Who is Leading Illinois Schools? A Comprehensive Analysis of the State's Principals
This study is supported with a grant from The Joyce Foundation (Funded May 2009–April 2011)
Kathleen Sullivan Brown and Bradford R. White. The Illinois Education Research Council has received a grant to conduct a comprehensive four-part study of principals in Illinois. The research will focus on the academic backgrounds and career paths of principals in Illinois public schools; estimates of principal effects, and the characteristics associated with successful school leaders in various school contexts; the roles that principals play in managing teacher talent and improving teacher quality; and school administrators’ attrition and retention patterns.
 
University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign Induction and Mentoring Pilot Programs
This study is supported with a grant from the Illinois State Board of Education (Funded December 2008–August 2009)
Kathleen Sullivan Brown and Brenda K. Klostermann. The primary purpose of this project is to conduct an evaluation of the beginning teacher induction programs that have been developed and applied in various school districts. The work will focus on documenting processes, activities, relationships and outcomes, and will supplement the information collected by INTC on "Common Data Elements." The IERC will focus on issues related to administrator involvement with the induction programs.
 

Study of Teacher Induction in the Midwest—PHASE 2
This study is supported with a grant from The Joyce Foundation (Funded April 2008–March 2010)
Brenda Klostermann. For the past two years, SRI International and the Illinois Education Research Council have been engaged in a research study of the induction efforts in Illinois and Ohio. The first report from the current study describes the induction policies in each state, identifies overarching factors affecting the design and implementation of induction programs, and presents policies and practices most likely to raise the quality of induction programs. (Click here for a copy of the report: http://policyweb.sri.com/cep/publications/JoyceTeacherInduction2008.pdf). The second phase of the study explores the relationships between various inputs—the induction and mentoring supports provided to teachers, teachers’ backgrounds, and the contexts in which they are working—and various teacher outcomes—teachers’ reported professional growth, efficacy, and retention.

Working in conjunction with the IERC and the Consortium on Chicago School Research (CCSR), SRI will carry out the study to answer the following research questions:
1. What induction supports do new teachers receive?
  • What is the frequency, content, and perceived quality of induction supports and mentoring provided to new teachers?
  • How and why do induction supports vary within and across programs?
  • How does state context (e.g., budgets, timing of funding) influence the implementation of induction programs?
2. How do teachers’ working conditions support or impede statewide induction efforts?
  • What induction supports lead to positive teacher outcomes in schools with strong professional community, strong leadership, and adequate resources?
  • What induction supports lead to positive teacher outcomes in schools with weak professional community, weak leadership, and inadequate resources?

3.

What are the differences, if any, in student achievement and teacher retention between new teachers receiving strong induction support and those receiving weak support?

Multiple methods will be used to answer the research questions, including an update of state policies, surveys of new teachers and mentors, case studies, and analyses of district databases to determine the impact of induction on teacher retention and student achievement. A final report will be available Spring 2010.
 
Chicago Early Childhood Teacher Preparation Pipeline Study
This study is supported with grants from The Joyce Foundation and the McCormick Foundation (Funded August 2007–July 2009).
Brenda K. Klostermann. After completing a two-year study of the supply of and demand for early childhood teachers in Illinois (which included new certificants from higher education and the reserve pool of already-certified teachers), we found that, in general, the reserve pool could be expected to meet the increased demand if salaries reflected the training and professional experience of these teachers. We also found, however, that the reserve pool was much less robust for the city of Chicago, so that it will need to rely more heavily on the certificant pipeline. But we also found that there appears to be large leakages in this higher education pipeline—especially from the ‘interest’ to ‘program enrollment’ stages of institutional enrollment.

The purpose of this project is to examine and better understand conditions related to this “leakage” using a two-pronged approach:
1. Due to differences in institutions’ reporting of enrollment and graduation data, we will contract with institutional research offices to more thoroughly analyze the institutions’ pipeline data, as well as examine the data systems of both public and private higher education institutions in Chicago to document how they report for the federal Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), how they are constrained (or not) by their student information systems, and develop recommendations to the institutions and the Illinois Board of Higher Education that could lead to more consistent, and therefore more useful planning and evaluation data over time.
2. Given that many students who start in Chicago institutions of higher education are quite unready for college, we will examine if it is these conditions that are preventing students from progressing through the pipeline, and/or conditions of the program designs themselves that prevent completion, or students’ personal circumstances that impede their progress.
 
Illinois Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 2002
Christopher M. Mullin, Bradford R. White, and Kathleen S. Brown. The goal of this longitudinal project is to understand minority and low-income students' transitions from high school to college and their persistence over time. A dataset containing ACT scores and background information for the cohort of 2002 high school graduates in Illinois has been merged with 2002-2003 higher education enrollment information from the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC). Together, these data allow us to follow the 2002 class of Illinois public high school graduates into college. We will compare patterns of enrollment for different student groups (e.g., low-income, minority) and examine the influence of students' high school environments, locale of upbringing and family backgrounds on these patterns. (A Higher Education Cooperative Act grant was awarded by the IBHE for 2003/2005.) We plan to follow the cohort for six years, i.e., through the 2007-08 academic year. Reports produced from the data include The Demographics and Academics of College Readiness in Illinois (2005),The Demographics and Academics of College Going in Illinois (2006), and Following the Illinois High School Class of 2002: Three Years into College (2006).
 
 

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