Organizing Schools for Improvement: Lessons from Chicago

In 1988, the Chicago public school system decentralized, granting parents and communities significant resources and authority to reform their schools in dramatic ways. To track the effects of this bold experiment, the authors of Organizing Schools for Improvement collected a wealth of data on elementary schools in Chicago. Over a seven-year period they identified one hundred elementary schools that had substantially improved—and one hundred that had not. What did the successful schools do to accelerate student learning?
The authors of this illuminating book identify a comprehensive set of practices and conditions that were key factors for improvement, including school leadership, the professional capacity of the faculty and staff, and a student-centered learning climate. In addition, they analyze the impact of social dynamics, including crime, critically examining the inextricable link between schools and their communities. Putting their data onto a more human scale, they also chronicle the stories of two neighboring schools with very different trajectories. The lessons gleaned from this groundbreaking study will be invaluable for anyone involved with urban education.

History

Bryk, Anthony S.

Sebring, Penny Bender

Allensworth, Elaine

Luppescu, Stuart

Easton, John Q.

Americas

University of Chicago Press

In 1988, the Chicago public school system decentralized, granting parents and communities significant resources and authority to reform their schools in dramatic ways. To track the effects of this bold experiment, the authors of Organizing Schools for Improvement collected a wealth of data on elementary schools in Chicago. Over a seven-year period they identified one hundred elementary schools that had substantially improved—and one hundred that had not. What did the successful schools do to accelerate student learning? The authors of this illuminating book identify a comprehensive set of practices and conditions that were key factors for improvement, including school leadership, the professional capacity of the faculty and staff, and a student-centered learning climate. In addition, they analyze the impact of social dynamics, including crime, critically examining the inextricable link between schools and their communities. Putting their data onto a more human scale, they also chronicle the stories of two neighboring schools with very different trajectories. The lessons gleaned from this groundbreaking study will be invaluable for anyone involved with urban education.

Teacher evaluation is arguably the hottest issue in education right now. Because of Race to the Top, many states and districts around the country are designing and implementing new teacher evaluation systems that--for the first time ever--evaluate teachers based on how much their students learn. However, there is limited research on how to build an evaluation system centered on classroom observations that can distinguish between effective and ineffective teaching. This report from the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research focuses on Chicago, but the lessons learned have significant applicability to districts across the country. The report is one of the first to provide research-based evidence showing that new teacher observation tools, when accompanied by thoughtful evaluation systems and professional development, can effectively measure teacher effectiveness and provide teachers with feedback on the factors that matter for improving student learning. This is especially relevant for those districts that are implementing the Charlotte Danielson Framework for Teaching, including Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, South Dakota, Washington, Los Angeles, and Pittsburgh.

Rethinking Teacher Evaluation in Chicago: Lessons Learned from Classroom Observations, Principal-Teacher Conferences, and District Implementation

Education & Teaching

Stoelinga, Sara Ray

Sartain, Lauren

Brown, Eric R.

Kapadia Matsko, Kavita

Miller, Frances K.

Durwood, Claire E.

Jiang, Jennie Y.

Glazer, Danielle

Schools & Teaching

Consortium On Chicago School Research

High-quality, well-implemented early childhood education (ECE) positively affects the learning trajectories of children who start school with lower skills than their peers, according to decades of evidence. Yet studies on ECE programs across the country reveal that too few offer high-quality programming. To date, the ECE field has focused most improvement efforts on classroom materials and interactions. Broadening these efforts to an organization-wide focus could better support quality improvement. The UChicago Consortium and the Ounce of Prevention Fund designed teacher and parent surveys, the “Early Education Essential Organizational Supports Measurement System” (Early Ed Essentials), to help ECE sites diagnose organizational strengths and weaknesses. The current study tested whether the newly-adapted and designed Early Ed Essentials teacher and parent surveys captured reliable and valid information about the organization of ECE programs—information that is also associated with existing indicators of program quality.

Organizing Early Education for Improvement: Testing a New Survey Tool

YOUNG, CHRISTOPHER

Frank, Elizabeth

Ehrlich, Stacy B.

Pacchiano, Debra M.

Stein, Amanda G.

Wagner, Maureen R.

Park, Sangyoon

Lewandowski, Holly

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