Unleashing Creative Potential: A Deep Dive into Creative Problem Solving (CPS)

In today's rapidly evolving world, equipping students with the skills to navigate complexity and innovate is more critical than ever. The World Economic Forum identifies creativity as a key competency for success in the 21st-century workforce. Creative Problem Solving (CPS) offers a structured approach to cultivate these essential abilities, transforming students into creative leaders ready to tackle future challenges. CPS unlocks creative thinking and teaches critical thinking processes that transform creativity into action.

The Essence of Creative Problem Solving (CPS)

Creative Problem Solving (CPS) is more than just brainstorming; it's a comprehensive framework that empowers individuals to approach challenges with a creative mindset and a structured process. It's about fostering a way of thinking and processing that can be applied across disciplines and in various situations.

Why CPS Matters in Education

The modern educational landscape must prepare students for a future characterized by constant change and unforeseen opportunities. The US Department of Labor anticipates that a significant percentage of today's students will hold jobs that don't even exist yet. Schools that integrate deliberate creativity into their curriculum are proactively equipping students for this uncertain future.

Adaptability and Resilience: CPS builds confidence, resilience, and tolerance for ambiguity. By learning clear steps to navigate challenges, students develop the assurance that they can overcome any obstacle.
21st-Century Skills Development: CPS fosters skills and abilities that represent an array of 21st Century outcomes. Educators and students will learn to value inquiry and curiosity, and how to use the tools and techniques to develop these intuitive inclinations. Embrace creativity, risk-taking, and imagination - qualities essential to revealing new ideas and solutions. Couple creative thinking with critical analysis to both unlock possibility and to define actionable activities. Collaborate as part of a team and communicate complex ideas.
Improved School Culture and Community: CPS can help to develop integrated and dynamic systems that improve school culture and community, all while fostering breakthrough academic success.

The Creative Education Foundation (CEF) and CPS

The Creative Education Foundation (CEF) plays a pivotal role in promoting CPS through training and resources for educators. CEF trains educators from K through College in the mindset, tool set, and skill set of CPS. A creative mindset improves communication, fosters positive engagement, and is fun. The tools and skills of CPS easily overlay any other initiative or curriculum because they enact a way of thinking and processing. Further, CPS fosters effective collaboration and team-building - all skills students need to have as part of a 21st Century workforce.

CPS Professional Development for Educators

CEF offers customized professional development programs for educators, ranging from short workshops to multi-day training sessions. These programs can be delivered virtually, in-person, or through one-on-one coaching, accommodating the diverse needs and budgets of educational institutions.

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Custom CPS Educator PD Programs: CEF can design workshops for your teaching teams as short as 90 minutes or for multiple days. We can provide virtual workshops, live workshops, one-on-one teacher coaching, and we can work with hundreds of teachers at once. Let us customize a CPS Educator PD program for you that fits your needs and budget.

The Creative Problem Solving Institute (CPSI)

CPSI Conference (Creative Problem Solving Institute) is CEF's signature conference, a 4-Day creativity, innovation, and leadership conference held each June. CEF can also bring CPSI to schools, offering customized virtual or on-campus conferences for students, faculty, and administrators. These conferences incorporate CPS and other creativity and innovation workshops.

CPSI Conference: The Creative Problem Solving Institute (CPSI, “SIP-see”) is our signature, 4-Day creativity, innovation, and leadership conference held each June. We can also take our CPSI show on the road and bring it to your school for students, faculty, and administrators. We will design and run a virtual or on-campus CPSI conference for one day or multiple days and can include CPS and other creativity and innovation workshops.

Foundations in CPS: A Structured Approach

CEF outlines a structured approach to CPS, typically encompassing the following sessions:

Session 1: Setting the Stage: This session explores how we solve problems every day and how we might solve problems faster, developing the mindset for deliberate creativity.
- How we solve problems everyday
- How we might solve problems faster
- Developing the mindset for deliberate creativity
Session 2: Introducing Creative Process: This session introduces Foursight preferences and the Clarify stage of CPS.
- Foursight preferences
- Introduce Clarify stage of CPS
Session 3: Formulating Challenges: This session focuses on gathering data, formulating challenge statements, and identifying the problem owner.
- Gather data
- Formulate challenge statements
- Identify problem owner
Session 4: Exploring Ideas: This session introduces ideation tools and methods and encourages seeking outside perspectives.
- Ideation tools and methods
- Seeking outside perspectives
Session 5: Developing Solutions: This session focuses on convergence, finding, and formulating solutions.
- Convergence
- Find and formulate solutions
Session 6: Formulating a Plan: This session involves action planning, ownership of action steps, and debriefing experiences.
- Action planning
- Ownership of action steps
- Debriefing experiences
Session 7: Reviewing and Implementation: This session reviews the CPS process and includes teachbacks.
- Review of CPS process
- Teachbacks
Session 8: Coaching: This session provides unstructured time with course facilitators to review, practice, and personalize the learning.
- Unstructured time with course facilitators to review, practice, and personalize the learning

Benefits of CPS Professional Development

CPS professional development equips educators with the tools and knowledge to:

Recognize and overcome blocks to creativity.
Identify attitudes and behaviors conducive to creative thinking.
Apply core concepts of creative thinking.
Use a variety of divergent and convergent thinking tools.
Apply the CPS method to many simulated or real situations.
Consciously be creative when facing problems and opportunities.

