She was the CEO of the Chicago Public Schools when Saga Education, a nonprofit offering in-person tutoring during the school day, had remarkable results with ninth and 10th graders in the city who had fallen behind in math. scored higher on tests, got better grades and passed classes at higher rates.

鈥淩ight away, I saw excitement from our principals,鈥� she told 蜜桃影视. 鈥淚t was a phenomenal program.鈥�

There was one problem: At the time, it cost $2,600 per student. 鈥淭he finances didn’t work,鈥� she said.

Three years after she stepped down from her position in Chicago, Jackson chairs the board of Accelerate, a position that grants her a national perspective on K-12 tutoring needs.

Only about 1 in 10 students who need high-dosage tutoring get it, despite evidence of persistent learning loss, according to released last year. To address the challenge, Accelerate recently brought researchers, providers and state leaders to Washington to discuss how to spread effective programs to more students.

Over a day and half, they discussed innovative models, the potential of AI in tutoring programs and the need for clearer data on its impact.  

鈥淲e already have decades of research that shows tutoring frequency matters, the teacher matters, the alignment to curriculum,鈥� said Jackson. 鈥淲hat we don’t know is how to do that in this new learning environment. like virtual and small groups.鈥�

But tutoring isn’t the only thing on Jackson鈥檚 mind. As she becomes more prominent nationally, she remains a 鈥渃ritical voice鈥� on issues facing the district she once led, said Daniel Anello, CEO of Kids First Chicago, an advocacy organization that helps parents understand education policy.

鈥淪he’s a parent, she went through the system,鈥� he said. 鈥淎nd from a racial equity standpoint, she’s always been very laser focused on ensuring that families that are the most marginalized are centered in decisions.鈥�

In December, she spoke up when the district鈥檚 appointed school board passed a that embraced neighborhood schools but also signaled a desire to move away from school choice. 

In , she called the resolution 鈥渨rong鈥� and accused the board 鈥� appointed by Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former teachers union organizer 鈥� of pursuing an anti-charter agenda. 

鈥淭here is no justification for taking away the rights of parents and putting the interests of their children at risk,鈥� she wrote.

In an interview, Jackson said while she鈥檚 not opposed to neighborhood schools, she feels Chicago鈥檚 families have been left out of discussions about the future of their district. She also discussed her work as head of Hope Chicago, an initiative that offers free college to low-income students and parents, and elaborated on her vision for expanding high-quality tutoring.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

蜜桃影视: High-dosage tutoring has become the most-recommended strategy for helping students recover from learning loss. Can you talk about your experience with tutoring in Chicago? 

Janice Jackson: The study that everyone cites was the [a nonprofit that provides high-dosage tutoring in math]. Right away, I saw excitement from our principals. It was a phenomenal program, but it cost us $2,600 per student at the time. The finances didn’t work. Today, a lot has transpired in this space, which is why I was attracted to Accelerate. I’m excited about being able to do this at scale and cheaper, because that’s what’s going to make it sustainable. That is what is going to help low-income districts that don’t have enough money. 

We have about 50 studies underway. To really see what’s working allows us to move a little bit faster than education typically moves.

At Accelerate鈥檚 recent conference in Washington, there was a lot of talk about how to continue providing students extra support when federal relief funds run out. If you were still running a district, how would you approach that?

I’d leverage online and tech tools a lot more than we did pre-pandemic. We did some things during the pandemic because we were forced to, but I’ve been out in the field and I’ve seen a lot of ways we can leverage technology that aren’t as dependent on humans. It frees up the teachers and frees up other staff members to do the real work, which is to get in front of kids and families and figure out what it’s going to take for them to come to school regularly.

I would pay a lot more attention to accelerated learning. We don’t talk enough about that. We keep talking about recovery, and that is a huge deal, but we can use technology to accelerate learning. In traditional neighborhood schools, there are always a handful of kids who could take advantage of an incredibly rigorous curriculum. Maybe they can’t offer that in the school because of the budget, or maybe they don’t have enough students, but you can access that through technology, through districtwide courses. 

Is Accelerate supporting research on the tech side of tutoring as well? 

Yes. The thing that really excited me about Accelerate was the idea that we were going to actually research some of these virtual options. Like so many educators, I saw the proliferation of all these tools, and there’s a lot of crap out there. Don’t make that the headline, but that’s the truth. There are some good tools, too. We need to be able to assess that with rigorous evaluation models. I care a lot about education, but I care even more about quality education.

You also care a lot about college access. What are you learning from your work with Hope Chicago?

