. Rates of four-year college enrollment and enrollment in more selective colleges were higher, on average, for students at charter schools than similar students at non-charter high schools. Using the five essentials framework to measure school climate, the study finds, on average, CPS charter high schools looked similar to non-charter, non-selective schools on some dimensions of organizational capacity, such as leadership, but looked quite different on other dimensions, such as preparation for post-secondary. At the same time, the study finds charter high school students were more likely to transfer schools between 9-12th grade than similar students in non-charter high schools. By the beginning of the fourth year of high school, 24.2 percent of students who began high school in a charter school transferred to another school in the district, compared to 17.2 percent of non-charter students. The majority of students who transferred by the beginning of their second year in high school transferred to a CPS non-charter high school. Transfer rates were highest in low-performing or recently-opened charter high schools. The study did not look at the reasons students transferred. Notably, the study also finds substantial variation across charter schools on test scores, college enrollment, and college selectivity. After controlling for differences in students’ incoming skills, experience, and background characteristics, there was far more variation among charter schools on these outcomes, than among non-charter schools.</p>

Chicago's Charter High Schools: Organizational Features, Enrollment, School Transfers, and Student Performance

Moore, Paul

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