Thinking Creatively Within Constraints

Creativity isn't about the absence of limitations; it's about thriving within them. CPS can cultivate creativity no matter what restrictions or barriers you may have. CPS can flourish even within restricted environments. Our professional development generates break-through ideas, improves teamwork, and energizes participants. Learn to:Recognize and overcome blocks to creativity.Identify attitudes and behaviors conducive to creative thinking.Apply core concepts of creative thinking.Use a variety of thinking tools.Apply the CPS process to simulated or real situations.Make deliberate creativity a regular way to engage the world.

Voices from the Field: Educators on CPS

Educators who have participated in CPS professional development highlight its transformative impact:

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Head of School, Inly School: "Creativity and problem solving are essential skills for students in this century. We use these skills in a variety of ways in our school. First, the CPS process is an excellent tool for students to understand, and implement, as they engage in and lead a more complex and demanding world. Second, at our school, we use the process to define and implement growth!"
Dr. Tamu Lucero, Superintendent, Stamford Public Schools: "Creative Education Foundation is providing teachers in Stamford Public Schools ways to think differently about instructional practice; to allow students to understand there are many ways to solve problems and different answers to the same questions. As we educate in the 21st century and beyond and prepare students for college and careers we need to continue to reflect on how we teach but also on how students learn."
Joette Field, Fourth Grade Teacher: "In education it is imperative that we consider not only the what (CPS) but the why and the how. Creative thinking and Creative Problem Solving foster and promote metacognition. Creative thinking enables a student to come to awareness."
Amy A. Whitney, Ed.D, MBA, Director, Center for Innovation, University of North Dakota: "As an academic, I have found that the CPS process provides a well- researched, grounded process to facilitate creativity and innovation. At our Center, we use the CPS process and tools to help students, faculty, and businesses identify new solutions to challenging problems in their communities and beyond. The CPS tools and techniques provide flexibility and structure for those we work with and help give them permission to bring their ideas forward, create new ones and approach their challenge from a different perspective."
Duane Wilson, COO Boys and Girls Clubs of St.: "The challenges within Higher Education demand that universities and colleges control costs, Increase completion rates, and address inequities within institutional resources. Creative Problems Solving (CPS) provides a framework for identifying opportunities and solving problems when conventional thinking has failed. The mindset of CPS encourages you to adopt creative thinking in order to find fresh perspectives and come up with innovative solutions. Whether deploying CPS within the academic or administrative divisions, CPS pulls on the strengths of teams by engaging the team in clarifying the challenge, generating potential Solutions and executing the action plan."

CPS and Broader Educational Metrics in Chicago Public Schools (CPS)

While the core focus of CPS is on fostering creativity and problem-solving skills, it's relevant to consider how broader educational metrics are tracked within systems like the Chicago Public Schools (CPS). These metrics, though not directly part of the CPS definition we've been discussing, provide context for student success and areas for improvement.

English Language Proficiency and ACCESS Testing

The ACCESS test assesses social and academic English proficiency and is administered to students as early as kindergarten. Students who are English Learners take the test once annually until they reach a score that meets the proficiency benchmark. The ACCESS test is different from the screener test used to determine if students are eligible for English Learner services.

ACCESS 2.0: In the 2015-16 school year, ACCESS 2.0 replaced the existing ACCESS test. This new test was more aligned to standards of college and career readiness and therefore more rigorous. Further, the cut score used to determine proficiency also changed over the years. This means that ACCESS test scores prior to the 2015-16 school year should not be compared to scores on the ACCESS 2.0 test.
English Learner (EL) Status: Students who took the ACCESS test of English proficiency during the school year, and/or whose prior-year ACCESS test score indicated they were eligible to receive English Learner services. Students who were classified as active English Learners at one point during their time at CPS based on their score on the ACCESS test or screener test, but are not currently classified as active English Learners. Students who were never eligible to receive EL services, either because their native language was English or because they scored high enough on the English proficiency screener test-which is different from the ACCESS test-when they entered CPS to be considered proficient in English.

