Opportunity Index FAQ

The Opportunity Index is a tool created by CPS in 2021 to assess each school’s proximity to opportunity and level of resources needed. It uses data from the school’s student population and students’ surrounding community to provide a holistic understanding of current and historical school context. The Opportunity Index is just one of the tools CPS uses to achieve the goal of distributing resources equitably and supporting schools that have less opportunity than others.

The Opportunity Index is rooted in CPS’ 5-Year Strategic Plan, called “Success 2029: Together We Rise,” and the CPS Equity Framework. It was created to help make sure resources like staff, time, and money are given to schools based on what they need to create equitable learning experiences for all students, also known as Resource Equity. To learn more about Resource Equity, view the Equity Framework. The Opportunity Index works using the principle of Targeted Universalism, which means that different groups might need specific kinds of support to reach the same goal. To learn more about Targeted Universalism, please click here.

CPS defines Equity as “Championing the individual cultures, identities, talents, abilities, languages, and interests of each student by ensuring they receive the opportunities and resources that meet their unique needs and aspirations. In an equitable school district, every student has access to the resources, opportunities, and educational rigor they need, irrespective of their race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, language, learning path, accessibility needs, family background, family income, citizenship, or tribal status.”

Opportunity Index scores help CPS figure out which schools might need more focused support with resources (staff, time, and money) based on environmental factors that the school cannot control. A higher Opportunity Index score means that the school needs more support and resources compared to other schools in CPS to have the same level of opportunity. A lower score does not mean a school has everything it needs. It just means that schools with higher scores need more help right now to operate as well as schools with lower scores because of their school and community contexts and past lack of funding due to inequity. School Opportunity Index scores are not good or bad, and they do not show how well the school or teachers are doing. It is not a ranking and should not be used for schools to compare themselves to one another.

The Opportunity Index serves as a strategic tool designed to measure and compare levels of need across Chicago Public Schools’ various school types, governances, and Networks. By categorizing demographic characteristics, community factors, and historical school funding indicators for each school into quintiles (i.e., five distinct groupings, where 1 = lowest need and 5 = highest need), we can systematically identify where resources are most needed to ensure equitable support across the district. However, certain schools, specifically Options, Safe, Early Learning Centers, and Specialty schools, are not assigned Opportunity Index scores.

Because Options, Safe, Early Learning Centers, and Specialty schools have unique operational structures, specialized funding models, and distinct educational guidelines, they cannot be accurately measured mathematically, conceptually, or ethically alongside traditional schools within the standard quintile framework. Still, these schools should remain a priority when allocating resources. They should be evaluated independently to acknowledge the specific needs of their students and learning environments, while also maintaining the integrity of the CPS Opportunity Index as a district-wide tool. For a full list of schools that were not assigned a CPS Opportunity Index score, please see the “Excluded Schools” Tab in the SY26 CPS Opportunity Index Scores file.

School Demographics

• Percentage of Students with Disabilities
• Percentage of English Learner Students
• Percentage of Students in Temporary Living Situations
• Percentage of Teachers Retained (i.e., stayed at the school)
• Simpson Diversity Index (i.e., racial concentration)

Community Factors

• Percentage of people living below 200% of the federal poverty line
• Percentage of people without health insurance
• Chicago Hardship Index (i.e., social and economic difficulty)
• Community Life Expectancy (i.e., how long people in the community are expected to live)

Historical School Funding

• School Budget and Changes in School Budgets from school years 2014 - 2024 (i.e., years that CPS used student-based budgeting)
• Capital and Outside Funding from school years 2008-2013 (i.e., money spent on acquiring, constructing, or renovating school buildings, facilities, and equipment)

You can find more details about what each indicator is in the “Metric Descriptions” Tab in the SY26 CPS Opportunity Index Scores file.

For all community factor indicators, all students enrolled in CPS as of the 20th day of the school year are connected to specific census areas and community areas based on their home address. This is called geocoding. Geocoding helps us accurately link student information with community data based on where students live, not just where their school is. You can learn more about the differences between Chicago community areas and census tracts on the  website for the University of Chicago's Library.

The 200% Poverty Rate and the % Uninsured Rate indicators use information from census tracts, while the Community Hardship Index and Community Life Expectancy indicators use community area data. These community factor indicator scores are calculated by taking an average that considers how many students at each school live in each census tract or community area. For example, if 25% of a school’s students live in a neighborhood with a Community Hardship Index score of 23 and 75% live in a community area with a score of 85, the school’s average Community Hardship Index score would be 69.5. To learn more about how Opportunity Index data is put together based on students’ home addresses, check the “Metric Descriptions” tab in the SY26 CPS Opportunity Index Scores file.

School Demographics tell us about the students and teachers at each school, Community Factors show the economic and social context of the areas where students of each school live, and Historical School Funding considers the resources the school has had in the past. You can find more details about why each item is included in the “Metric Descriptions” tab in the SY26 CPS Opportunity Index Scores file.

