The Learning Collective has been working with CPS for the past ten years.
In 2024, we led we led the renewal visits of 16 charter schools authorized by Chicago Public Schools, including cutting-edge examinations of schools’ social-emotional learning supports of its students and staff members. In 2023, we led the renewal visits of 23 charter schools. With CPS’s Office of Innovation and Incubation, we co-presented some of our lessons learned at the NACSA conference. This was building off our work we did in leading 20 renewal visits in 2022, many of which were focused on schools’ social-emotional learning programs and supports.
In 2019, The Learning Collective updated CPS’s school review protocol and led the review of five schools. In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, TLC further updated the review protocol to reflect remote learning then led the review of six schools. In 2021, TLC continued updating the protocols then led the in-person reviews of four schools.
In 2018 and 2020 The Learning Collective was the sole external expert to serve on panels to evaluate new school applications in Chicago.
In 2014, The Learning Collective worked with Chicago Public Schools’ Office of New Schools to devise innovative and analog solutions to decrease the dropout rate of CPS’s most at-risk students. These solutions could improve the lives of thousands, and even tens of thousands, of Chicago’s teens. We also evaluated a proposal to open a new CPS blended learning charter school. We utilized many elements of the blended learning planning process and evaluation tool we developed for EL Haynes Charter School and funded by Carnegie Corporation of New York.