Children and Youth, Education and Literacy, Journalism and Media
- Do the skills, attitudes, and behaviors imparted in youth programs "stick" into adulthood?
- If they do, how do they manifest in career, education, and life decisions?
- How do the skills, attitudes, and behaviors that youth programs try to impart differ based on program intensity or levels of engagement?
- Do these elements look different for people who went through youth media programs versus people who went through other types of youth programs?
These are common questions that youth program providers, funders, public officials, and other leading thinkers regularly wrestle with. This report, funded by The Robert. R. McCormick Foundation, tells the story of a group in Chicago committed to providing quality youth media programming in the city and how, through a collective evaluation, they were able to begin to answer these critical questions.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America-United States (Midwestern)-Illinois-Chicago Metropolitan Area
Education and Literacy, Employment and Labor
Reform of educator evaluation, in Illinois and around the nation, is intended to more accurately identify effective and ineffective teachers and to inform teacher development. The reality is that more effort and attention has been focused on how to rate teachers within such systems than on how to design these systems to provide regular and useful feedback on teaching. If the 2010 Performance Evaluation Reform Act (PERA) is to achieve its aims in Illinois, it must help teachers to learn and improve on the job.
For beginning teachers, the challenge is more pronounced. On average, new teachers are less effective than their more experienced peers. Improvements in individual teaching practices tend to occur during these early years in the classroom, when teachers are applying lessons learned during preparation and developing their own pedagogical approach. While beginning teachers should not be held to a different performance standard, they do require more intensive support and more frequent feedback to grow into highly effective practitioners. This is one reason why highly structured, intensive new teacher support is prized by beginning teachers -- and strengthens their teaching.
If PERA is to accelerate new teacher effectiveness, beginning teachers in Illinois will require more feedback and support than what is provided by this law alone. An aligned system of high-quality induction -- featuring regular contact with a mentor, frequent classroom observation, on -- going opportunities to engage in reflection and self-assessment, and actionable, "real time" feedback to inform instructional improvement throughout the school year -- would provide the necessary intensity of instructional support. To accomplish this, Illinois should design and articulate a comprehensive talent development system with teacher learning at its center.
Illinois is well-positioned to succeed. Its deep commitment to successful PERA design coupled with a gradual approach to implementation has put the state on the right track. Its existing induction program standards and new induction rules lend important tools to the effort to address the unique learning curve of beginning teachers.
This Guide explores how the state can solidify PERA's role in informing and supporting new teacher development. In this effort, we have identified two main priorities for Illinois policymakers and PERA implementers.
- Design a comprehensive educator effectiveness system that encompasses both evaluation and robust instructional feedback and support. For new teachers, this system must include induction support aligned with PERA's evaluation requirements.
- Encourage and enable teacher leaders to serve as teacher mentors and as peer evaluators. Instructional improvement is a collective responsibility and is too critical and time-intensive an endeavor to leave solely to school administrators.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America-United States (Midwestern)-Illinois
Too many students in Chicago Public Schools are performing below -- often far below -- grade level. Ideally, all students should be increasing their subject matter knowledge and critical thinking skills over time. In September 2008 a three-year initiative, the Partnership for Instructional Leadership, was created to help a group of neighborhood elementary schools in Chicago Public Schools Area 4, on the city's Northwest Side, build the internal capacity to improve school achievement for all students at all grade levels, including Pre-K and English Language Learners.**Over the course of three years, the Partnership was implemented in 11 elementary schools�six for the full three years with five more schools joining in the third year. This report summarized significant outcomes and learnings from the Partnership experience.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America-United States (Midwestern)-Illinois-Cook County-Chicago
Most high school reform efforts understandably focus on boosting the success of low-income students who are underachieving academically, but in every school district where students struggle, there are academically capable low-income and minority students who do graduate prepared for college. Yet each year, many of these students choose to attend nonselective four-year colleges where graduation rates are distressingly low. Others enroll at two-year colleges, where degree completion and transfer rates are even lower. Many more do not attend college at all.
In 2010, MDRC and its partners pilot-tested an innovative advising program, College Match, in three Chicago public high schools. This practitioner brief presents practical lessons from that program. It offers five strategies that show promise, that could be widely applicable, that counselors and advisers can integrate into their existing college guidance activities, and that can be implemented in college advising settings in and out of schools.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America / United States (Midwestern) / Illinois / Cook County / Chicago
Most high school reform efforts understandably focus on boosting the success of low-income students who are underachieving academically, but in every school district where students struggle, there are academically capable low-income and minority students who do graduate prepared for college. Yet each year, many of these students choose to attend nonselective four-year colleges where graduation rates are distressingly low. Others enroll at two-year colleges, where degree completion and transfer rates are even lower. Many more do not attend college at all.