Our goal is to narrow the economic and wealth gap for Black and Latino families, and we do that by offering them debt-free college. It sounds simple, but why don’t we do that in this country? We made a lot of progress in Chicago with and . One of the biggest things we learned is that our students and families are more discerning around the financial risk of college than we give them credit for. I remember one student said to me, 鈥淚f I go to college and I don’t graduate, I’m going to be worse off financially than the person who just sat at home.鈥� That’s a very true 鈥攁nd smart 鈥攊nsight.

With Hope Chicago, we’ve seen students select more competitive schools, and then we also allow one parent or guardian to go to college with them. Last fall, we had 93 parents enrolled in college. 

Are other cities looking at what you鈥檙e doing?

We haven’t had anybody else say, 鈥淗ey, we want to totally adopt this and take it to another place.鈥� But I want to be clear, I signed up for this for the opportunity to really disrupt higher education. I think we’ll get free community college, but I would love to see, in my lifetime, free college. The United States is behind in education. What if every state in America had a free four-year option, if you make below a certain amount? That is doable, and I would argue is actually necessary for this country. 

At the turn of the 20th century, only about 9% of Americans had a high school diploma. We created a higher education system because America was emerging as a superpower. You needed an educated populace. America is reaching that same inflection point. We’re not going to maintain our same global positioning if we continue on the path we’re going. The demographics of this country are changing. We know in 2045, the majority of the people in America are going to be Latino. But they鈥檙e not being educated at the same rate as white Americans.

People would actually go to college in much higher numbers if it wasn’t so expensive. This country can afford to do more.

As you take on these broader challenges, you鈥檙e still very connected to the Chicago schools and you鈥檝e had a lot to say about how the school board鈥檚 recent resolution affects Chicago families. Why did you write that op-ed?

This is the thing that really angers me. People think it’s OK to tell poor Black and Latino people where their kids need to go. Nobody would ever question a person of means about where they send their children. Nobody questions white people about where they send their children. But we continue to do this.

If we pushed the button today, and everybody had to attend their neighborhood school in Chicago, Black kids would benefit the least from a system like that, and they actually exercise choice at a higher level than any other group. I don’t speak on behalf of the entire community, but I am a leader in the Black community, and I feel like it’s my responsibility to lift my voice up around this issue. 

You think the timing is wrong?

We’re getting ready to make a decision that literally impacts everybody. If you really believe in participatory democracy and an elected school board, why is an appointed school board making this decision? If people vote for board members and they support this and that’s the way it goes, I believe in that.

Let’s not pretend like a resolution is not important. I don’t know where people can rightfully lift up their voices to say, 鈥淭his isn’t right for my community or let’s have a discussion.鈥� 

Will this resolution hurt enrollment even more?

Black people are 鈥� largely working class and middle class Black people, so that has changed communities in a lot of different ways. We think people aren’t paying attention. They may not find time to sit on Twitter all day and argue about it, or come to the city council meeting, or come to the board meeting, but what they do is vote with their feet. They just leave.

There鈥檚 a moratorium on school closures until 2025, but it鈥檚 likely closures will take place in the future. How did you approach that process when you were in leadership?

Let me talk about Englewood, because that鈥檚 indicative of how I think Chicago should deal with enrollment. We had four comprehensive high schools in Englewood that in their heyday, probably had 4,000 students across all four high schools. When we took action, they had maybe [a total of] 400 students. We put out a plan to close those four high schools and consolidate them into one big comprehensive high school and build a brand new building. 

A school is the most well-resourced institution in these communities. When you take that away, you need to put something back. Slapping a name change on an existing building is not going to do it. You have to create a new investment and opportunity. Don’t get me wrong, they called me every name under the sun, but I worked with the community. I didn’t stop showing up. To me, we needed to do that in about seven neighborhoods in Chicago. Ultimately, we didn’t start that plan, because COVID happened. 

I am against a large-scale closing. It should be planned. It shows respect when you lay out a five- or 10-year plan and people know what’s going on. 

This resolution, concerns about enrollment loss 鈥� it鈥檚 all happening as the city is about to elect school board members for the first time in almost 30 years. How is the community preparing? 

If a mom from Englewood ends up on the board, I’m all for that. But I just haven’t seen that happen. It’s usually special interests versus the union, or the reform community versus the union, and neither group represents the parents. There should be a media campaign. If you walk down the street in Chicago and ask 10 parents, they probably could not tell you anything about what’s coming, and that is a problem.

This is a big change. Parents should be informed, they should be engaged and that’s on the city to do that. 

