Education

Education

WE ADVANCE HIGH-QUALITY EDUCATION AND EQUITABLE ACCESS TO OPPORTUNITY FOR ALL CHICAGO STUDENTS TO PREPARE THEM FOR LIFELONG SUCCESS AND FULFILLMENT

“Chicago Public Schools is on track to have a strong school year. Civic Consulting Alliance has been a tremendous partner in helping CPS strategize how we can provide students with a great education while overcoming the challenges that were exacerbated by the pandemic.”

— Pedro Martinez, CEO, Chicago Public Schools

FOCUS AREAS

High-quality learning experiences
Connectivity across the continuum
Strong strategy and operations
Equitable distribution of resources

Projects

Chicago Public Schools Office of Diverse Learner Supports and Services Organizational Assessment
P-2 Early Learning Strategy
Chicago Public Schools 3-Year Blueprint
Chicago Public Schools COVID-19 Mitigation

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HIGH-QUALITY LEARNING EXPERIENCES

Strengthening supports for Chicago Public Schools’ most vulnerable students

Project: Chicago Public Schools Office of Diverse Learner Supports and Services Organizational Assessment

Client: Chicago Public Schools - Office of Diverse Learner Supports and Services

The Office of Diverse Learner Supports and Services (ODLSS) supports school networks, schools, and families with all issues related to special education including instruction, interventions, and legal and compliance supports. Chicago Public Schools (CPS) serves nearly 50,000 diverse learners who receive special education support and services. Each year, these students represent ~15% of CPS’ total student population, and nearly 90% of diverse learners are students of color (~50% are Latinx, ~40% are Black).

Over the last several years, ODLSS faced significant turnover and budget cuts that negatively impacted organizational operations and staff morale. The COVID-19 pandemic inhibited the office’s ability to provide federally mandated services and individualized instruction for diverse learners, who are already the district’s most vulnerable student population. The challenges in serving these students’ needs continue to intensify as the pandemic evolves and persists.

With pro bono support from West Monroe Partners, we conducted an organizational assessment of ODLSS to identify gaps and barriers to achieving the district’s vision of providing a high-quality public education for every child, in every neighborhood, that prepares each for success in college, career, and civic life. This included interviews with department leaders and principals, an analysis of the office’s organizational structure, including workloads and spans of control, and a review of key student-facing processes.

Upon this review, five key themes for needed organizational change emerged: clarify roles, empower leadership, increase capacity, cultivate collaboration, and enhance awareness. Recommendations within these themes were further developed, prioritized, and sequenced for the ODLSS Senior Leadership Team to review recommendations and align on the next steps. The assessment provided the department with a roadmap of priorities for the year ensuring a strong start to the 2022-23 school year. Now with clarified priorities and resources, the office is better equipped to more equitably serve the district’s most vulnerable student population of diverse learners.

THANK YOU

West Monroe Partners for their pro bono support in conducting an organizational assessment of ODLSS to identify gaps and barriers to achieving the district’s vision.

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CONNECTIVITY ACROSS THE CONTINUUM

Aligning early learning systems across school communities

Project: P-2 Early Learning Strategy

Client: Chicago Public Schools - Office of Early Childhood Education

The first five years of a child’s life are the most important for healthy development, well-being, and lifelong success. Over the last few years, we have worked with Chicago Public Schools (CPS) to expand the number of pre-kindergarten (Pre-K) seats, and CPS invested significant funding to build Pre-K classrooms with the goal to achieve Universal Pre-K. Since the 2018 – 2019 school year, CPS has more than doubled its Pre-K classrooms to be able to serve an additional 5,000 students, of which 90% qualified as at-risk based on federal guidelines. This expansion has increased the urgency for CPS to develop a robust program to complement future growth in enrollment for the Pre-K – 2nd grade (P – 2) grade band to ensure students remain on track for benchmarked learning and development during these critical early learning years.

Civic Consulting Alliance partnered with Chicago Public Schools’ Office of Early Childhood Education to support the development of a multi-year strategy for P– 2 that will help CPS close achievement gaps so that the benefits of Pre-K are further developed. The process included a stakeholder engagement component that led to the development of three strategic pillars to support the P – 2 vision and facilitate alignment:

enhance student and family experience
build teacher and principal capacity, and
align and coordinate systems.

Our team assisted the Office of Early Childhood Education to chart a new course with deliverables that included a unified vision, priorities, action plans, and structures for tracking progress. Now, the Office of Early Childhood Education can better accelerate student outcomes across student groups and community areas. This aligned system provides a roadmap to enable teachers and administrators to create an intentional, differentiated, and seamless P – 2 experience for students and families. Long-term, this strategy will help CPS increase the number of students meeting kindergarten readiness benchmarks across all developmental domains, as well as increase the number of children who meet and exceed national attainment in math and reading through elementary and high school.

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STRONG STRATEGY AND OPERATIONS

Addressing the effects of the pandemic with a strategic plan refresh for CPS

Project: Chicago Public Schools 3-Year Blueprint

Client: Chicago Public Schools - Office of the CEO

Chicago Public Schools’ (CPS) five-year vision for 2019 – 2024 committed to building upon the district’s academic progress, ensuring continued financial improvements, and strengthening integrity through regular parent and community engagement in all parts of the city.

