Looking Forward to High School and College: Middle Grade Indicators of Readiness in Chicago Public Schools

Grades and attendance—not test scores—are the middle grade factors most strongly connected with both high school and college success. In fact, grades and attendance matter more than test scores, race, poverty, or other background characteristics for later academic success. This report follows approximately 20,000 Chicago Public Schools students as they transition from elementary to high school. It is designed to help answer questions about which markers should be used to gauge whether students are ready to succeed in high school and beyond. It also considers the performance levels students need to reach in middle school to have a reasonable chance of succeeding in high school.

ELAINE ALLENSWORTH, PHD is the Executive Director of UChicago Consortium. She conducts research on factors affecting school improvement and students' educational attainment, including high school graduation, college readiness, curriculum and instruction, and school organization and leadership. JULIA GWYNNE is a Senior Research Analyst at UChicago Consortium. Her current work focuses on early warning indicators of high school and college readiness and the use of indicators with groups such as English Language Learners and students with disabilities. PAUL T. MOORE was a Research Analyst at the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research . He has substantial experience evaluating the impacts of education policies and is an expert in causal inference with quasi-experimental designs. His research interests include urban school reform, school choice policies and practices, and quasi-experimental design methodologies. MARISA DE LA TORRE is an Associate Director at UChicago Consortium. Before joining UChicago Consortium, she worked for the CPS Office of Research, Evaluation, and Accountability. She received a master's degree in Economics from Northwestern University. The University of Chicago Consortium on School Research (UChicago Consortium) builds the capacity for school reform by conducting research that identifies what matters for student success and school improvement. Created in 1990, UChicago Consortium conducts research of high technical quality that can inform and assess policy and practice in the Chicago Public Schools. UChicago Consortium studies also have informed broader national movements in public education. UChicago Consortium encourages the use of research in policy action and improvement of practice but does not argue for particular policies or programs. Rather, UChicago Consortium helps to build capacity for school reform by identifying what matters for student success and school improvement, creating critical indicators to chart progress, and conducting theory-driven evaluation to identify how programs and policies are working.