This guide aims to present district instructional leaders and staff with a core set of criteria for what high-quality professional development entails. What makes this particular document different and useful is the focus on practical issues of district-level implementation in multiple teaching and learning environments. This is a guide designed…

This is UChicago Consortium's first comprehensive brief on student teachers and the student teaching experience in Chicago Public Schools (CPS). It synthesizes findings from research done in partnership with researchers from National Louis University, University of Michigan, and Stanford University, using CPS teacher data, along with surveys of…

This study looks at the experiences of pre-service teachers who began their student teaching assignments amidst the 2012 Chicago Teachers Union strike. Four yearlong student teachers reflected on their understandings of teaching, unionism, and activism before, during, and after the strike. Findings suggest pre-service teachers need greater…

Attracting and retaining high-quality teachers is especially challenging in urban districts. It is in these communities where teacher candidates must begin their preparation. This article provides a conceptual framework and programmatic examples used to develop a community-based urban teacher preparation model within a third hybrid space where…

Previous research has shown that professional communities have the potential to be a powerful lever for continuous improvement in school settings. This research seeks to extend previous research by investigating the indicators of professional community that influence science teaching practice. This study took place in a network of urban…

Despite alarming rates and negative consequences associated with urban teacher attrition, mentoring programs often fail to target the strongest predictors of attrition: "effectiveness" around classroom management and engaging learners; and "connectedness" to colleagues. Using a mixed-method iterative development framework, we…

A survey of 185 teachers and administrators in Chicago indicated some differences of opinion on a ruling that teachers must reside in the city. Minorities (blacks and Latinos) and those who lived in the city favored the residency ruling. These responses could be influenced by economic and social concerns. Teachers who lived in the suburbs…

Low reading achievement in the Chicago public schools spurred the development of a mastery approach reading package. This approach assumes that in time any student can achieve the level of the brightest student. Implementation of a mastery program in urban areas presents special problems, including diversity of student backgrounds, time and space…

Reports the results of a questionnaire distributed to randomly selected teachers within the Chicago metropolitan area. Teachers indicated their desire for the availability of various resources, were they to take their students on a field trip to a natural area. Implications for natural area managers, as well as proposed training strategies, are…

A decentralized system of Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) was established in clusters of six to nine ghetto elementary schools in Chicago to increase the relevance of televised instruction, allow each group to provide its own curriculum, and to involve classroom teachers in program development processes. An additional benefit, that the programs…