College Enrollment

The proportion of CPS 8th grade graduates who enrolled directly in college in the fall following spring or summer high school graduation, after graduating from high school in four years. This does not include students who transferred out of the district during high school, but does include students who dropped out of high school before the end of those four years. Students in both charter and non-charter schools are included. Students who received their high school diplomas from Options schools (sometimes called alternative schools) are included in our high school graduation rates and in the denominators of college enrollment rates.

Two-year Enrollee

Students who enroll in a two-year college the fall after graduating from high school. [[MORE:inst_enroll]]

Four-year Enrollee

Students who enroll in a four-year college the fall after graduating from high school. [[MORE:inst_enroll]]

College Persistence

Enrolled in both the fall semester directly after high school graduation, and the subsequent fall. Data on college enrollment and completion comes from National Student Clearinghouse (NSC).

Categories for immediate 4-year enrollees:

Remained in a 4-year college

Enrolled in a four-year institution in the fall semester immediately following high school graduation, and was still enrolled in a four-year institution the subsequent fall. [[MORE:inst_persist]]

Transferred to a 2-year college

Enrolled in a four-year institution in the fall semester immediately following high school graduation, and was enrolled in a two-year institution the subsequent fall.[[MORE:inst_persist]]

Did not persist

Enrolled in a four-year institution in the fall semester immediately following high school graduation, but was no longer enrolled in any institution in the subsequent fall. [[MORE:inst_persist]]

Categories for immediate 2-year enrollees:

Remained in a 2-year college

Enrolled in a two-year institution in the fall semester immediately following high school graduation, and was still enrolled in a two-year institution the subsequent fall. [[MORE:inst_persist]]

Transferred to a 4-year college

Enrolled in a two-year institution in the fall semester immediately following high school graduation, and was enrolled in a four-year institution the subsequent fall. [[MORE:inst_persist]]

Did not persist

Enrolled in a two-year institution in the fall semester immediately following high school graduation, but was no longer enrolled in any institution in the subsequent fall. [[MORE:inst_persist]]

College Types

2-year college

Institutions classified in the IPEDs data as having only programs that are less than four years.

4-year college

Institutions classified in the IPEDs data as having programs that are four years or higher.

Other college

An institution that doesn't have a clear type designation in the most recent IPEDS data. Examples of these institutions include: private, for-profit institutions, colleges with multiple campuses that report their data in aggregate, and graduate schools.

Condensed Elementary OnTrack (EOT)

Similar to the elementary on-track categories used by CPS, Condensed EOT groups students into four categories based on their GPA and attendance. The four categories are: On-Track (above a 3.0 GPA and above 90 percent attendance), Academic Support (below a 3.0 GPA but above 90 percent attendance), Attendance Support (above a 3.0 GPA but below 90 percent attendance) and Intensive Support (below a 3.0 GPA and below 90 percent attendance).[[MORE:eot_groups]]

These groupings are intended to help educators strategize around school-wide trends, as well as identify students that may need targeted support in order to ensure they are prepared for success. Research using data from CPS students in 3rd–8th grade in school year 2018–19 showed a strong link between students' middle grades GPA and attendance and later outcomes.

For more information on the Condensed EOT categories and the research behind them, see this report.

On-Track

On-Track refers to greater than 3.0 GPA, greater than 90% attendance. More than 90% of students in this category went on to graduate from high school and over half earned a 3.0 at graduation; nearly 3 in 4 enrolled in college, with more than half enrolling in a four year college. For elementary and middle grades educators, the goal is to get more students in this category and, once there, to engage, challenge and support these students so that they stay on-track.[[MORE:eot_groups]]

Academic Support

Academic Support refers to less than a 3.0 GPA, greater than 90% attendance. Academic Support students come to school regularly yet still are not earning 3.0 GPAs, suggesting something about the curriculum, assessment, or classroom culture was not working for many of them. Only 17% earned a 3.0 at high school graduation and 20% enrolled in 4-year colleges. To support this group, educators may need to make whole-school and whole-classroom changes, including assessing and addressing student’s sense of engagement and belonging in their classes. In certain cases, particularly those where students are failing core classes, more specific, individual intervention may be necessary.[[MORE:eot_groups]]

