Education

We advance an education system that provides equitable access to opportunity for all Chicago students and prepares them for lifelong success.

“Civic Consulting Alliance’s partnership ensured we were able to drive progress towards a unified early learning system where more children will receive the foundational education services that are so critical to their development.”

— Sybil Madison, Deputy Mayor for Education and Human Services, City of Chicago

OPPORTUNITY AREAS

High Quality Learning for All Ages
System of Supports for the Whole Student
Meaningful & Responsive Career Pathways

Indicators

Key Projects

Chicago Public Schools - Vision Collaborative
Early Childhood Education

Indicators

Civic Consulting Alliance uses long-term indicators to evaluate our progress towards 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 where one lives. 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.

Degree Attainment (%)
Chicagoans 25+ | 2010-2019

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 | 2017-2020

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.

Chicago Public Schools –
Vision Collaboratives

In 2019, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) CEO Dr. Janice K. Jackson released a Five-Year Vision that laid out commitments to build upon the district’s academic progress, ensure continued financial improvements, and strengthen integrity through regular parent and community engagement, all with a focus on achieving a more equitable education system. Given the Five-Year Vision’s broad and ambitious scope, CPS needed to make it actionable by systematizing their strategic planning approach to connect the plans of each department, school cluster, and school to the Vision’s goals in a coordinated way.

CPS called on Civic Consulting Alliance to guide the district in refining this new, coordinated strategic planning approach in order to achieve its Five-Year Vision. We aimed to develop a process to prioritize and launch initiatives and track data in order to drive progress—with the goals of facilitating collaboration across the district, gathering input from all levels of the district, and accelerating those initiatives that would have the greatest impact on equity issues. With the support of McKinsey & Company and Northwestern University pro bono fellows, we interviewed CPS staff, analyzed CPS’ current strategic planning model, and researched peer organizations’ strategic planning processes.

Based on this research, we led CPS in establishing Vision Collaboratives—cross-functional groups that bring people from across the district together around different topic areas and goals in CPS’ Vision (e.g. Early Literacy, or High School). These collaboratives would formally manage strategic planning for the Five-Year Vision, directing and governing the execution of initiatives through departments. We recommended approaches to data and progress monitoring, governance, and timelines that would best support the Vision Collaboratives’ success.

Through our partnership with Civic Consulting Alliance, Chicago Public Schools gained a collaborative process to guide future strategic planning efforts—one that aligns and energizes people, schools, and departments across the district around critical educational goals and metrics.

-Eva Giglio, Deputy Chief of Staff for CEO of Chicago Public Schools

Moreover, this project will enable CPS to efficiently prioritize and launch concrete initiatives that affect equity issues across the district—such as early childhood literacy. This work is even more urgent given the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on our schools’ day-to-day operations and on CPS’ most disadvantaged students.

“Civic Consulting Alliance helped turn this visionary idea into reality. Chicago Public Schools is excited to see the impact of this new way of doing business in pursuit of our five-year goals.”

— Bridget Lee, Senior Manager, Chief Executive Office, Chicago Public Schools

OUTPUTS

Playbook—Through extensive stakeholder interviews and best practice research, CPS has a detailed playbook for how to develop Vision Collaboratives around key topic areas from its Five-Year Vision
Analyses—Analysis of school-based continuous improvement plans to inform the Early Literacy strategy

OUTCOMES

Vision Collaboratives are in place for Early Literacy and High School strategies with cross-functional groups addressing high-impact initiatives, paving the way for future collaboratives focused on the district's five-year goals
CPS now has a process for analyzing school needs to inform district strategy that is being replicated across the district

Early Childhood Education

The long-term benefits of high-quality early childhood education are well researched. Children who attend pre-kindergarten are 44% more likely to graduate high school. For every $1 invested in early childhood education, society gains a $7.30 return due to reduced spending on crime, anti-poverty measures, and education. Yet only 25% of Chicago Public Schools (CPS) students starting kindergarten arrive ready to learn—that is, with the social and emotional, language and literacy, and other developmental skills to thrive. Access to publicly-funded pre-kindergarten (or pre-K) is limited, and private pre-K is prohibitively expensive for most Chicago families.

To increase access to quality early childhood education, the City of Chicago committed in May 2018 to universal, full-day pre-K for four-year-olds and expanding birth-through-three services for high-need families. Since March 2019, Civic Consulting Alliance and our pro bono partners have supported several critical projects with the Mayor’s Office, Chicago Public Schools, and Department of Family and Support Services (DFSS) to achieve the systemic change that this vision requires and implement Universal Pre-K (UPK) by the 2021-2022 school year.

