With whole neighborhoods mired in violence, inequality, and poverty, Chicago can sometimes seem to be at war with itself. Yet amid these battles—and perhaps precisely because of them—the city has become a font of scholarship and hands-on innovation that is transforming social policy worldwide.

Consider the work of Northwestern University economist Jonathan Guryan, who, with researchers at the University of Chicago, has shown that daily one-on-two math tutoring (one tutor mentoring two students) can lift academic performance across multiple subjects. It not only reduced the gap in math test scores between white and black students in Chicago’s public schools by a third but also improved black students’ performance in other subjects and increased their overall academic engagement. It was a novel notion: Nail math and you’ve got a leg up across the board.

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