This report finds that a Chicago Public Schools (CPS) policy dramatically increasing science requirements for all students did not help them learn more science and actually may have hurt their college prospects. The science policy was part of a larger CPS initiative to expose all students to a college-preparatory curriculum by increasing course requirements across a range of subjects. To examine the effect of the 1997 policy change, the report compares academic outcomes for cohorts of students in Chicago before and after the policy switch. The new science policy did end low expectations for science coursework, the report finds. Two years before the change, less than half of CPS graduates passed three or more college-prep science courses; most did not complete more than one. Immediately after the change, almost all graduates passed at least three full-year science classes. However, though CPS high school students took and passed more college-prep science courses under the new policy, five out of six of them earned Cs or lower, the same low grades they earned before the policy switch. Graduation rates also declined after the policy change. They dropped by four percentage points in the first year of the policy and another percentage point in the next year, after accounting for changes in the backgrounds and prior achievement of students entering CPS high schools. What's more, most graduates still did not complete all of the high-level science courses expected at selective colleges, and college-going rates ultimately declined among graduates with a B average or better in science. Because of the way the policy was structured, students were less likely after the policy to take both physics and chemistry, a combination that is common for students aspiring to college nationally.
About the Author: NICHOLAS MONTGOMERY was a Senior Research Analyst at the Consortium on Chicago School Research (UChicago CCSR). Nicholas holds a master's degree in Education Research and Policy from the University of Michigan's School of Education and a bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Brown University. ELAINE ALLENSWORTH, PHD, is the Executive Director of UChicago CCSR. She conducts research on factors affecting school improvement and students' educational attainment, including high school graduation, college readiness, curriculum and instruction, and school organization and leadership. MACARENA CORREA is a former research analyst at UChicago CCSR. She eceived her BA in psychology from Harvard College and her EdM from the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) where her focus was administration, planning, and social policy. The University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research (UChicago CCSR) builds the capacity for school reform by conducting research that identifies what matters for student success and school improvement. Created in 1990 after the passage of the Chicago School Reform Act that decentralized governance of the city's public schools, UChicago CCSR conducts research of high technical quality that can inform and assess policy and practice in the Chicago Public Schools. UChicago CCSR studies also have informed broader national movements in public education. UChicago CCSR encourages the use of research in policy action and improvement of practice but does not argue for particular policies or programs. Rather, UChicago CCSR helps to build capacity for school reform by identifying what matters for student success and school improvement, creating critical indicators to chart progress, and conducting theory-driven evaluation to identify how programs and policies are working.