Attendance Support

Attendance Support refers to greater than a 3.0 GPA, less than 90% attendance. Though they are able to maintain a relatively high GPA, Attendance Support students graduated high school below district average and fewer than half attended college. Since some of these students may be experiencing special circumstances like prolonged sickness or unstable housing, educators need to actively identify what is preventing them from regularly attending school and to provide some focused support to improve their attendance.[[MORE:eot_groups]]

Intensive Support

Intensive Support refers to less than a 3.0 GPA, less than 90% attendance. Since Intensive Support students struggle with both grades and attendance, they likely require more intensive interventions and personalized support. More than half of these students did not graduate high school, and more than 80% did not enroll directly in college. When a student’s GPA and attendance both fall below these thresholds, schools likely need to immediately work with the student and their family to identify the root cause and provide the necessary support to get them back on-track.[[MORE:eot_groups]]

Missing 8th grade GPA and/or attendance data

Students whose 8th grade grades or attendance were not available. Grades are not available for students who attended charter schools or a school outside of CPS for 8th grade

English Learners

While reporting data on active English Learners calls attention to students in need of the most support, excluding former English Learners obscures the success of students who do reach English proficiency. Therefore, we group students by whether they were ever classified as active English Learners, were classified as former English Learners, or were never classified as English Learners. We identify students as English Learners based on whether they took the ACCESS test (see “ACCESS test”: definition above) of English proficiency and whether they reached proficiency on the test—not whether they were actually receiving services. Because ACCESS is required by the state for all English Learners, this allows us to include both English Learners who received services and those who did not.

While some ACCESS test data was collected during the COVID-19 pandemic, it is incomplete and not externally available for the 2020–2021 school year. Therefore, we have held all students’ EL status constant from 2019–2020 (SY20) to 2020–2021 (SY21). This means that if a students’ score on the SY20 ACCESS test did not meet the proficiency level, we assumed that student continued to have an active EL status in SY21. While this may misrepresent a small number of students’ actual statuses in SY21, we believe it to be an accurate representation for the majority of students and a more useful data point than simply suppressing the SY21 English Learner data. According to CPS, EL supports provided during remote learning in the pandemic were as similar as possible to normal EL supports

Students who were classified as active English Learners

Students who took the ACCESS test of English proficiency during the school year, and/or whose prior-year ACCESS test score indicated they were eligible to receive English Learner services. [[MORE:ell_groups]]

Students who were classified as former English Learners

Students who were classified as active English Learners at one point during their time at CPS based on their score on the ACCESS test or screener test, but are not currently classified as active English Learners. [[MORE:ell_groups]]

Students who were never classified as English Learners

Students who were never eligible to receive EL services, either because their native language was English or because they scored high enough on the English proficiency screener test—which is different from the ACCESS test—when they entered CPS to be considered proficient in English. [[MORE:ell_groups]]

High School Types

Neighborhood School

CPS schools that have a defined attendance boundary. All CPS students have an assigned high school based on their residential address. If a student lives within a schools’ attendance boundary, it is known as their “assigned neighborhood school”. Some neighborhood schools also accept students who do not live within their attendance boundary.

Neighborhood — Assigned

Students who attend a neighborhood school and have a residential address within that school’s attendance boundaries.

Neighborhood — Other

Students who attend a neighborhood school and who have a residential address outside of that school’s attendance boundaries.

Charter School

CPS schools that are publicly funded but independently run. All CPS charter schools are open enrollment, meaning students from any neighborhood are eligible for enrollment via a lottery system.

Selective Enrollment School

CPS schools that admit students from across the city. Students must apply to gain admission; criteria for admission include students’ grades and scores on standardized tests and an entrance exam, and the majority of seats are allocated according to a tiered system based on socioeconomic status. No student is guaranteed a seat based on their home address.

