Chicago Public Schools – Vision Collaboratives
In 2019, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) CEO Dr. Janice K. Jackson released a Five-Year Vision that laid out commitments to build upon the district’s academic progress, ensure continued financial improvements, and strengthen integrity through regular parent and community engagement, all with a focus on achieving a more equitable education system. Given the Five-Year Vision’s broad and ambitious scope, CPS needed to make it actionable by systematizing their strategic planning approach to connect the plans of each department, school cluster, and school to the Vision’s goals in a coordinated way.
CPS called on Civic Consulting Alliance to guide the district in refining this new, coordinated strategic planning approach in order to achieve its Five-Year Vision. We aimed to develop a process to prioritize and launch initiatives and track data in order to drive progress—with the goals of facilitating collaboration across the district, gathering input from all levels of the district, and accelerating those initiatives that would have the greatest impact on equity issues. With the support of McKinsey & Company and Northwestern University pro bono fellows, we interviewed CPS staff, analyzed CPS’ current strategic planning model, and researched peer organizations’ strategic planning processes.
Based on this research, we led CPS in establishing Vision Collaboratives—cross-functional groups that bring people from across the district together around different topic areas and goals in CPS’ Vision (e.g. Early Literacy, or High School). These collaboratives would formally manage strategic planning for the Five-Year Vision, directing and governing the execution of initiatives through departments. We recommended approaches to data and progress monitoring, governance, and timelines that would best support the Vision Collaboratives’ success.
Through our partnership with Civic Consulting Alliance, Chicago Public Schools gained a collaborative process to guide future strategic planning efforts—one that aligns and energizes people, schools, and departments across the district around critical educational goals and metrics.
-Eva Giglio, Deputy Chief of Staff for CEO of Chicago Public Schools
Moreover, this project will enable CPS to efficiently prioritize and launch concrete initiatives that affect equity issues across the district—such as early childhood literacy. This work is even more urgent given the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on our schools’ day-to-day operations and on CPS’ most disadvantaged students.
“Civic Consulting Alliance helped turn this visionary idea into reality. Chicago Public Schools is excited to see the impact of this new way of doing business in pursuit of our five-year goals.”
OUTPUTS
Playbook—Through extensive stakeholder interviews and best practice research, CPS has a detailed playbook for how to develop Vision Collaboratives around key topic areas from its Five-Year Vision
Analyses—Analysis of school-based continuous improvement plans to inform the Early Literacy strategy
OUTCOMES
Vision Collaboratives are in place for Early Literacy and High School strategies with cross-functional groups addressing high-impact initiatives, paving the way for future collaboratives focused on the district's five-year goals
CPS now has a process for analyzing school needs to inform district strategy that is being replicated across the district
