Background

With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, students experienced major disruptions in schooling. This meant that students in Grades K–2, which are considered formative years for developing literacy skills, potentially missed out on developing these essential skills.

In 2019, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) began developing Skyline—a comprehensive, standards-aligned, culturally relevant digital curriculum—to ensure that all teachers had access to high-quality materials to ensure strong literacy instruction in all classrooms. It is critical for CPS to ensure that students who were in the early grades during the remote learning experience accelerated learning in the wake of the pandemic. Providing teachers with high-quality literacy materials is a key strategy to accelerating learning recovery.

The disruption to learning that occurred because of the pandemic positioned Skyline as a key piece of CPS’s recovery efforts. Skyline was piloted in 2020–21 to support educators in remote learning and was officially brought online for use during the 2021–22 school year.

In addition to Skyline materials, CPS is providing a multiyear professional learning (PL) plan for adopting schools, to support effective implementation and strong instructional practice.

Research Study

This mixed methods study examines the ongoing implementation of the Skyline K–2 English language arts curriculum in combination with professional learning (Skyline+PL). The goal is to improve the quality of instruction, especially for students in priority groups whose learning was most disrupted by the shift to remote learning: Black and Latinx students in the communities with the highest economic hardship, English learners, and students who begin kindergarten with the fewest literacy skills.

The study team will document the degree to which literacy outcomes in Grades K–2 changed in cohorts impacted by COVID-19 disruptions to understand the following:

• The degree to which Skyline+PL resources are reaching K–2 priority learners.
• Whether students who experience Skyline are catching up to other students over time on a series of outcome measures.
• How Skyline implementation is related to teachers’ instructional practices.
• How teachers’ perceptions of Skyline+PL shape their engagement with the resources.
• The incremental costs and effects of different tiers of PL support.