Citywide School

CPS schools that do not have a defined attendance boundary. Some may offer preferential admittance to students from within a certain area.

Military Academy / Service Learning Academy School

Open enrollment CPS high schools that specialize in JROTC programming; students must meet a minimum standardized test score for admission.

Options Schools

Non-traditional CPS high schools that serve students outside of traditional school-day structures.

Specialty Schools

CPS schools that provide educational, therapeutic, and sometimes residential services to special education students with serious or complicated clinical needs.

Other Schools

Other CPS schools that do not have specified attendance boundaries. Some, such as magnet schools, may have a curriculum specialized in a particular area - for example, fine & performing arts, STEM, or language – while others do not have a particular curricular focus. Some may have test score and/or GPA requirements for admission, while others do not have any criteria for admission.

Students’ College Access Level Groups

Students’ college access levels are based on 2022 data analysis from the To&Through Project about the academic qualifications of students that make them likely to be accepted to colleges with different levels of selectivity. The framework breaks students into different groups based on their graduating GPA and ACT scores (or converted SAT scores). Students with selective access are likely to be accepted to selective and very selective four-year colleges, students with somewhat selective access are likely to be accepted to somewhat selective and non-selective four-year colleges, and students with two-year access are likely to be accepted to two-year colleges. These groups enable students to understand where they may be most likely to gain admission, and help schools to understand the enrollment patterns for students with different college access levels. [[MORE:qual_groups]]

Students with Selective College Access

Students whose GPA and ACT scores (or converted SAT scores) suggest they have at least a 50 percent chance of being admitted to selective or very selective four-year colleges (based on Barron’s selectivity categories). [[MORE:qual_groups]]

Students with Somewhat Selective College Access

Students whose GPA and ACT scores (or converted SAT scores) suggest they have at least a 50 percent chance of being admitted to somewhat selective four-year colleges (based on Barron’s selectivity categories). [[MORE:qual_groups]]

Students with Two-Year College Access

Seniors whose GPA and ACT scores (or converted SAT scores) give them access to non-selective or two-year colleges. [[MORE:qual_groups]]

Students with Disabilities

Students with disabilities are often treated as a single group. However, students’ disability or disabilities vary widely in type and extent. Students can also have multiple disabilities. As a result, their experiences in school and attainment rates are far from homogeneous.

We group students based on whether they have an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) related to a disability. If a student is identified by the district as having one or more disabilities, we categorize the student based on the primary disability type designated by CPS (a student’s primary disability is designated by CPS during the services eligibility determination process, during which an IEP team determines whether a student is eligible for services under Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)). We report rates for students with IEPs related to a specific learning disability, and students with IEPs related to another disability. After conversations with CPS’s Office of Diverse Learner Supports and Services, we decided to categorize the data in this way because students with learning disabilities represent a plurality of students with IEPs and because finer categorizations of IEPs have changed over time. The “students with other IEPs” category includes students with a wide range of disabilities, including physical, cognitive, and behavioral disabilities.

The specific definitions of each disability type can be found in the CPS Procedural Manual: Guidance on Providing Special Education and Related Services to Students with Disabilities Pursuant to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) published in August 2021.

Students with an IEP related to a learning disability

This group includes students whose primary disability for which they have an IEP is a Specific Learning Disability (SLD), which is defined as a disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or in using language, spoken or written, that may manifest itself in the imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell, or to do mathematical calculations, including conditions such as perceptual disabilities, brain injury, minimal brain dysfunction, dyslexia and developmental aphasia. [[MORE:iep_groups]]

Students with an IEP related to any other disability

This group includes students with IEPs related to any disability other than Specific Learning Disability (SLD). These include: Autism, Deaf/Blindness, Deafness, Emotional Disability, Hearing Impairment, Intellectual Disability, Multiple Disabilities, Other Health Impairment, Physical (Orthopedic) Impairment, Speech or Language Impairment, Traumatic Brain Injury, and Visual Impairment. This does not include students who currently have a 504 plan but do not have an IEP. [[MORE:iep_groups]]