Demographic and Socioeconomic Factors

Understanding the demographic and socioeconomic context of students is crucial for tailoring educational approaches.

Community Area Demographics: The total number of people living in the community area, of any age. Data are grouped into five race/ethnicity categories. The “Latino” category is composed of people who self-identified as Hispanic or Latino, regardless of which race they selected. All other race/ethnicity categories are composed of people who identified as not Hispanic or Latino, and the category is based on the race they selected.
Household Income: A household's annual income is the combined income of individuals sharing that housing unit (related or not), or the income of the individual inhabiting that house, if they live alone. Data is organized into four categories based on income level: (1) below $25,000, (2) $25,000 - $59,999, (3) $60,000 - $99,999, and (4) $100,000 or above.
Parental Education: Adults over the age of 25 in a given community area are grouped into four categories. The “high school or less” category describes anyone whose highest level of education was less than a high school diploma. The “high school diploma” category includes those whose highest level of education was completing a high school degree or equivalent (such as a GED). The “some college, no degree” category represents those who attended some college but did not complete any degree.

High School and College Readiness

Tracking high school performance and college enrollment/completion rates provides insights into long-term student outcomes.

High School Enrollment: Of students enrolled in grades 9-12, these students attend Chicago Public Schools (CPS), as opposed to a non-CPS option (e.g., private school, homeschool, religious school). First-time enrollment in a Chicago Public Schools high school, including charter schools. Students attending private school are not in this data tool.
Ninth-Grade On-Track (9OT): A student is on-track if they earn at least 6.5 total credits by the end of ninth grade, meaning they can fail no more than 1 semester course (including non-core subjects). Under the original definition of 9OT (phased out after the SY2023-24 school year), a student is on-track if they fail no more than one semester of a core course and earn at least 5 credits by the end of ninth-grade.
College Enrollment: The proportion of CPS graduates (including those who received their high school diplomas from Options schools) who enrolled directly in college in the fall following spring or summer high school graduation. Data on college enrollment come from the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC), which houses enrollment and graduation records for colleges throughout the United States. This does not include students who delayed college entry. Students who enroll in a two-year college the fall after graduating from high school. Students who enroll in a four-year college the fall after graduating from high school.
College Completion: A two-year or four-year college enrollee is considered to complete college if they completed a degree or certificate from an accredited higher education institution within six years of high school graduation. These data come from the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC). Students who enrolled in a college that does not provide graduation records to the NSC, or whose records are suppressed due to FERPA or other reasons, are not included in college completion rates.
College Persistence: Enrolled in both the fall semester directly after high school graduation and the subsequent fall semester. Data on college enrollment and completion comes from National Student Clearinghouse (NSC). A student is considered to fall into this category if they: (1) Enrolled in a four-year institution in the fall semester immediately following high school graduation and (2) were still enrolled in a four-year institution the subsequent fall (not necessarily the same four-year institution). A student is considered to fall into this category if they: (1) Enrolled in a four-year institution in the fall semester immediately following high school graduation but (2) were no longer enrolled in any institution in the subsequent fall. Enrolled in a two-year institution in the fall semester immediately following high school graduation, and was still enrolled in a two-year institution the subsequent fall. Enrolled in a two-year institution in the fall semester immediately following high school graduation, and was enrolled in a four-year institution the subsequent fall. Enrolled in a two-year institution in the fall semester immediately following high school graduation, but was no longer enrolled in any institution in the subsequent fall.
Institutional Graduation Rate: An institution's Institutional Graduation Rate by year is the proportion of full-time, first-time college freshmen at that institution and from that year who earned a bachelor’s degree within six years.
Post-secondary Attainment Index (PAI): The Post-secondary Attainment Index (PAI) provides an estimate of the proportion of ninth-graders who will earn any college degree or certificate within 10 years of starting high school based on current rates. The PAI uses current rates of high school graduation, college enrollment, and college completion.
College Access Groups: Students’ college access groups are based on 2022 data analysis from the To&Through Project about the academic qualifications (GPA and ACT/SAT scores) of students that make them likely to be accepted to colleges with different levels of selectivity. These groups enable students to understand how their grades and test scores may affect where they are likely to gain admission, and enable high schools to understand the enrollment patterns for students with different academic backgrounds. The To&Through Project is currently unable to predict admissibility for students who apply test optional. Students whose GPA and ACT scores (or converted SAT scores) suggest they have at least a 50 percent chance of being admitted to Highly Competitive or Competitive colleges. Students whose GPA and ACT scores (or converted SAT scores) suggest they have at least a 50 percent chance of being admitted to Moderately Competitive colleges. Seniors whose GPA and ACT scores (or converted SAT scores) suggest they have at least a 50 percent chance of being admitted to Slightly Competitive or Near Open Admissions colleges.

