Over the past three years, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) has focused on better supporting schools and students most in need. As part of our commitments to equity and inclusion, we are beginning a formal process to develop a new school accountability system by forming a diverse advisory group and convening a series of public forums across the city to hear from you and other valued members of our CPS community.
The district suspended its existing School Quality Rating Policy (SQRP) during the 2019-20 and 2020-21 school years due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and we have been using this time to design a robust process for reimagining our accountability system. Through the advisory group and engagement process, we will work to develop a new SQRP for the 2022–23 school year that is responsive to the varying needs of different stakeholders, especially students, families, and instructional leaders.
Key goals of the new SQRP go beyond traditional school ratings to include:
Providing a more complete picture of school performance and progress: The advisory group will seek to better portray the various ways in which schools have improved and are serving the needs of their diverse student populations.
Improving the district’s capacity to support schools: Effective accountability systems are tied to strong school support, and the new system should ensure that every school is effectively supported.
Providing clear information to parents and the public: By better understanding what parents and other stakeholder groups want measured and reported, the new system should help each family choose the school that best meets their child’s unique needs and advocate for the support their school community needs.
Evaluating and reporting on district effectiveness: The entire district must share responsibility for improvements in student outcomes, and the new accountability system will develop and report measures of district effectiveness that will enable conversations about district accountability.
Our SQRP advisory group represents diverse perspectives.
CPS has formed a diverse advisory group to review materials, research system designs, incorporate parent and stakeholder feedback, and provide recommendations for an improved SQRP that promotes equity and stability. The advisory group includes Board of Education members, experts from UChicago Consortium on School Research and UIC’s Center for Urban Education Leadership, principals, teachers, and student representatives.
We will gather public feedback through extensive community engagement.
To gather feedback from community members on potential ways to strengthen how we measure school quality, we will hold targeted conversations with key CPS stakeholder groups such as Local School Councils and Community Action Councils. In March, the district will also hold four town halls to solicit feedback from stakeholders across Chicago and inform the public of our existing accountability system.
The town hall meetings will provide an overview of the history and purpose of school accountability. The town halls, which will be simultaneously aired in Spanish, will offer community members an opportunity to provide feedback directly to CPS and the Board of Education. Community feedback will be combined with research and data on school quality measurements of CPS schools to present an SQRP redesign to the Board of Education for approval in April 2022. This new SQRP will be applied to the 2022-2023 school year.
Your feedback is critical to ensuring our school accountability system is as inclusive as possible. If you are interested in participating in a discussion, please register for one of the town hall meetings. Thank you for your continued support of Chicago Public Schools.
Sincerely,
Janice K. Jackson, EdD LaTanya D. McDade Chief Executive Officer Chief Education Officer Chicago Public Schools Chicago Public Schools
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