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The 5Essentials School Reports for Chicago Public Schools are derived from more than 20 years of research on improving urban schools. The raw data for these reports are based on a comprehensive core of over 80 student and 150 teacher questions compiled into 22 measures of school climate and practice and formed into five Essentials. As measured by the 5Essentials Surveys, those five Essentials are leading indicators of school improvement. The power of 5Essentials comes from their prediction of school success, the intuitiveness of the overall framework components (Ambitious Instruction, Supportive Environment, Effective Leaders, Collaborative Teachers, and Involved Families), and the reliability of the survey measures.

As detailed in the seminal book, Organizing Schools for Improvement: Lessons from Chicago, UEI researchers determined that there are five essential supports for school success. These “5Essentials” detail the perspectives and processes central to the delivery and support of student learning.

The 5Essentials framework as measured by our survey instruments is a leading indicator of school performance now and predictive of the future. Data from over 650 schools (elementary and high schools) have found our survey measures to predict many aspects of student and school success, before and after controlling for school type, demographic composition, test scores, and socio-economic status. Our principal indication of the power of the 5Essentials is that University of Chicago analysis of two natural experiments spanning a total of 15 years each found that they mattered considerably: Schools strong in 3-5 Essentials were 10 times more likely to improve student learning substantially compared to schools weak in 3-5 Essentials. This evidence came from over 400 elementary schools representing the best and worst in Illinois. Following those natural experiments, we have found our survey measures reliably predict school success on a variety of outcomes for both high school and elementary schools, including:

• ITBS improvement
• ISAT value-add
• EXPLORE to ACT gains
• EXPLORE to PLAN gains
• PLAN to ACT gains
• Attendance rates
• College enrollment
• High school graduation
• Freshman grades
• Teacher mobility
• Grades in college-preparatory classes

References:
(Bryk, et al. 2010)(Selected by Education Next as one of the best education books of the decade: http://educationnext.org/the-best-books-of-the-past-decade-according-to-ed-next-readers/)
(Bryk, et al. 2010); (Easton, Ponisciak and Luppescu 2008); (Easton, Ponisciak and Luppescu 2008); (Allensworth, Correa and Ponisciak 2008); (Bryk, et al. 2010); (Roderick, Nagaoka, et al. 2008); (Allensworth and Easton 2007); (Allensworth and Easton 2007); (Allensworth, Ponisciak and Mazzeo 2009); (Allensworth, Nomi, et al. 2009); (Montgomery, Allensworth and Correa 2010)