Giving Compass' Take:

• A Stanford University study found that third to eighth grade Chicago students were improving their performance faster than the majority of students in the country. This news comes after years of education reform and a new CEO of Chicago Public Schools. 

• How can communities help engage with local public schools to offer support for students who are under performing?

• Read more about the reasons behind Chicago schools turnaround.

The phone call Janice Jackson had been waiting for came in early December. She was going to be named interim CEO of the Chicago Public Schools (CPS). A protégé of Mayor Rahm Emanuel, she would be taking over the third largest school district in the nation. She was also getting the job she had predicted for herself since her days as a student at the University of Illinois at Chicago. A month after her appointment, the city closed the deal by dropping the word “interim” from her title.

But Jackson, who is 41 years old, has also taken over an institution that has never been able to divorce itself from Chicago’s reputation for political controversy and corruption. Her rise to CEO was hastened by the resignation of Forrest Claypool, a former county commissioner and head of the Chicago Transit Authority, who was the target of an ethics investigation during his short tenure running the city schools.

Still, good news landed on Jackson’s desk just before she took the reins at CPS. New research from Stanford University showed that Chicago schoolchildren between the third and eighth grades were improving their performance at a faster rate than those in 96 percent of the school districts in the country. A significant number of Chicago pupils who came into third grade far behind their peers nationally were said to be attaining six years of academic growth in five school years.

The Stanford researchers didn’t have an answer for how Chicago was making its strides. But CPS officials offered an explanation. They claimed it was their strategy of recruiting and training elite quality principals that was turning around what a U.S. education secretary once called the worst school district in the nation.

Read the full article about chicago schools by J. Brian Charles at Governing Magazine