However, much has changed in the world and in the district since that five-year vision was released in 2019. CPS has grappled with the ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic, civil unrest, and internal CPS leadership transitions that call for an updated strategy.

Civic Consulting Alliance and our pro bono partner Slalom supported CPS in the development of a three-year Blueprint for 2022-2025 that builds upon the five-year vision CPS originally adopted in 2019. We supported key fronts of the effort by establishing the project approach and infrastructure for execution – two components that were essential to ensuring CPS had the necessary internal collaboration functions needed to support the creation of the Blueprint. We worked with our pro bono partner Slalom to design a multi-layered stakeholder engagement process that reached over 1,000 stakeholders including parents, students, principals, district leaders, and community members. Additionally, we worked with district leaders to draft and refine Blueprint content, leveraging the latest data on student outcomes and stakeholder input.

The Blueprint contains two sections. The first section recommits to key evidence-based and responsive strategies in the following areas: academic progress, operational excellence, and building trust; the second section identifies aspects that the district needs to reimagine in order to accelerate academic progress. Importantly, in line with the district’s focus on equity, the reimagine section also commits to a robust community engagement process to co-create solutions. As we continue to partner with CPS, the reimagine section will provide a roadmap in how we may work together over the next few years.

Long-term, the 3-Year Blueprint will put CPS on strong footing to address the widening post-pandemic racial gaps in academic outcomes, and will do so with extensive stakeholder engagement.

THANK YOU

Slalom for pro bono support in designing the multi-layered stakeholder engagement process.

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EQUITABLE DISTRIBUTION OF RESOURCES

Supporting COVID-19 mitigation efforts in the classroom

Project: Chicago Public Schools COVID-19 Mitigation

Client: Chicago Public Schools

In January of 2022, Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Teachers Union reached an agreement to re-open classrooms for in-person learning based on the implementation of additional measures and investments in COVID-19 mitigation efforts across the school district. This included COVID-19 testing of at least 10% of the student population at each school, KN95 masks for every student and staff member, and metrics that guide a school’s decision to convert classrooms or the entire school to remote learning, among others. However, CPS’ ability to manage, launch, and monitor the implementation of these efforts was limited by capacity constraints at the executive and strategic planning levels following the recent CEO leadership transition. CPS and the Mayor’s Office requested that Civic Consulting Alliance provide implementation planning and management support during this critical period for public health and the CEO’s first 90 days.

To support CPS teachers and district leaders, we developed a project management structure and launched cross-functional teams to implement increased COVID-19 mitigation strategies, including testing expansion, increased opt-in rates for testing, and vaccination uptake. In addition, we identified recommendations for sustained operations. Our pro bono partner, Deloitte, supported the “Test-to-Stay” project that aimed to give unvaccinated students exposed to COVID-19 the option of regimented testing to stay on campus and minimize the overall number of students being quarantined. These mitigation strategies supported public health protocols and investments at all schools across the district and advanced an equity framework that prioritized resources at schools with high-risk student populations that exhibited stark disparities in vaccination rates and COVID-19 testing participation.

THANK YOU

Deloitte provided support on the “Test-to-Stay” COVID-19 mitigation project that aimed to give unvaccinated students exposed to COVID-19 the option of regimented testing to stay on campus and minimize the overall number of students being quarantined.

Indicators

Civic Consulting Alliance evaluates long-term indicators to inform our platform visions and our mission. These indicators also help us understand how the challenges we seek to address impact people in our region inequitably, shaped by factors like race, ethnicity, gender, or neighborhood. In turn, these indicators highlight that our solutions must be equity-focused and guided by the people they most impact.

KEY TAKEAWAY

Educational outcomes for Chicago students have gradually improved in recent years. However, there continues to be a significant gap in student outcomes based on race, in particular between White and Asian students, and Black and Latinx students. The COVID-19 crisis has only exacerbated many of the systemic inequities that underlie these gaps.

Degree Attainment (%)
Chicagoans 25+ | 2012-2021

The graph below depicts the percentage of Chicagoans 25 years old and above who have attained an associate’s degree or higher.

2 or 4 year College Attendance (%)
CPS Graduates | Class of 2011-2020

The graph below depicts the percentage of Chicago Public Schools (CPS) graduates who go on to attend a 2- or 4-year college.

Kindergarten Ready* (%)
CPS Students | 2018-2020

The graph below depicts the percentage of Chicago Public Schools (CPS) students who are kindergarten ready when they enter the district.

Note: The Kindergarten Individual Development Survey’s collection methods were impacted by the COVID-19 crisis for the 2020-2021 school year. As a result, the data is not a reliable measure of “kindergarten readiness,” and has been omitted for 2021 - 2022. To read more visit the Illinois State Board of Education website.

Platform Funders

In addition to the many pro bono partners acknowledged in the Education projects described above, the following corporate and foundation partners committed philanthropic support to fuel our staff investments in our Education platform in FY2021:

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General Operating Funders

Our ability to maintain our flexible and responsive capacity to get big things done in all platforms relied on those philanthropic partners who provided general operating support for our mission:

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