Other Relevant CPS Definitions

Community Areas: There are 77 officially defined community areas in Chicago. Community areas are distinct from Chicago’s more commonly recognized neighborhoods, however there is considerable overlap between the two. Where neighborhood boundaries are dynamic and may be recognized differently by different people, community areas have static boundaries which align with the United States census.
Similar Schools: Similar Schools are schools that enroll students with similar demographic backgrounds and similar needs, and that are located near each other.
Elementary On-Track: The Elementary On-Track metric groups students into four categories based on their GPA and attendance. The four categories are: (1) On-Track (above a 3.0 GPA and above 90 percent attendance), (2) Academic Support (below a 3.0 GPA but above 90 percent attendance), (3) Attendance Support (above a 3.0 GPA but below 90 percent attendance), and (4) Intensive Support (below a 3.0 GPA and below 90 percent attendance). Research using data from CPS students in 3rd-8th grade in school year 2018-19 showed a strong link between students' middle grades GPA and attendance and later outcomes. As one method of conveying this information, these groupings are intended to help educators strategize around school-wide trends, as well as identify students that may need targeted support in order to ensure they are prepared for success.
Gender: Historically, data has been collected in a way that groups students into one of two categories: male and female. Starting in the 2020-2021 school year, the categories in the CPS demographic questionnaire were: male, female, and non-binary; however, we are not currently reporting data on non-binary students due to small group sizes. We hope in the future to be able to report data that more fully and accurately describes the identities of CPS students.
Grade Point Average (GPA): Cumulative graduating grade point averages (GPAs) are calculated as the unweighted average of a student’s entire credit-bearing load. Ninth-grade core grade point averages (GPAs) are calculated as the unweighted average of a student’s grades in ninth-grade core courses.
High School Graduation Rate: The high school graduation rate for a 9th grade cohort is calculated as the proportion of first-time ninth-graders in that cohort's year who graduate high school in four years, including the summer after their fourth year. A student’s graduation is counted towards the graduation rate of the community area or high school where that student began their first year in the school district. Students who transfer into CPS high schools are included with their corresponding ninth-grade cohort. Students who transfer out of CPS are not included in the high school graduation rate. The To&Through Project uses a high school graduation rate that includes students who graduated through Options schools (i.e., alternative schools).
School Types: CPS schools that have a defined attendance boundary. All CPS students have an assigned high school based on their residential address. If a student lives within a schools’ attendance boundary, it is known as their “assigned neighborhood school”. Schools that are publicly funded but independently run - charter schools. CPS schools that admit students from across the city - magnet schools. Students must apply to gain admission; criteria for admission include students’ grades and scores on standardized tests and an entrance exam, and the majority of seats are allocated according to a tiered system based on socioeconomic status. CPS schools that do not have a defined attendance boundary - other CPS citywide schools. Some, such as magnet schools, may have a curriculum specialized in a particular area - for example, fine & performing arts, STEM, or language - while others do not have a particular curricular focus. An institution that doesn't have a clear type designation in the most recent IPEDS data.
Networks: Schools within CPS are organized into networks, which are led by a Chief and have a small staff which provides an additional layer of support to their schools.
Race/Ethnicity Categories: CPS administrative records group students into the following race/ethnicity categories: Asian (which includes students in the Asian and Pacific Islander/Hawaiian categories), Black, Latino, Multiracial, Native American/Alaskan Native, White, and Not Available. We acknowledge that the race/ethnicity categories available in our data do not accurately reflect the full spectrum of races and ethnicities embodied by CPS students and that they mask diversity within racial groups.
School Board Districts: These areas represent the 10 regions from which the 10 elected members of the new school board are be chosen. Each area elects one member to the new board. As of January 2025, the Chicago Board of Education is made up of 21 Board Members. According to CPS, 'the City of Chicago has been divided into 10 districts (each of which is divided into 2 subdistricts).
Students with Disabilities: Students with disabilities are often treated as a single group. vary widely in type and extent. Students can also have multiple disabilities. We group students based on whether they have an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) related to a learning disability, or another type of disability. After conversations with CPS’s Office of Diverse Learner Supports and Services, we decided to categorize the data in this way because students with learning disabilities represent a plurality of students with IEPs and because finer categorizations of IEPs have changed over time. student is eligible for services under Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)). This group includes students whose primary disability for which they have an IEP is a Specific Learning Disability (SLD), which is defined as a disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or in using language, spoken or written, that may manifest itself in the imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell, or to do mathematical calculations, including conditions such as perceptual disabilities, brain injury, minimal brain dysfunction, dyslexia and developmental aphasia. This group includes students with IEPs related to any disability other than Specific Learning Disability (SLD). These include: Autism, Deaf/Blindness, Deafness, Emotional D…

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