AKNOWLEDGEMENTS
In the late winter of 2005, CCSR researchers asked students
in 12 junior English classrooms to join a longitudinal study
of students’ experiences in making the transition to college.
In three neighborhood high schools, we recruited students
from three IB classrooms, three AP classrooms, and six regular
English classes. We told students they were the experts
who could help us understand what works, what needs to
be improved, and how to make Chicago high schools do a
better job of supporting students as they make the transition
to college or work. We told students that they would not get
any benefits from participating, but asked them to join us in
helping Chicago schools become better for their younger
brothers and sisters and for all students who would come
after them. In a testament to the character of CPS students,
more than 85 percent of the recruited students volunteered
to join the study—so many that we could not, unfortunately,
include them all. For over three years, students gave up
lunch breaks, talked to us about their experiences and plans,
and continued to make time for us in their busy schedules,
even after they graduated. Their teachers allowed us to visit
their classrooms, gave up free periods to be interviewed,
and voluntarily filled out individual assessments of each
student in our study. We are indebted to these students and
teachers for the many hours of time they volunteered and
to the principals and staff of the high schools in which we
worked, who allowed this study to happen and supported
it over two years. The students, teachers, and other school
staff truly were the experts who guided our quantitative
analysis and provided critical insights. In the end, we hope
we have delivered on our promise to these students and
have assembled their experiences and our analysis into a
report that will assist CPS educators and policymakers in
building effective systems that bridge the gap between
students’ college aspirations, their college access, and their
college success.
Along the way, many individuals helped shape this
report. It is a testament to our colleagues that we have so
many people to thank. The heart of this report is found
in its student voices and we want to thank all those who
conducted student interviews, including Jonah Deutsch,
Jamiliyah Gilliam, and Macarena Correa, as well as Karen
Roddie for her significant contributions to our qualitative
analysis. We also owe a debt of gratitude to our colleagues
who provided feedback, guidance, and support through all
stages of this project, helping us clarify our findings, refine
our argument, and build a cohesive report out of a wide variety
of methods and data. In this regard, we especially want
to thank CCSR leadership, (John Easton, Elaine Allensworth,
Penny Sebring, and Sue Sporte); the project staff who
helped guide and edit the report (Jenny Nagaoka, David
W. Johnson, Nicole Beachum, Faye Kroshinsky, Kersti Azar,
Billie Jo Day, and Tasha Keyes); colleagues who took on the
essential but difficult tasks of doing the technical read of the
report (Matthew Holsapple, Courtney Thompson, and Marisa
de la Torre); and CCSR Steering Committee members, Lila
Leff and Raquel Farmer-Hinton, who read an earlier draft
of the report and provided incredibly helpful comments.
Emily Krone and Bronwyn McDaniel, the public informing
staff at CCSR, were instrumental in helping us edit and
produce this report, while simultaneously developing effective
impact and informing strategies. We want to thank both
Emily and Bronwyn for their many contributions to our work.
The purpose of this research is to help inform practice.
And there are also many practitioners who have guided
this report. First and foremost, we owe a great debt to
Greg Darnieder, currently serving as a Senior Advisor to
the U.S. Secretary of Education, who, as the director of the
Postsecondary Initiative, saw the value of data and research
and was invaluable in both starting this project and guiding
our work. Kelly Sparks and Gudelia Lopez were amazing
partners in designing our CPS postsecondary database
and in helping to align the research with a set of validated
research-based indicators that CPS could use to support
high schools in tracking their progress. We miss their leadership
at CPS.
We have, however, the additional advantage of working
with some of the most cutting edge educators in high
school reform in the country, through our partner project,
the Network for College Success (NCS). NCS directors and
coaches (Mary Ann Pitcher, Sarah Howard, and Elizabeth
Monge-Pacheco) provided invaluable feedback on everything
from the readability of graphs, to the question of what
the implications of the findings might be for high schools
across the city. NSC staff held us to high standards and
challenged us often in ways that made the report better.
Some of the issues in this report are difficult to grapple
with, particularly around issues of employment. We are
tremendously indebted to Robert Schwartz, Aarti Dhupelia,
and Jackie Lemon, who pushed our thinking by participating
in a critical and substantive conversation about the findings
of this report, which is being published separately. Similarly,
we want to thank Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy
Institute. Heidi was generous with her time and provided
us with detailed breakdowns of trend in youth employment
data that proved critical in framing the problem faced by
students who don’t go to college.
Finally, we would especially like to thank the administrative
staff at the School of Social Service Administration—
Keith Madderom, Gidget Ambuehl, Suzanne Fournier, Anita
Goodnight, John McDonald, John Adamczewski, and Sid
Ulevicius—who provided ongoing and important support
for this work. SSA’s staff always made us feel that our work
was important and never made us feel like we were asking
too much.
The study is funded by grants from the Bill & Melinda
Gates Foundation, the William T. Grant Foundation, and the
Spencer Foundation. The research reported here on AP
and honors coursework was supported by the Institute of
Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through
Grant #R305R060059 to the University of Chicago. The opinions
expressed are those of the authors and do not represent
views of the Institute or the U.S. Department of Education.