The Middle Grades Network (MGN)

The To&Through Middle Grades Network is a group of schools dedicated to creating more equitable and supportive educational environments where middle grades students can thrive. The network seeks to build the capacity of practitioners to understand the developmental, social-emotional, and non-academic factors critical for student success and to make changes in practice that improve middle grades indicators for success in high school and beyond.

Practitioners from selected schools participate in customized professional learning and receive dedicated in-school coaching as they engage in a student-centered improvement process grounded in data, research, and the expertise of participating schools. This process involves articulating a problem of practice connected to the experiences of middle grades students; designing, implementing, and iterating a strategy to address this problem; and codifying and demonstrating promising tools and practices relevant to middle grades outcomes district-wide. Schools will learn and apply research from the UChicago Consortium on School Research and others on adolescent development, continuous improvement, social-emotional learning, early warning indicators, equity learning environments, and effective middle grades practices from around the country.

Online Tool

The To&Through Project provides data on the milestones that research shows matter most for students’ high school and college success in one online hub for education stakeholders. The To&Through Online Tool links Chicago public high schools to post-secondary outcomes, providing the full picture of students’ educational progress, from the middle grades through college graduation. District and school leaders, school partners, families, and policymakers can interrogate district and school level data. The Online Tool can be used to examine patterns of educational attainment among different student subgroups, see how many students from individual high schools have reached a particular milestone along the path to and through college, and see which colleges and universities Chicago Public Schools students are choosing, as well as the institutional graduation rates of those schools.

Reports

The To&Through Project works closely with The University of Chicago Consortium on School Research to conduct research and publish reports on what matters most for students’ high school and college success. These reports have included work on the educational attainment of Chicago Public School students, the transition from 8th to 9th grade, sophomore year, and patterns of college enrollment. The To&Through Project uses these reports as the basis for data on the To&Through Online Tool.