Chicago Public Schools

If principals have the authority to dismiss teachers, will they dismiss the less effective ones, or will they instead make perverse decisions by letting the good teachers go? Evidence from low-stakes surveys suggests that principals are able to...

This paper studies the effect of employment protection on worker productivity and firm output in the context of a public school system. In 2004, the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) and Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) signed a new collective bargaining...

This paper takes advantage of a unique policy change to examine how principals make decisions regarding teacher dismissal. In 2004, the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) and Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) signed a new collective bargaining agreement that...

In this paper, we examine whether expanded access to sought-after schools can improve academic achievement. The setting we study is the "open enrollment" system in the Chicago Public Schools (CPS). We use lottery data to avoid the critical issue of...

School choice has become an increasingly prominent strategy for enhancing academic achievement. Evaluating the impact of such programs is complicated by the fact that a highly select sample of students takes advantage of these programs. To overcome...

We develop an algorithm for detecting teacher cheating that combines information on unexpected test score fluctuations and suspicious patterns of answers for students in a classroom. Using data from the Chicago Public Schools, we estimate that...

The recent federal education bill, No Child Left Behind, requires states to test students in grades three to eight each year, and to judge school performance on the basis of these test scores. While intended to maximize student learning, there is...

As standards and accountability have become an increasingly prominent feature of the educational landscape, educators have relied more on remedial programs such as summer school and grade retention to help low-achieving students meet minimum...

We explore the impact of school choice on student outcomes in the context of open enrollment within the Chicago Public Schools (CPS). Roughly half of the students opt out of their assigned high school to attend a different CPS school, and these...