Chicago Tech Academy

Programs: The 2016-2017 school year was one of continued growth and improvement for chicago tech academy. We remain the only wall-to-wall project-based learning high school in chicago public schools, emphasizing the development of critical thinking, creativity, communication and collaboration skills to prepare our students for the digital jobs of the future. For the third consecutive year, chitech improved it's overall score on the school quality rating program, and is now rated by chicago public schools as a level 2+ school. We are one of only two charter or contract high schools in chicago to have improved its sqrp rating in each of the last three years. Since the 2013-2014 school year we have increased our freshman-on-track by 35 points to 93%, our four-year cohort graduation rate by 21 points to 78%, and our college enrollment rate by nine points to 63%. We are the only charter or contract high school in the city that ranks in the top ten for largest increase in each one of these categories. In addition to those measures, in 2016-2017 the school rolled out its real world learning internship program on a school-wide basis. Now, every chitech twelfth-grader completes a full-time month-long internship in the tech industry before they graduate, learning valuable professional skills, building social capital, and changing their mindsets about college and career. This rwl program has become recognized both in chicago and nationally as an innovative model for work-based learning. Also, this year chitech expanded its partnership with project lead the way, adding a second year of engineering curriculum to help prepare students for stem careers. Every one of our students now takes a minimum of four year-long classes in technology and engineering during high school. Toward the end of the school year, chicago public schools completed its contract renewal authorization process with chitech, and is expected to renew the school's educational services and performance agreement for another five years, through the 2022-2023 school year. In june of 2017, chitech hired a new chief executive officer, lance russell, to lead the school organization into the next phase of its growth.