The Genius in Every Black Family: Our ‘Hidden Figure’

I’m visiting my aunt and uncle in Los Angeles, and we decide to watch the movie “Hidden Figures,” about three little-known Black women whose mathematical…

Fix the Formula, Illinois. It’s Time.

Yesterday afternoon, my second-grader got her copy of the school yearbook. She flipped back to the kindergarten class photos. “Miss Maya’s class used to have…

Every Student in This School’s Founding Class Is Headed To and Through College

“We pledge that in four years we will be better than we are today.” That’s what the members of the Baker College Prep class of…

Meet the Chicago Senior With $1.6 Million in College Scholarships

I have been thinking about college since my elementary school days at Frazier Prep, a charter school on Chicago’s West Side, where every classroom is…

Sometimes Your Kids Can Be What It Takes to Go Back to School for the Third Time and Graduate

Like many first-generation college Latinx students, Priscila González struggled through her freshman and sophomore years at Chicago State University. She struggled with managing time, learning…

A Principal Helping Kids to Be the First in Their Family to Go to College, Just Like He Was

First-generation college student Vincent Gay started his journey on a wrestling scholarship at Edinboro University, near Erie, Pennsylvania. Early on, he got into such difficulty…

Coffee Break: Andrew Schmitz on the 5Essentials, What Makes School Work for Kids and Exploring Chicago’s 77

The Urban Education Institute at the University of Chicago has been a long-standing partner in education reform for city school districts across the country. Andrew Schmitz is…

While Feds Loosen School Nutrition Standards, My Child’s School Won’t Back Down

While my husband dug in the freezer on a recent Monday morning, my second-grader informed me of the day’s breakfast menu: “I’m having a waffle…

You Don’t Know a School Until You Know Its Community: Lessons From a Charter School Principal

As administrators, teachers, or any other sort of “expert” in education, we can often come into school communities thinking we know the answers, that we…

You May Have Seen ‘Hamilton,’ But Not Like This

It was a cool Chicago evening in late April. I walked down the bleacher steps of the spacious new Back of the Yards College Preparatory…