Chicago Early Learning Partnership

Chicago’s early learning system – which serves children from birth-through-five – is made up of hundreds of service providers and stakeholders, including community-based providers and CPS. Given this diversity, collaboration is key to ensure our city’s youngest students receive the best preparation for life.

From April through September 2019, to maximize pre-K enrollment in the 2019-2020 school year, including the first 28 community areas to offer UPK, Civic Consulting Alliance – with sponsorship from the Mayor’s Office – provided a centralized structure to coordinate enrollment supports and UPK policy implementation across six organizations: CPS, DFSS, Illinois Action for Children, Community Organizing and Family Issues, and Vera Communications. Read more in our FY2019 Impact Report.

Building upon this work, in the fall of 2019, pro bono partner Deloitte designed a new Chicago Early Learning (CEL) governance model to strengthen collaboration between Chicago’s early childhood education stakeholders (including the City, CPS, DFSS, and community-based providers) to ensure decision-making is inclusive and equity-focused. From February through May 2020, Civic Consulting Alliance worked with the Mayor’s Office to implement this new CEL governance model, including recommendations on how to engage more stakeholders in decision-making and operationalize a structure within the Mayor’s Office to manage CEL.

“Over the past two years, Civic Consulting Alliance has provided the City the project management tools and the capacity we needed to strengthen collaboration internally and with other early childhood education stakeholders. Civic Consulting Alliance’s partnership ensured we were able to drive progress towards a unified early learning system where more children will receive the foundational education services that are so critical to their development.”

— Sybil Madison, Deputy Mayor for Education and Human Services, City of Chicago

Universal Pre-K Expansion Planning

Over the course of 2019, Civic Consulting Alliance guided CPS through a collaborative process to integrate UPK into the City’s early childhood education system.

Implementing UPK | March – August 2019

Civic Consulting Alliance, together with our pro bono partner Deloitte, worked with CPS to develop a plan to scale UPK to 49 remaining Chicago community areas (out of 77 community areas in total). We helped CPS complete their classroom expansion plan and set up a project management infrastructure to execute this plan by the 2021-2022 school year. Read more in our FY2019 Impact Report.

Bridging Pre-K to K-12 | September – December 2019

Civic Consulting Alliance and Deloitte developed a comprehensive strategic plan for CPS to integrate UPK into the Kindergarten through 12th grade (K-12) system, to provide a more seamless experience for students as they transition from Pre-K to Kindergarten and beyond. This work included the development of a new cross-departmental governance model and a management structure to ensure smooth and coordinated execution of the plan.

Realigning Stakeholders | October 2019 – February 2020

Two years into the City’s four-year UPK implementation plan, the policy had become controversial with some stakeholders due to the changes it would bring to Chicago’s early childhood ecosystem. Civic Consulting Alliance helped a new Mayoral administration step back and take stock of the policy. We compiled a fact base on progress, challenges, and options for moving forward to guide conversations between the Mayor’s Office and other early childhood education stakeholders. Additionally, Baker McKenzie provided pro bono support to analyze a recently completed RFP that awarded $200 million in early childhood funding, to ensure the process was done with integrity and met intended objectives. In sum, this work helped Mayor Lightfoot assess the UPK policy and determine if and how implementation of it should proceed—enabling Chicago early learning leaders to make strategic adjustments in response to stakeholder feedback, and keeping the City on track to implement UPK by the 2021-2022 school year.

CONCLUSION

Our work with the City, CPS, DFSS, and community stakeholders over the past two years has helped increase collaboration across these groups, in turn ensuring sound decision-making and accelerating the move to a single Chicago early learning system that is easier for families to navigate and ensures more children have access to these critical services.

The COVID-19 crisis has stressed our city’s education system, introducing new and ever-changing regulations for educators, and hurting small businesses that had to close their doors for months. Moreover, the pandemic has revealed the systemic inequalities that our education providers seek to change. In the months ahead, as the pandemic continues, we must continue to work to ensure that all families are able to access high-quality early learning services for children at this critical stage of their development.

OUTPUTS

Program management—Structured governance model and program management toolkit to strengthen Chicago Early Learning collaboration
Fact base—Universal pre-K assessment and fact base to support early childhood education stakeholder alignment and enable continued progress on implementation
Strategic plan execution structure—Chicago Public Schools strategic plan and execution structure to integrate pre-K with K-12 programming and operations

OUTCOMES

Mayoral support and prioritization to continue the roadmap to Universal pre-K, on track for implementation in the 2021-2022 school year
Continuation of the Chicago Public Schools preschool expansion plan to scale Universal pre-K to all remaining community areas—77 community areas in total
More coordinated and efficient decision making among City agencies working to advance the Early Childhood Education system

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 FY2020:

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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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