When used in the Opportunity Index, the Simpson Diversity Index helps us measure how concentrated a school’s population is in one or two racial groups (i.e., how not racially diverse a school is). This specific indicator helps us mathematically quantify the lasting and deeply rooted effects of racial segregation across the City of Chicago. While a diverse school does come with its own set of needs, this indicator in particular helps us measure the needs of schools where students do not get the opportunity to experience peers with different backgrounds, circumstances, and cultures due to the lasting effects of systemic racial inequities related to education, affordable housing, career opportunities, and community safety, that can still be seen on our city’s maps to this day. Therefore, a school with low racial diversity (i.e., high concentration of students of single racial background) contributes to a higher overall Opportunity Index score (i.e., higher need).

The Simpson Diversity Index was first introduced as an indicator in the Opportunity Index in the SY25 version. Based on school leader and stakeholder feedback, we replaced the previous indicator, which told us whether a school had 90% or more of its students from a single racial/ethnic group, or it did not, which created a rigid cutoff. The Simpson Diversity Index, however, is a continuous measure that puts all schools on a smooth scale. Instead of relying on an arbitrary threshold like 90%, it allows us to look at the differences between all schools’ racial makeup to more accurately reflect the long-term effects of segregation in our unique school district.

Teacher turnover is a major, systemic problem that disproportionately harms our highest-need schools. When educators leave, it strains the already limited administrative support, competitive pay, and essential resources required to address the unique challenges of their students and communities. This lack of necessary support creates a self-perpetuating cycle, driving more teachers away. High educator turnover (i.e., low teacher retention) leaves schools with many open positions, which are often filled by new, less experienced teachers, or long-term substitutes. As a result, these schools then require even more support and specialized resources (like training, funding, and administrative assistance) to help their new educators thrive. Most importantly, low teacher retention harms student success by creating an unstable and unpredictable learning environment. This instability disrupts school operations and causes students to lose the important relationships they have built with their teachers.

To better understand this systemic cycle at CPS, we examined if teacher retention was affected by schools’ Opportunity Index scores and their changes in student enrollment. While there were no links from changes in student enrollment to schools’ teacher retention rates, we found that schools with a higher Opportunity Index score (i.e., have greater needs) statistically had lower teacher retention rates (i.e., the percentage of teachers who remain at a school). This means that teachers are more likely to leave schools that have higher needs, reflecting the existing challenge of keeping staff in high-needs schools. This tells us that the Opportunity Index is accurately reflecting, not causing, teacher retention rates at schools. If the use of the Opportunity Index when allocating staff positions caused teachers to stay or leave due to its impact on the number of available positions, we would expect schools with lower needs to have lower teacher retention rates, but that is not the case.

The Opportunity Index was initially created with help from CPS community members and the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) Great Cities Institute. It was first used within CPS offices in the 2020-2021 school year. You can read more about how it was first created in the CPS Opportunity Index Prototype: Executive Summary. The Opportunity Index was made public in the 2023-2024 school year when it was used by CPS in school budget planning for the first time for the 2024-2025 school year (see SY24 Opportunity Index).

In SY25, the Office of Equity used the Spectrum of Inclusive Partnerships from the CPS Equity Framework to update the Opportunity Index indicators from the SY24 version to the SY25 version (see SY25 Opportunity Index). This involved getting input from stakeholders who are affected by the Opportunity Index, those who use it, and those who have institutional knowledge on it. The goals of the SY25 Opportunity Index Working Group (OIWG) were to (1) Decide which 3-4 indicators of the Opportunity Index needed to be changed most, and (2) Give feedback on how to change those indicators. You can learn more about the updates and changes in the SY25 OIWG Phase 1 Summary.

The Opportunity Index for this school year (SY26) uses the same approach and measurements as last year (SY25), with two small improvements based on feedback from school leaders and other stakeholders:

1. Students in Temporary Living Situations (STLS): We now collect this data on November 21, 2025, instead of the 20th day of the school year. This change ensures schools have more time to enter all the required Family Income Information Form (FIIF) data, which was due on November 20, 2025.
2. 2014 - 2024 School Budget and Changes in School Budget: We improved the calculation for this historical funding indicator to better handle extreme outliers where a school’s budget increased by 200% or more from one year to the next due to significant school actions. This prevents those rare cases from skewing schools’ Opportunity Index scores. Only schools with an extreme outlier saw changes in this indicator score.

A school’s Opportunity Index score or its individual indicator scores can change or not change from year to year for a couple of main reasons, even if the indicators themselves have not been altered:

1. Shifts in Student Population: The most direct reason for a score change is a shift in the school’s student population. Changes in the students’ demographic characteristics or the community factors they face can directly alter the school’s data points that feed into the Opportunity Index. These changes might be temporary for a single year or reflect a longer-term trend in the school community.
2. Scores are Relative: Scores are subject to change because they are relative to other schools in the district, not based on a fixed standard or threshold. Even if your school’s demographics and community factors have not changed, its score may shift because other schools have changed. Conversely, if your school sees an increase in an indicator, you might expect that indicator score to increase. However, if other schools saw an even larger increase in that indicator, your score might remain the same or even decrease because your school’s relative score has dropped.

