Learning disruptions can require school leaders to make changes quickly. In the wake of the pandemic, the Chicago Skyline Early Literacy project channeled this sense of urgency into a drive to innovate. The project team is a research-practice partnership (RPP) between Chicago Public Schools (CPS) and the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research (Consortium). 

In 2021, Chicago Public Schools launched Skyline, the district’s custom PK-12 digital curriculum, to provide teachers and students with no-cost access to high-quality, comprehensive, culturally relevant curricula across seven content areas, including English Language Arts (ELA). At the time, data showed that the reading achievement of students in kindergarten through second grade in CPS was disproportionately impacted by remote learning. In an effort to address students’ unfinished learning, a core component of CPS’s pandemic recovery plan involved increasing access to high quality curriculum. In order to gauge the effectiveness of these efforts, the District partnered with the Consortium to assess the impact of the Skyline ELA curriculum in the primary grades. 

“We wanted to bring on our research partner so that we were studying this as we go and not waiting, because we did have the opportunity to engage in continuous improvement [of the curriculum],” said Jane Fleming, co-principal investigator and Director of Literacy at CPS. 

Bridging the gap between research and practice from the beginning 

From the beginning of the project, the CPS and Consortium teams have built spaces for collaboration in their implementation and evaluation processes. Biweekly meetings with the Consortium research team, CPS literacy team, and CPS Skyline digital learning team bring together a range of perspectives. 

Elaine Allensworth, principal investigator at the Consortium, shared that the consistent meetings between district and Skyline staff became invaluable to the research. At the meetings, researchers share data and discuss patterns and interpretations with district partners, who bring their experiences working directly with the curriculum and CPS teachers to these conversations. 

“When we bring summaries of what we see in the data, our district partners will help us see what is interesting to them, which is often things we wouldn’t think about. Or their questions make us realize we need to consider different ways of grouping or presenting the data,” said Allensworth. 

By sharing their knowledge, CPS staff guide the research in new directions, enriching the quality of the research.

Making immediate impact, no cliffhangers necessary 

These sharing sessions also informed CPS’s early efforts to make the curriculum easier for teachers to use in their classrooms. Fleming said that the partnership meetings allow CPS to quickly respond to teachers’ feedback on the curriculum, as well as providing the Consortium researchers context for the study. 

In other words, the research has had an immediate impact. For example, in the first year of the partnership, Consortium researchers found in interviews and surveys that about a third of teachers using the Skyline literacy curriculum felt it was too challenging for their students. After learning about this result, the CPS Skyline team enhanced professional learning for teachers—developing unit-specific PL sessions so teachers could see Skyline’s alignment to grade-level standards, as well as creating streamlined views of the digital content, high-level snapshot views of facilitation guides, and additional hands-on materials for the younger student population. 

“As we’re learning things, we’re trying to feed them back to the Literacy Team, not only to be able to say, ‘here’s what we’re learning,’ [but also] so that our team can take that back and apply that to continuous improvement of the curriculum," Fleming said. 

Allensworth also emphasized that holding ongoing discussions is key to continuous improvement work. It’s not always a clear-cut process of seeing data and making a change. She noted “it’s much more of a continual conversation, building our understanding of what is happening around implementation together, and district partners incorporating that knowledge in their ongoing efforts.” 

Lessons for the field 

With collaboration as a pillar of a successful RPP, both researchers and practitioners can reap the benefits that Fleming and Allensworth shared. Fleming has decades of experience working in both the research field and in district roles. She shared that in the past, researchers have limited how closely they work with partners to reduce the burden on participating schools and districts. 

But this limited collaboration doesn’t always have to be the case. Starting in the first meetings with the Consortium, her team “wanted this to be a true partnership,” Fleming said. 

From there, the Skyline Early Literacy project became one that was really focused on how the partnership would inform the work happening day-to-day. Research on what makes an effective RPP indicates that strong interpersonal relationships are key to a successful partnership. Productive RPPs have routine meetings that encourage collaboration and share multiple forms of expertise. By providing many opportunities for knowledge sharing, CPS has created a curriculum for schools that both anticipates and is responsive to student and staff needs. 

On the horizon for Skyline 

In the upcoming year of partnership, researchers at the Consortium will continue meeting with staff across multiple departments at CPS. After making updates based on teacher feedback, Skyline has introduced numerous new features that teachers can try out in the new school year. 

Fleming is hopeful that future survey and interview results will reflect the team’s continuous improvement efforts, and that even more teachers will report that Skyline ELA is appropriately challenging for their students and is increasingly user-friendly as revisions are made. 

Time for ongoing feedback, collaboration, and data-sharing allows researchers and school or district partners to respond quickly. In the meantime, partners provide researchers with feedback that can shape better data systems that lead to better research. It’s an opportunity for researchers and partners to write a new chapter together. 

“It’s okay to be lifting up the veil and sharing things from time to time so we can learn from each other,” Fleming said.

Photo by Allison Shelley for EDUimages