Student Performance : Course Taking, Test Scores, and Outcomes. The State of Chicago Public Schools: 1993 to 2000 / Shazia Rafiullah Miller, Elaine M. Allensworth and Julie Reed Kockanek.

Each report in The State of Chicago Public Schools: 1993 to 2000 makes up part of a comprehensive picture of how high schools changed under Phase 2 of the Chicago, Illinois, educational reform efforts. This report looks at student performance. Data from a variety of sources show that in recent years the high school eligible students in Chicago's public schools improved on a number of measures. These trends exist even though the analyses include students who dropped out of school between eighth and ninth grade or were sent to Academic Preparatory Centers. More students were on track their first year after elementary school (received no more than one failing grade in a core course and had enough credits to assume sophomore status on time, passed the algebra/geometry sequence by the end of their second year, and passed an honors class sometime in their first year. Somewhat more students also completed a college preparatory program and passed an honors or advanced placement course over 4 years. The percent of students graduating by age 18 rose slightly. Finally, the average scores on the Tests of Achievement and Proficiency (TAP) rose substantially for the subset of students who enrolled in the ninth grade. Overall, this is good news for the Chicago public high schools. However, this good news is qualified by the fact that student performance itself, even by 2000, was still very poor on most measures. Fewer than half of all students graduated, barely half were on track after their freshman year, and the dropout rate remained above 40%. Policies aimed at bringing in better prepared students appear to have worked, and these account for much of the improvement in student performance. No particular type of school was especially effective in improving students' performance on the TAP. Four appendixes contain sample data, technical notes, a description of first-year course taking, and a chart of change in students taking the TAP by performance on the eighth grade Iowa Tests of Basic Skills. (Contains 4 tables, 29 figures, and 23 references.) (SLD)

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