Disclosure: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Walton Family Foundation and Overdeck Family Foundation provide financial support to and 蜜桃影视.

It was 2004. A Honduran immigrant who鈥檇 arrived with her family in the late 1990s, she secured a slot at a local community college, but reality hit when a counselor revealed her first semester鈥檚 tuition: $700, up front.

鈥淚 didn’t have that kind of money,鈥� Alvarado said. And her high school offered scant advice on how to pay for it. 鈥淪o I started working,” first as a daycare assistant, then in a series of manufacturing jobs, all while raising two kids on her own.

Now 37, Alvarado works for , the manufacturer of those ubiquitous plastic Hefty cups.

But this fall, 19 years after she graduated from high school, she鈥檚 about to get a second chance at college, compliments of an unusual benefactor: her oldest daughter.

Alvarado鈥檚 first-born, Yolany Baltazar, is among the first beneficiaries of , an unusual experiment in college access. Like many 鈥渃ollege promise鈥� programs, it essentially offers a free ride to a bachelor鈥檚 degree, covering tuition and fees for students who graduate from high school and persist through college.

But in Baltazar鈥檚 case, there鈥檚 a difference: Once she made it through her first semester, Hope Chicago made the same life-changing offer to her mother.

It鈥檚 part of a 鈥渢wo-generation鈥� approach to attacking poverty, said Janice Jackson, Hope Chicago鈥檚 CEO. She noted that many college access organizations that support low-income families often 鈥渢inker around the edges, instead of going to where we know we need to go: making sure that there is much more of a pathway to the middle class.鈥�

Advocates say research shows that greater access for both groups increases parents鈥� earnings and encourages kids to stay enrolled long enough to graduate.

鈥楢 different conversation鈥�

If Jackson鈥檚 name sounds familiar, it鈥檚 because she spent four years, from 2017 to 2021, as CEO of Chicago Public Schools, the fourth-largest district in the U.S.

鈥淭he thing about Hope Chicago is [that] when you first hear about it, it almost seems too good to be true,鈥� Jackson said. 鈥淎nd I think that’s the response that a lot of people have.鈥�

Once they sit with the idea a while, she said, many begin to ask why it isn鈥檛 true everywhere. 鈥淲hy don’t we have a system in place so that kids across this country, quite frankly, can continue their education, and that finances are not the biggest barrier to them?鈥�

At the moment, Hope Chicago has agreements with just five city high schools, offering graduates and their parents free access to 28 colleges, most of them Illinois public four-year and community colleges, along with a handful of private institutions.

Students must gain admission based on their own academic achievements 鈥� Hope Chicago doesn鈥檛 ask colleges to change their admissions criteria. And the program has no GPA cutoff, so students remain eligible to continue as long as they鈥檙e enrolled in classes.

But those who drop out also make their parents ineligible 鈥� a bit of subtle, intra-family peer pressure to stay in the game.

鈥淪tudents obviously can go if their parents don’t go, but parents cannot take advantage of this unless their child is enrolled in school full-time,鈥� Jackson said. 鈥淪o they have an incentive, right? If I’m a parent and I’m in school and things are working out, but my child wants to drop out, that’s a different conversation.鈥�

She said Hope Chicago deliberately chose its five high schools for the greatest possible impact, working in buildings that had seen 鈥渄ecades of chronic disinvestment,鈥� lower achievement levels and graduation rates.

The focus, she said, is on helping the entire school. 鈥淚t’s really about making a big difference.鈥�

Baltazar, 20, still remembers the day she learned about the program in February 2022, at an assembly at Benito Juarez Community Academy on Chicago鈥檚 west side.

She texted her mother to warn her to stay off social media until she could deliver the news herself, Baltazar said. 鈥淲hen she picked me up from school, she was like, 鈥榃hat have you got to tell me?鈥� I’m like, 鈥楳om, we get to go to college debt-free!鈥欌��

Alvarado was dumbstruck. 鈥淚 was really happy if she got the opportunity to go [to college], just herself or my kids,鈥� she said. 鈥淏ut for me, it was a little bit hard to process.鈥�

In a few years, Alvarado鈥檚 younger son, 16-year-old Adrian, also a Hope Chicago scholar, will be able to attend college for free when he graduates from Benito Juarez.

鈥業n the center of a tornado鈥�

The program launched in early 2022, with a from two philanthropists, Pete Kadens and Ted Koenig. Jackson wants to raise another $1 billion over the next decade to expand it and make more families eligible.

Recent research shows that these more educated parents will almost certainly earn more money 鈥� about $4,000 annually, according to , even though many are already years into their careers. 

