This paper presents findings from a randomized controlled trial studying a comprehensive program designed to support students in achieving their goals. One Million Degrees (OMD) is a nonprofit organization serving community college students in the Chicago metro area that supports students financially, academically, personally, and professionally.…

The current paper examines associations between preschool cognitive and behavioral skills and indicators of college enrollment in a sample (n = 379) of primarily Black and Hispanic youth growing up in low-income areas of Chicago. Although we found that most early cognitive and behavioral skills were only weakly or moderately related to later…

Background/Context: English learners (ELs) have the potential to bring much-needed multilingual skills to the workforce, and most ELs aspire to graduate high school and earn a post-secondary credential (Gwynne, Pareja, Ehrlich, & Allensworth, 2012; Shi & Watkinson, 2019). But active ELs graduate high school at far lower rates than their…

This annual report looks closely at how Chicago Public Schools (CPS) students are progressing on the path to and through high school and college. In particular, the report examines three key milestones--high school graduation, college enrollment, and college completion--and tracks how rates on these milestones have changed across time. These rates…

Completing a post-secondary degree is crucial to being competitive in the current job market. By 2020, the majority of all jobs in the United States require post-secondary education and training; however, barriers to access and attainment exist among individuals working to obtain post-secondary degrees, and there is an overall slowdown in…

This annual report looks closely at how CPS students are progressing on the path to and through high school and college. In particular, we examine three key milestones: high school graduation, college enrollment, and college completion, and track how rates on these milestones have changed across time. These rates are then used to calculate an…

Recent data from Chicago Public Schools (CPS) show that active English Learners were less likely to graduate from high school (77% did so in 2023) than their peers (85%) and less likely to enroll in college (56% of 2022 English Learners high school graduates enrolled in college compared to 66 percent of their non-English Learners high school…