New Data Suggest Chicago’s Schools Are Better Than You Might Think

Whet Moser:

At the New York Times blog The Upshot, Emily Badger and Kevin Quealy have a piece on a new set of data from Stanford University: test scores from 11,000 school districts that have been analyzed to see which ones achieve the most growth from their students.

Way up near the top is Chicago. It’s one of a handful in which, based on the scores, students progress the equivalent of six years in just five, and it’s the only very large school district for which that’s the case. (Schaumburg also comes in above six years.)

This shouldn’t actually be a surprise. I’ve written before about data that indicates this same trend: Chicago Public Schools students start well behind their peers, but then make substantial progress as they move through the system. (Again, this is based on test scores, which are not the be-all and end-all of an education, but it’s what we have for a bird’s-eye view of American public education.)