But multi-generational college enrollment not only benefits parents. It also has a significant 鈥渟pill-over effect鈥� on their children. One reason is obvious: Parental education is a strong predictor of whether a student will attend college. 

A recent study by City University of New York economist noted that children whose parents are college graduates are three times as likely to attend college themselves. Investing in multigenerational college-goers, he said, is 鈥渆conomically efficient.鈥� 

When Hope Chicago came to Ajani Cunningham鈥檚 school, Johnson College Prep, in spring 2022, it was co-founder Kadens who told an assembly of students they鈥檇 be going to college for free. Cunningham鈥檚 mother, Yolanda White, was filming the moment with her mobile phone and began crying. But then Jackson, Hope Chicago鈥檚 CEO, joined Kadens onstage and told the parents they were also eligible for free college. 鈥淎nd then the uproar was, like, magnified a thousand times,鈥� Cunningham recalled.

鈥淚t was almost like 鈥� what people describe as being in the center of a tornado,鈥� White said. 鈥淚 think [Kadens] broke my brain because I could not react. I just .鈥�

But stunned as she was, she knew immediately what she would do with her good fortune: finish her culinary education.

The 50-year-old mother of five had earned an associate鈥檚 degree at the for-profit Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Chicago in 2014, which closed in 2017, part of a of for-profit closures. 

She studied to be a pastry chef and nutritionist and has spent the past few years running an online bakery called . She also created and teaches a handful of home economics and mentoring courses for Chicago Public Schools. 

White dreams of earning a bachelor鈥檚 degree and teaching people how to source and eat higher-quality, locally grown food, especially in so-called urban 鈥渇ood deserts.鈥� She knows these issues firsthand: In the eight-year period when she and her five kids were homeless, White recalled, 鈥淚 had to make $20 work鈥� for a week’s worth of meals. 鈥淎nd they were never hungry.鈥�

White plans to study at Kendall College鈥檚 Culinary Arts School in Chicago, but she鈥檚 holding off on enrolling for a year while she figures out how to cut back her hours at the district. She also needs to put the online bakery on hiatus.

鈥淲hen someone presents the physical manifestation of a lifelong dream to you,鈥� she said, 鈥測ou kind of have to pay attention to that.鈥�

Meanwhile her son will matriculate this fall at Loyola University Chicago, thanks to Hope Chicago, studying psychology while planning for law school and a career in civil rights law.

鈥楢 different life鈥�

The organization鈥檚 efforts unfold as the district faces an odd mixture of crisis and confidence: While Chicago Public Schools in 2022 boasted a record-high graduation rate of 83%, just one-fifth of high school students were reading and doing math at grade level, according to the . And nearly half of students missed at least 18 days of school.

Hope Chicago says its work is already having an impact: An April report by Belfield, the City University scholar, found that college enrollment rates averaged 74% 鈥� a 17% increase 鈥� in the organization鈥檚 first year partnering with the five schools.

The program is looking to expand 鈥� at the moment it serves about 4,000 students, and is fund-raising both publicly and privately with hopes of announcing more high schools in the future.

While the two-generation approach is unique, the program operates in the tradition of 鈥渃ollege promise鈥� programs that for nearly 20 years have guaranteed tuition-free access to higher education. The movement began in 2005, in , and now counts more than 300 programs in at least 32 states, according to the .

The offers Kalamazoo Public Schools graduates up to 100% of tuition and fees at in-state public universities and community colleges. A found that six years after high school graduation, students in the program had higher rates of college credential attainment 鈥� 46%, up from about 36% before 2005. 

While the researchers said making college free won鈥檛 necessarily ensure that more students enroll, they found that offering a 鈥渟imple, universal, and generous scholarship program鈥� can significantly increase educational attainment, especially among low-income students.

Last spring, Baltazar finished her first year at in Normal, Ill., about a two-hour drive south of Chicago. Studying biology and pre-dentistry, she spent much of her freshman year adjusting to dorm life.

Baltazar had the advantage of bunking with a friend she鈥檇 known since middle school. She made new friends by simply leaving the dorm room door ajar and playing music.

Meanwhile, her mother is putting the finishing touches on an application to attend , an online program, in August. She plans to study finance while keeping her job at Pactiv Evergreen, and still can鈥檛 get over her good fortune 鈥� or her daughter鈥檚. 

鈥淚 think just the idea of her going to school without any debt, and including myself, is just like 鈥︹�� She paused for a second. 鈥淚n four or five years, this is just a different life.鈥