Our Approach
Project
Personalized Learning Initiative
The Personalized Learning Initiative (PLI) is a moonshot to overcome pandemic learning loss and aims to bring high-dosage tutoring to students nationwide.
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The Education Lab partners with school districts to design, test, and scale programs to ensure all students have the opportunity for future success. By generating cutting-edge evidence in a real-world setting, our insights are not theoretical; they are designed to be applied in the classroom and to reach students at scale – translating into maximum impact for students nationwide. Below find broad categories of our work.
Topics
Mentoring and Counseling Interventions
We partner with community-based organizations to identify and evaluate trauma-informed interventions, including mentorship and counseling programs, that surface and strengthen skills in students that help them navigate difficult situations and succeed in school.
Personalized Learning
We work in partnership with school districts to understand whether and how we can scale high-impact tutoring programs to reach tens of thousands more students without compromising effectiveness.
Post-Secondary Pathways
We work in partnership with CPS and college success providers in Chicago to identify and co-design supports to support CPS students to achieve their post-secondary aspirations in college and career.
Restorative Practices
We partnered with CPS to evaluate the effects of RP on student behavior and provide a model of classroom management and a disciplinary system that works for interested school districts across the nation.
Student Re-Engagement
We work with school communities to reach youth who have become disengaged from school, reconnect them to school programming, and ensure they have the trauma-informed supports needed to thrive.
Methodologies
Capacity Building
We help our partners maximize their impact by providing technical assistance and evidence-based recommendations to inform program design, implementation, and scaling.
Policy and Program Evaluation
We work with government agencies and community-based partners to rigorously evaluate programs that aim to ensure all students have the opportunity for future success.
Randomized Controlled Trials
Randomized controlled trials are the gold standard in research, driving some of the most important advances in fields like technology and medicine—and we’re using them to do the same in education.
Explore more of our work
Learn more about all of our projects at the Education Lab.
Personalized Learning Initiative
The Personalized Learning Initiative (PLI) is a moonshot to overcome pandemic learning loss and aims to bring high-dosage tutoring to students nationwide.
Working on Womanhood
In 2017, the University of Chicago Education Lab partnered with the Mayor’s Office, Chicago Public Schools and Youth Guidance to understand the effects of Youth Guidance’s Working on Womanhood program as part of the Mayor’s Mentoring Initiative.
Overcoming Pandemic-Induced Learning Loss
The Education Lab’s faculty co-directors, Dr. Jens Ludwig, professor at the University of Chicago, and Dr. Jon Guryan, professor at Northwestern University, published a paper commissioned by the Aspen Economic Strategy Group (AESG) for its 2023 policy volume, “Building a More Resilient US Economy,” that makes the case for a large-scale tutoring program designed to compensate for pandemic-era learning loss and equalize educational opportunities in the long-term.
Video- From Retributive to Restorative: An Alternative Approach to Justice
This video provides an overview of the Education Lab’s evaluation of the effect of restorative practices implemented in high schools across Chicago Public Schools.
2023 Video- University of Chicago Education Lab: Looking Back and Forward
Watch our latest video on the Education Lab’s history and vision for the future.
Working on Womanhood- Research Brief
Research brief for the Working on Womanhood project.