All parent questions
Student SEL Development

Is my child developing life skills?

The University of Chicago's 5Essentials Survey asks every student about life at their school. Four of those measures tell us how well a school helps kids build confidence, communicate, and find their direction.

Looking at
Pick a comparison

UChicago Impact identified an error in how this year's 5Essentials Survey was administered, so the overall rating and six measures — including Academic Rigor — weren't scored. They will return in future surveys. Click a different year at the upper right to see previous values.

How students are doing

Four life skills, one picture.

Each spoke is one survey measure, mapped to the life skill it speaks to. The further the shape reaches out, the stronger students rated their school that year.

The four measures ·
Abraham Lincoln Elementary School All Chicago elementary schools

Abraham Lincoln Elementary School compared with All Chicago elementary schools

Every spring, CPS students answer the 5Essentials Survey about life at their school. Each spoke of this chart is one survey measure. The colored rings show what score range it falls in — dark red near the center means a weak score, dark green at the edge means a very strong score. The school's shape sits on top.

A dashed outline shows the school or group you are comparing with. A grayed-out spoke means no score was published for that measure this year. We show the four published scores side by side instead of averaging them into one number.

How students are doing

What the survey actually asks.

5Essentials sends a survey to every CPS student each spring. These are the four themes that map onto the life skills parents named — what students experience, in their own words.

What the school provides
This school's 5Essentials at a glance.

Alongside our four-skill view, the survey publishes its own official report card: five "essentials" and one overall rating. Both views use the very same published scores — just grouped differently.

Official survey rating ·

This is the survey's own report card — the same rating CPS publishes for every school.

Published overall rating

UChicago Impact groups its twenty survey measures into five "essential supports": Ambitious Instruction, Collaborative Teachers, Involved Families, Supportive Environment, and Effective Leaders. Each gets a published score from 1 to 99, colored from very weak to very strong.

The overall rating uses the survey's own words — from "Not Yet Organized for Improvement" to "Well Organized" — describing how ready the school is to improve. Research behind the survey found schools strong on three or more essentials were ten times more likely to improve student learning.

Source

5Essentials Survey, UChicago Impact. Survey administered every spring to CPS students; results published the following fall.

Coverage

Data through SY2024-25. We show every year the public source reports back to SY2017-18.

How to read this page

Kids First Chicago mapped each parent question to the 5Essentials measures that most directly speak to it. The "Student SEL Development" view uses Academic Press, Postsecondary Expectations, Future Orientation, Quality of Student Discussion, Student-Teacher Trust, and School Commitment. Every score on this page is a value published by the survey — we never average measures together.

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