HCC: Improving Educational Results of Disadvantaged Children in Chicago, Mar 6th

Date: Thursday, March 6, 2014
Time: 5:30-8:00 pm
Location: Mayer Brown
71 S. Wacker Dr., 33rd Floor Chicago

Improving Educational Results of Disadvantaged Children in Chicago:

A Panel Discussion with the University of Chicago's Urban Education Lab

Date:  Thursday, March 6, 2014
Time:  5:30-7:30 PM
Location: Mayer Brown
71 S. Wacker Dr., 33rd Floor, Chicago

What to do about improving education in Chicago?  Having dropped steadily for the past 40 years, the urban graduation rate for students beginning in ninth grade today is 53%.  While magnet and charter schools address the needs of the top students, we are losing our most disadvantaged children.  As the January 2014 National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper states:
There is growing concern that improving the academic skills of disadvantaged youth is too difficult and costly, so policymakers should instead focus either on vocationally oriented instruction for teens or else on early childhood education. Yet this conclusion may be premature given that so few previous interventions have targeted a potential fundamental barrier to school success: “mismatch” between what schools deliver and the needs of disadvantaged youth who have fallen behind in their academic or non-academic development.
We know far too little about how to improve the educational outcomes of disadvantaged children in urban areas although educators and researchers have studied extensively how children learn and the best practices of teachers.  As UEL notes on its web site:
The field needs to recognize that many of our most important education-policy questions are empirical, not philosophical. A policy intervention either is or is not more effective than the status quo for improving student outcomes.  In fact, the problem has not been a lack of ideas or new programs. Rather, the problem is that in the context of urban education, new programs are rarely implemented in ways that can be rigorously evaluated.
The URBAN EDUCATION LAB (UEL) was created in 2011 with the goal of generating knowledge to help improve educational outcomes for disadvantaged children growing up in some of the most distressed urban neighborhoods. 

During the 2012-13 academic year, UEL’s research team, working with Match Education, carried out a rigorous randomized controlled trial of intensive, individualized math instruction – two-on-one math instruction for an hour a day, every day ("tutoring on steroids") – designed to help students catch back up to grade level so that they can re-engage with regular classroom instruction and increase their likelihood of passing required math classes that are a common barrier to graduation. To address non-academic barriers to schooling success, youth also received the promising non-academic intervention BAM (Becoming a Man) developed by Chicago nonprofit Youth Guidance.

Based on the positive results from the first trial, UEL is currently running a large-scale study of both the tutoring and the social-cognitive skill building interventions in 21 CPS high schools.  Join us and participate in a discussion of the results of this exciting study and the implications it has for the Chicago School System.  On the panel will be:
  • Roseanna Ander serves as the founding Executive Director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab (2008) and the University of Chicago Urban Education Lab (2011).  She holds a bachelor’s degree from Boston University and a master’s degree from the Harvard School of Public Health.

  • Jens Ludwig (UEL & CCL Director), is the McCormick Foundation Professor of Social Service Administration, Law, and Public Policy at the University of Chicago, Non-Resident Senior Fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution, Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), and co-director of the NBER's Working Group on the Economics of Crime. Ludwig received his BA in economics from Rutgers College and his MA and PhD in economics from Duke University. In 2006 he was awarded APPAM's David N. Kershaw Prize for Contributions to Public Policy by Age 40. In 2012 he was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Science.

  • Mark Saint, site director for Match Tutoring in Chicago for Harper, Harlan and Julian High Schools.  Mark is a pastor, writer, and social justice advocate who has worked in the U.S. and the U.K. Prior to joining Match Education, he pastored the Cross Street Baptist Church in London, U.K., and has traveled four continents as a speaker and consultant on faith, educational opportunity, and social justice. He began his undergraduate work in Philosophy and English at Southern Illinois University, continued at Northwestern University, and is currently completing his Masters of Divinity at North Park Theological Seminary.

  • Elory Rozner will moderate the panel.  She is on the board of directors of the Harvard Club of Chicago and is Chairman of the club’s Education Support Committee.  Elory is the founder and principal of Uncommon Classrooms and works with clients across sectors to design innovative K-12 education programs.  She holds a bachelor’s degree in English Education from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a master’s degree in Technology, Innovation, and Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

For more information on UEL and its program, take a look at this New York Times article and the short University of Chicago/Crime Lab video, Reducing Youth Violence.

EVENT DETAILS:
DateThursday, March 6, 2014
Time
5:30-7:30 PM
Location:
Mayer Brown, 71 S. Wacker Dr., 33rd Floor, Chicago 60606
Cost
:
$20.00 for Members and Member's Guest
$35.00 for Non-Member Alumni & Guests
Complimentary for Crimson and Crimson Plus Members

Reservations will be held at the door. 

Click here to buy tickets.  Reservations will be held at the door.

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