In 2010, MDRC and its partners pilot-tested an innovative advising program, College Match, in three Chicago public high schools. This practitioner brief presents practical lessons from that program. It offers five strategies that show promise, that could be widely applicable, that counselors and advisers can integrate into their existing college guidance activities, and that can be implemented in college advising settings in and out of schools.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America / United States (Midwestern) / Illinois / Cook County / Chicago
This report examines mathematics test data from the first year of implementation (2012-13) of the Teach to One: Math (TtO) approach in seven urban middle schools in Chicago, New York City, and Washington D.C. Researchers addressed the question: How did Tto students' growth on the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) mathematics assessment compare with national norms?
To answer this question, the researchers analyzed student performance on the MAP test, an established instrument developed by the Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA). The researchers then compared these results to the national norms published by NWEA (2011). Please note that these analyses cannot attribute Tto student results to the TtO model: the data available did not permit the use of an experimental design, which would be necessary to establish a link between the implementation of the program and the student test results. While the TtO results are promising, its performance beyond one year should be analyzed using an experimental design, in order to remove unmeasured differences between TtO students and schools with an appropriate comparison sample.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America / United States (Midwestern) / Illinois / Cook County / Chicago;North America / United States (Southern) / District of Columbia / Washington;North America / United States (Northeastern) / New York / New York County / New York City
Arts and Culture;Education and Literacy
The PAIR (Partnerships for Arts Integration Research) complete final report is an evaluation of a four year, federal Department of Education funded Arts in Education Model Development and Dissemination (AEMDD) project administered by the Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education (CAPE) in partnership with the Chicago Public Schools.
This project brought together 3 pairings of school populations (a world languages focused magnet cluster school with a fine-arts focused magnet cluster school; a math and science focused magnet cluster school with a fine arts focused magnet cluster school; and a literature and writing focused magnet cluster school with a fine arts magnet cluster school) to work with teaching artists in 4th, 5th, and 6th grade classrooms. Results from the six schools were compared with six control schools of similar status, resources, student population, demographic factors, and comparable levels of academic achievement prior to the start of the PAIR project.
The PAIR research and evaluation focuses extensively on teacher impact and student achievement. Two principal investigators noted for their work in the fields of teacher education, student learning, and arts in education teaching and learning practices engaged in this research: Dr. Gail Burnaford, School of Education faculty at Florida Atlantic University, who examined the impact of PAIR on classroom teachers, and Dr. Lawrence Scripp, Director of the Center for Music-In-Education, Inc, who analyzed student arts integration and academic learning outcomes and their relation to PAIR teacher professional development outcomes and controlled for student demographic factors. Burnaford's and Scripp's cumulative findings on the impact of PAIR on teacher professional development, student learning and the intersections between teacher and student outcomes over the three-year time period of the project are presented in the three-part comprehensive report.
Lawrence Scripp and Laura Tan Paradis (PAIR research coordinator) provide a brief summary of the project findings as an addendum to the comprehensive three-part PAIR Report.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America / United States (Midwestern) / Illinois / Cook County / Chicago
Arts and Culture;Education and Literacy
The PAIR (Partnerships for Arts Integration Research) complete final report is an evaluation of a four year, federal Department of Education funded Arts in Education Model Development and Dissemination (AEMDD) project administered by the Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education (CAPE) in partnership with the Chicago Public Schools.
This project brought together 3 pairings of school populations (a world languages focused magnet cluster school with a fine-arts focused magnet cluster school; a math and science focused magnet cluster school with a fine arts focused magnet cluster school; and a literature and writing focused magnet cluster school with a fine arts magnet cluster school) to work with teaching artists in 4th, 5th, and 6th grade classrooms. Results from the six schools were compared with six control schools of similar status, resources, student population, demographic factors, and comparable levels of academic achievement prior to the start of the PAIR project.
The PAIR research and evaluation focuses extensively on teacher impact and student achievement. Two principal investigators noted for their work in the fields of teacher education, student learning, and arts in education teaching and learning practices engaged in this research: Dr. Gail Burnaford, School of Education faculty at Florida Atlantic University, who examined the impact of PAIR on classroom teachers, and Dr. Lawrence Scripp, Director of the Center for Music-In-Education, Inc, who analyzed student arts integration and academic learning outcomes and their relation to PAIR teacher professional development outcomes and controlled for student demographic factors. Burnaford's and Scripp's cumulative findings on the impact of PAIR on teacher professional development, student learning and the intersections between teacher and student outcomes over the three-year time period of the project are presented in the three-part comprehensive report.
Lawrence Scripp and Laura Tan Paradis (PAIR research coordinator) provide a brief summary of the project findings as an addendum to the comprehensive three-part PAIR Report.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America / United States (Midwestern) / Illinois / Cook County / Chicago
