News & Articles

Dear Academic Approach Families & Colleagues: At Academic Approach, we are committed to serving as a reliable resource for parents in our community, especially as they navigate an often-changing landscape of assessment, curriculum, and instruction. One of the more complicated landscapes to navigate is high school admissions in Chicago Public Schools (CPS). Two weeks ago, [...]

Dear Academic Approach Families & Colleagues: Gaining admission to a Selective Enrollment High School is very competitive, and test scores are a significant factor in determining acceptance into the top schools, with 7th grade MAP scores comprising a third of a student’s point total and the 8th grade Selective Enrollment Exam accounting for an additional [...]

Dear Academic Approach Families & Colleagues: Academic growth is scaffolded: mastery of prior skills is necessary to succeed in more advanced skills. This becomes especially clear when teaching math to high school students. We show our students how the Pythagorean Theorem (content they likely first encountered in middle school) is related to more advanced math [...]

Dear Academic Approach Families & Colleagues: Over the years, we’ve been impressed by the achievements of so many of our students, and we’ve reflected on what key habits are correlated with their success. As we approach spring exams and summer schedules, we want to identify three habits of successful students that are especially relevant this [...]

Dear Academic Approach Families & Colleagues: As families and schools are planning summer schedules, we are hearing many questions about using this summer—in particular—productively for both test preparation and academic tutoring. 3 Reasons Why Summer Instruction is Valuable Combating summer learning loss It’s been well known and well researched that students on average lose 25-30% [...]