This research report finds that students and teachers feel much safer in some Chicago Public Schools than others, and the best predictor of whether students and teachers feel safe is the quality of relationships inside the school building. The report, Student and Teacher Safety in Chicago Public Schools, found that schools serving students from high-crime, high-poverty areas tended to feel less safe; however, demographics were not deterministic of safety. In fact, disadvantaged schools with high-quality relationships actually felt safer than advantaged schools with low-quality relationships.
About the Author: MATTHEW STEINBERG is a fourth-year doctoral student at the Harris School of Public Policy Studies at the University of Chicago and an Institute of Education Sciences Pre-Doctoral Fellow with the University of Chicago Committee on Education. Matthew received his BA in Economics and Sociology from the University of Virginia, an MSEd. in elementary education from the City College of New York and a Master's in Public Affairs from the Robert M. La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 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. DAVID W. JOHNSON is a research assistant at the Chicago Postsecondary Transition Project at UChicago CCSR and a doctoral candidate at SSA. 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.