The Opportunity Index is updated once a year, usually in December, to make sure all the information is as current as possible and ready to use.

1. Information about students and teachers is updated every year based on enrollment and staff data.
2. Community information is updated as new data becomes available. For example, the 2019-2023 Community Hardship Index data was released after the SY25 Opportunity Index was calculated, so the SY25 Opportunity Index uses 2018-2022 data and now the SY26 Opportunity Index uses 2019-2023 data.
3. Data about historical school funding is not updated because it looks at a specific time period. For example, the School Budget and Changes in School Budget indicator covers the years when student-based budgeting was used at CPS (2014-2024).

To learn more about how data for each Opportunity Index indicator is updated, please refer to the Metric Descriptions tab in the SY26 | CPS Opportunity Index Scores file.

The CPS Opportunity Index scores are either the average or the sum of the scores of the 11 indicators (see Question 4 for a list of the indicators). Scores are calculated for traditional elementary and high schools, both district-managed and charter. Some types of schools (i.e., Options, Safe, Early Learning Centers, and Specialty) are not assigned Opportunity Index scores given that these types of schools do not fit into the traditional educational paradigm, and could affect index ratings of other schools.

For each of the 11 indicators, the values are distributed into five equal groups called quintiles, and each group gets a score between 1 and 5 where 1 = closest to equitable opportunity or lowest need and 5 = furthest from equitable opportunity or highest need. These quintiles are calculated separately for elementary and high schools because they are structured differently. Since charter schools might be missing information (such as teacher retention and budget information), their quintiles were assigned based on parameters (the five equal groups) determined by district-managed schools.

There are two ways to calculate an Opportunity Index score for schools: (1) Average of the quintile scores for all 11 indicators, or (2) Sum of the quintile scores for all 11 indicators. Both the average and the sum score work for the same purpose as long as you do not compare average scores to sum scores. The Office of Equity suggests that most CPS Offices, Departments, Networks, and External Partners use the average score. With this method, schools can have a score from 1 (lowest need) to 5 (highest need). In some unique cases, using the sum score of all quintiles might be more useful. For example, the CPS School Budget formula uses the sum score, where schools can range from 11 (lowest need) to 55 (highest need).

The CPS Opportunity Index does not give different weights to different indicators when calculating the average or sum score. The different factors, including School Demographics, Community Factors, and Historic School Funding, all work together to identify and help schools that need extra support to achieve a more equitable future at CPS.

The data used in the Opportunity Index comes from both CPS’ own records and from public data sources. To find out exactly where the data for each item comes from, check the “Metric Descriptions” tab in the SY26 | CPS Opportunity Index Scores file.

The Opportunity Index is meant to be used by CPS Offices, Departments, Networks, and approved external partners to share resources equitably among schools in the district.

There are many ways to use the Opportunity Index. Generally, it can help identify schools that should be first in line to receive resources (staff, time, and money). Offices, Departments, and external partners may consider using the Opportunity Index when making district-wide decisions. Networks may consider using the Opportunity Index when making decisions with a Network. The specific ways to use it depend on the situation. If you have questions about how your team can use it, please contact equity@cps.edu.

The Opportunity Index is one tool CPS uses to help decide how to share resources fairly, but it should not be the only one. Offices, Departments, Networks, and external partners using it should also consider other important information specific to their area and the resource they are trying to share equitably. The Opportunity Index is not meant to measure how much individual students or groups in one school need help.

In Fiscal Year 2026, every school received a guaranteed set of positions and resources that are centrally funded by the District. These include a slate of core administrative and instructional staff. Additional funding and supplemental positions are then provided to schools based on the CPS Opportunity Index, as well as other unique school factors. To learn more, please visit the Budget web page.

• The Office of Early Childhood Education used the Opportunity Index to help decide where to put 25 Curiosity Classrooms in schools with Pre-K programs.
• The Office of Transportation used the Opportunity Index to improve 35 bus routes through the Transportation Hub Project.
• The Department of Arts Education used the Opportunity Index to decide which schools should get priority for grant money to improve arts education across the district.

External groups can use the Opportunity Index in similar ways that CPS Offices and Departments do. If they have resources to share, they can use the Opportunity Index to identify schools that should be prioritized across the district. They should also consider other important factors specific to the resource and their organization when sharing resources equitably.

The Opportunity Index should not be used for research, publishing, or commercial purposes without getting permission from Chicago Public Schools first. Researchers interested in using the Opportunity Index or related CPS data should contact the CPS Research Review Board at cps.edu/about/district-data/conduct-primary-research/.