Chicago, Illinois
Numbers of Students: 371, 382
Number of Schools: 646
Chicago Public School’s Office of Social Emotional Learning (OSEL) consists of thirty four staff members. OSEL’s mission is to provide physically and emotionally safe and supportive learning environments to students. In order to accomplish this, they have developed robust multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS) that strive to meet the social and emotional needs of all students. In order to fully implement social emotional learning, every school was tasked with developing a plan to integrate social emotional learning skills across all subject areas, positive and collaborative relationships throughout the school community. CPS partners with the Collaborative of Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL). Through this partnership, they have been able to empower 269 schools to implement evidence-based SEL programs. They have also adopted a progressive disciplinary policy that limits the use of exclusionary discipline practices and instead encourages schools to respond to behavior incidents using restorative practices. As a result, there was an increase in average GPA, reading and math scores. Since 2012, out of school suspensions have declined 76%, attendance rates rose significantly and graduation rates have soared to 73.5%.
Learn more about CPS’s social emotional learning initiatives here.