“There’s no silver bullet here,” study author David Johnson said. “But there is some really solid evidence that the work that schools are doing matters. And I think that’s really exciting and important.”

At 9 years old, L.J. started missing school. His parents said they would homeschool him. It took two years — during which he was beaten and denied food — for anyone to notice he wasn’t learning.

Benard McKinley is preparing to begin law school at Northwestern’s Pritzker School of Law. He graduated from college while serving 22 years in prison for a crime he committed when he was 16 years old. 

The historic November races are part of a multi-year transition that is hard to explain to voters. Special interest groups are taking notice. And questions loom about how the new 21-member board, triple the current size, will govern.

For low- and middle-class families feeling the pressures from the rising costs of living, the passing of a state-level child tax credit is a “big win,” said Ameya Pawar, a senior advisor at Economic Security Project and former alderperson of Chicago's 47th Ward.

Chicago Public Schools on Tuesday published individual school-level budgets amid as some have expressed concerns about how the district’s new funding model could affect its selective enrollment and magnet schools.

The Chicago Board of Education unanimously approved a new agreement with unionized staffers represented by Service Employees International Union Local 73.

The presidents of Northwestern and Rutgers universities defended their decisions to end pro-Palestinian encampments through negotiations rather than police force, telling a House committee on Thursday that they defused the danger without ceding ground to protesters.

Chicago Teachers Union Vice President Jackson Potter confirmed the union and school district have agreed to hold open bargaining sessions that will allow community stakeholders to attend negotiations for the first time.

With the latest action, the administration said it has canceled $167 billion in student debt for nearly 5 million Americans through several programs.

Chicago’s school funding model is changing. Instead of basing school funding on student enrollment as the district has done for the past decade, Chicago Public Schools is now taking a needs-based approach.

SEIU Local 73 says it represents more than 11,000 CPS support staff, including special education classroom assistants, custodians, crossing guards, bus aides, security officers and parent workers. CPS and the union had been negotiating on a contract for a year.

Officers and workers in yellow vests cleared out tents and camping equipment at the student encampment, leaving behind yellow squares of dead or dying grass where the tents had stood. Front-loaders were being used to remove the camping equipment.

The Illinois State Board of Education on Wednesday awarded a six-year, $53 million contract to the ACT, Inc. organization, meaning high schoolers statewide will shift back to the ACT after taking SAT exams for most of the past decade.

Chicago Public Schools teachers and administrators aren’t shying away from Mayor Brandon Johnson’s claim the city’s schools are “owed” $1 billion from the state. But they dramatically scaled back their immediate demands during a rare joint CPS and Chicago Teachers Union lobbying trip to the state Capitol on Wednesday.

As Chicago Public Schools moves to fully remove police officers from its buildings, education officials are planning a phased-in approach to its new school safety plans.