Read the To&Through Project's latest op-eds, essays, and updates.
To&Through Project Blog

To&Through Fall Newsletter
We highlight the amazing work from local and national professionals in education and launch our Elementary on Track tool. We also imagine how equity can look both in our workplace and in the larger education policy.

Data Points: 10 High Schools and Communities Increasing College Access
As we enter the new school year, the To&Through Project is highlighting five Chicago Public Schools (CPS) high schools and five community areas that have significantly improved their CPS graduates’ access to college, according to data reported on our To&Through Milestones Tool.

To&Through Summer Newsletter
We celebrate Chicago Public Schools (CPS) high schools and communities greatly increasing college access for their CPS graduates, and we recap the annual To&Through Middle Grades Network Summer Institute. We also introduce new team members and list upcoming Data Collaboratives.

The To&Through Team's Summer Reading List
As the To&Through Project team has been working through our summer reading lists, we curated a collection of articles and books that have stuck with us the past couple of months. We hope you find them as thought-provoking as we did.

To&Through Project Spring 2022 Newsletter
Read our Chicago Data Stories series and an op-ed from the To&Through Middle Grades Network team. Learn about our open staff positions and upcoming events.

Teachers Don't Need More Work. They Need Help, Grace and Understanding.
The To&Through Middle Grades Network (MGN) conducted empathy interviews with educators at MGN schools to capture their pandemic reflection. We stuck to open-ended questions about their experiences—mostly, we just held space for our teachers, counselors, and school leaders to talk, cry, and laugh. What we heard leaves us both concerned about the profound levels of exhaustion educators have experienced and moved by their deep commitment to students, families, and each other.Â

OPINION: Students who began as English Learners at CPS have relatively strong attainment rates — and it means we should up our investments.
Our recent findings on the attainment of students who began as English Learners at CPS shows that they are graduating from high school and enrolling in college at a rate on par with the district average. One co-author reflects on the finding as a cause for celebration — and a cause for maintaining the momentum around improving services and supports for English Learners in CPS.Â

Communities in Chicago are working to solve the challenges they face. Are we giving them the right tools to do it?
Chicago has a rich ecosystem of community-based organizations striving to raise educational attainment rates for students from their community areas. The expansion of high school choices outside of students’ communities over the past two decades has complicated their work.

To&Through Project Winter 2022 Newsletter
Learn about the recently announced second cohort of the To&Through Middle Grades Network as well as new student activity resources for middle grades educators. We also overview our new research finding summaries, which provide learnings — and questions — from our reports via bite-sized reads, and we overview our annually published Data Insights and the To&Through Milestones Tool's recent data update.

The Downstream Impacts of School Choice on Chicago’s Black Communities
Over the past two decades, students from Chicago’s Black communities experienced more dispersion — students going to different high schools — and more charter school enrollment than majority White, Latinx, Asian-American/Pacific-Islander, and mixed-race communities. Read more about this new research finding and its implications.