Lessons Learned From the Chicago Public Schools

(And Clues to the Future of Federal Research Efforts)

By Timothy Knowles

Since his appointment as the U.S. secretary of education, Arne Duncan has championed an approach to school reform based on research. In public appearances from Denver to Brooklyn, Duncan has emphasized the importance of data in measuring long-term student success and in determining which programs should be expanded, and which scrapped.

Duncan’s determination is backed by the unprecedented education funding, up to $100 billion, in the federal economic-stimulus bill. It was further reinforced by the choice of John Q. Easton as the director of the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences , the nation’s engine for educational research, evaluation, assessment, and statistics.

Duncan and Easton developed a partnership while Easton was the director of the Consortium on Chicago School Research at the University of Chicago and Duncan was running the nation’s third-largest school system, the Chicago public schools. Easton and his fellow researchers dug deep into Chicago’s schools to document what made a difference. Duncan turned those findings into plans and programs...