{"id":2674,"date":"2025-12-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carnegie25live.wpenginepowered.com\/?p=2674"},"modified":"2026-01-28T09:23:40","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T17:23:40","slug":"how-a-city-learned-to-improve-its-schools-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.carnegiefoundation.org\/how-a-city-learned-to-improve-its-schools-2\/","title":{"rendered":"How a City Learned to Improve Its Schools"},"content":{"rendered":"
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How a City Learned to Improve Its Schools<\/em> offers comprehensive analysis of the astonishing changes that elevated the Chicago public school system from one of the worst in the nation to one of the most improved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How a City Learned to Improve Its Schools<\/em> tells the story of the extraordinary thirty-year school reform effort that changed the landscape of public education in Chicago. Acclaimed educational researcher Anthony S. Bryk joins five coauthors directly involved in Chicago\u2019s education reform efforts, Sharon Greenberg, Albert Bertani, Penny Sebring, Steven E. Tozer, and Timothy Knowles, to illuminate the many factors that led to this transformation of the Chicago Public Schools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beginning in 1987, Bryk and colleagues lay out the civic context for reform, outlining the systemic challenges such as segregation, institutional racism, and income and resource disparities that reformers grappled with as well as the social conflicts they faced. Next, they describe how fundamental changes occurred at every level of schooling: enhancing classroom instruction; organizing more engaged and effective local school communities; strengthening the preparation, recruitment, and support of teachers and school leaders; and sustaining an ambitious evidence-based campaign to keep the public informed on the progress of key reform initiatives and the challenges still ahead. The power of this capacity building is validated by unprecedented increases in benchmarks such as graduation rates and college matriculation. This riveting account introduces key actors within the schools, city government, and business community, and the partnerships they forged. It also reveals the surprising yet essential role of Chicago\u2019s innovative information infrastructure in aligning disparate initiatives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In making clear how elements such as advocacy, civic capacity, improvement research, and strong democracy contributed to large-scale progress in the system\u2019s 600-plus schools, the book highlights the greater lessons that the Chicago story offers for system improvement overall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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How a City Learned to Improve Its Schools offers comprehensive analysis of the astonishing changes that elevated the Chicago public school … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2675,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":true,"inline_featured_image":false,"ghostkit_customizer_options":"","ghostkit_custom_css":"","ghostkit_custom_js_head":"","ghostkit_custom_js_foot":"","ghostkit_typography":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70],"tags":[],"client_controls":[],"class_list":["post-2674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-improvement-science-collection"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHow a City Learned to Improve Its Schools - Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.carnegiefoundation.org\/how-a-city-learned-to-improve-its-schools-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How a City Learned to Improve Its Schools - Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"How a City Learned to Improve Its Schools offers comprehensive analysis of the astonishing changes that elevated the Chicago public school ... 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