Case Study: Chicago Public Schools achieves scalable district-wide Career and Technical Education and real-time student tracking with Salesforce for Nonprofits

Preparing Students for College and Career with District-Wide CTE Model

Chicago Public Schools (CPS), the third-largest U.S. district serving over 360,000 students (77% economically disadvantaged), runs district-wide Career and Technical Education (CTE) across 16 schools and 40+ programs for more than 16,000 students. Managing thousands of students, hundreds of employer partners, teachers, and administrators with paper forms and spreadsheets became unsustainable, making it difficult to track placements, collect time sheets, and provide timely, coordinated support.

CPS implemented Salesforce (Sales Cloud, Skuid, Trailhead, Premier Success) as a flexible CRM and integration layer to automate partner and student registration, communications, time tracking, and reporting. The system delivered real-time dashboards and aggregated metrics, enabled district-wide rollout and staff upskilling via Trailhead, and gave administrators instant visibility into student engagement—allowing CPS to streamline processes, scale support, and expand CTE offerings while better tracking student outcomes.

Chicago Public Schools

Alexander George

Work-Based Learning Specialist