TCS Brings ABA-Centered education to East Garfield Park

The Chicago School has teamed up with the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) on an ambitious project to improve educational opportunities for children in one of the city’s most economically disadvantaged West Side neighborhoods while providing TCS students with unique practicum and internship experiences.

Dozens of families gather at The Chicago School for the lottery drawing of GPPA's first classes

Garfield Park Preparatory Academy (GPPA), a contract school scheduled to open in September, is the result of a two-year effort by the Applied Behavior Analysis Department and TCS administrators to develop a training site built explicitly on the use of ABA principles. It will serve East Garfield Park, a community of low-income households, below-average education attainment rates (only 50 percent of residents have high school diplomas), and a history of modest academic achievement, with standardized test scores averaging in the 50th percentile.

“The goal of opening a school like this in an area like this is what brought me to Chicago,” said Dr. Denise Ross, ABA professor who will assume the role of principal at the new school. “It’s a wonderful opportunity for our ABA students, as well as for students in our School Psychology and Forensic Psychology departments, but more importantly, it’s a means of bringing about powerful improvements in academic achievement.”

The curriculum Dr. Ross and her team are developing is built on principles that are fundamental to ABA—the systematic use of data to measure change and improve behavior. Known as the Accelerated Independent Learner (AIL) model of instruction, it has been proven to increase learning substantially in numerous studies and settings. In developing the program, Dr. Ross is drawing on experience she gained while on the faculty of Columbia University Teachers College, which created the AIL model to work with children in underperforming New York City schools. Columbia is collaborating with Chicago School faculty on program development.

GPPA is believed to be the only CPS school that will explicitly and consistently apply behavior analysis techniques across all areas of education. While some teachers incorporate such practices into their classrooms, most often in special education settings, only a fraction of schools in the country use ABA in a cohesive, integrated way that involves all teachers and is used to solve all instructional problems.

Dr. Chuck Merbitz, ABA Department chair, points to the school’s status as a new initiative as a key factor in its ability to ensure consistency.

“Because we are building the staff from the ground up, we can put together a team that shares the same philosophy of learning,” he says. “Kids do a lot better when everyone is pulling the oar in the same direction. ABA solutions lend themselves to all areas of instruction and behavior—problems that other schools might solve in other ways. Our teachers and students will be in a position to use behavior analysis to its full potential.” Dr. Ross is looking to skilled ABA practitioners—including Chicago School alumni—to round out her team.

The final contract with CPS was scheduled to be signed in April. GPPA plans to open its doors in fall 2009 with 160 students in grades K-3, and will expand by an additional grade level each year until it accommodates some 360 students through the 8th grade. The initiative is part of Chicago’s Renaissance 2010 project, conceived by former CPS Superintendent and current U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, and touted as a model for urban educational reform.

The ABA Department is also working with CPS on three additional school-based training sites. A high school operated in collaboration with the Center for Polytechnic Education will provide ABA students the opportunity to work with secondary students, while the Chicago Vocational High School, which contracts with the Springfield-based Hope Institute to provide special education services, will allow students to work with youth with a variety of disabilities. Through its affiliation with Hope Institute Learning Academy, a new Renaissance 2010 school will be run by the Hope Institute as well. Dr. Merbitz anticipates that the new training sites will provide field training opportunities for 70—or more than half—of the department’s students at any one time.

For more information, visit www.garfieldparkprep.org.