DePaul University has grown in size and stature in the last decade. Chicago's "little school under the El," as DePaul was once known, is now the nation's largest Catholic university and the largest private, nonprofit university in the Midwest. DePaul University restructured its board, enabling it to play an important role in the…

In 2010, Illinois policymakers sought to advance statewide school improvement by strengthening school leadership. Illinois became one of the first states to legislatively require a complete redesign of all its principal preparation programs with the goal of ensuring future principals would be "highly effective in leadership roles" and…

"While community college enrollment has generally declined by about 2 or 3 percent annually in recent years--due to some extent to the improving economy--some colleges have bucked the trend" (Ashford 2015). What made the difference? Like many community colleges, College of DuPage has been concerned with access and affordability. The…

The Every Students Succeeds Act (ESSA) provided states with newfound flexibility on accountability measures and school improvement strategies. Many policy experts have analyzed states' ESSA plans, which explain how states use their federal funds under various provisions of the new law, as well as the approaches states take to identify and rate…

Improving teacher preparation is critical to long-term improvement in teacher quality. More than 200,000 new teachers enter classrooms each year. Increasing student enrollment, the retirement of baby boom generation teachers, and high attrition in their first five years (between 40 and 50 percent of new teachers leave the profession) have…

Teacher evaluation and dismissal reforms have been in the education policy spotlight in recent years. From The New Teacher Project's "The Widget Effect" to states' Race to the Top applications, educational leaders and advocates have been thinking about how to make evaluation and dismissal more performance-based. These downstream…

Guest editors Gail Boldt and William Ayers have asked 14 leading educators to address the politics of the teacher accountability movement in America. Who benefits and who is hurt? What is gained and what is lost? How can we move forward with a more hopeful and inclusive vision of our educational future? All of the contributors are motivated by an…

The author reports the results of a study on the effectiveness of the Teacher Advancement Program in Chicago that contains performance-pay model pushed by the U.S. secretary of education Arne Duncan. The study by Mathematica Policy Research finds that student test scores were no better for schools following the national Teacher Advancement Program…

This report provides a summary of major results of the Illinois Bridge Status Survey, administered online between April and June 2010. The purpose of the survey was to understand the extent to which bridge programs are being implemented in Illinois, as well as to build an online directory of bridge programs. Bridge programs are an emerging…

This study responds to a request from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards to analyze National Board certification among high school teachers in understudied subject areas and locales to help fill gaps in the research literature. The authors also were asked to use multiple indicators of performance. The research team selected two…

This policy analysis explains the need for a system approach to educator talent management. The report analyzes how state policies in the Midwest support the development of effective teachers and leaders throughout their career. The report focuses on state policies in teacher preparation including certification and licensure, recruitment and…

Urban Teacher Residencies (UTRs) are an emerging innovation designed to embody best practices in recruitment, screening, preparation, placement, induction, and teacher leadership for urban school districts. UTRs can be a key element of urban districts' portfolio of pathways into teaching and a lynchpin of a larger strategy to strengthen the…

The process of teacher identification, selection, initial training, and on-going professional development that has developed at the Illinois Virtual High School (IVHS) over the past seven years is described and discussed in this article. Validation was based upon existing practices and research. To provide background the creation and initial…

Meeting the requirement for highly qualified teachers as outlined in the No Child Left Behind Act has left school districts in a quandary, especially those that serve a population of students deemed "at-risk" and where attracting and retaining highly qualified teachers is difficult. One professional development program based on…

The following are among the 47 papers included: "Academic Performance and Retention of College of Agriculture Students" (Garton, Dyer, King); "Perceptions of Recent Graduates and Employers about Undergraduate Programs in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources at Michigan State University" (Heyboer, Suvedi);…