Chicago Early Childhood Teacher Preparation Pipeline Study This study is supported with grants from The Joyce Foundation and the McCormick Tribune Foundation (Funded August 2007 – July 2009). Brenda K. Klostermann and Jennifer B. Presley, with Sally Ferguson. 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.
Teacher Quality & Essential School Supports: Untangling Their Interrelationship for School Improvement This study is supported with a grant from the Spencer Foundation (Funded April 2007 – March 2008) Karen J. DeAngelis and Jennifer B. Presley with Stephen Ponisciak from the Consortium on Chicago School Research. The Illinois Education Research Council (IERC) is partnering with the Consortium on Chicago School Research (CCSR) at the University of Chicago to conduct a study that brings together two strands of research – one on teacher quality, the other on school environment/effectiveness - to determine if and how these characteristics of schools relate to each other and to student achievement. For this project, the CCSR has generously agreed to share with the Illinois Education Research Council (IERC) their school-level indicators of Essential Supports created from their Spring 2003 teacher and administrator surveys. We will combine their five Essential Supports indicators with the IERC’s 2002-03 school Teacher Quality Index (TQI) for an analysis of the relationship among TQI, Essential Supports, and student achievement in the Chicago Public Schools. More specifically, the following research question will be addressed: What is the relationship between school teacher quality and school environment and what, in turn, is the relative importance of each for student performance? With only one year of TQI and Essential Supports data, we will not be able to untangle the direction of any relationship between teachers’ academic qualifications and schools’ environments. Nonetheless, the results from this initial study will add a new dimension to existing research on school effectiveness and determine if a subsequent longitudinal analysis is warranted.
Assessing Change in Access to Teacher Quality in Illinois This study is supported by a grant from The Joyce Foundation (Funded December 2006 – June 2008). Jennifer B. Presley, Bradford R. White and Karen J. DeAngelis. In 2005, the Illinois Education Research Council published the results of its work on the distribution of teacher quality. The IERC constructed a Teacher Quality Index that allowed us to examine differences in the cadre of teachers who were in schools with different student characteristics. The work also provided a useful comparison between similar schools in different parts of the state, including Chicago. Those results were based on 140,000 teachers in Illinois public schools in 2002-2003. In this follow-up project we will update the Teacher Quality Index for teachers in the Illinois Public Schools in 2005-2006. In this follow-up project, we will replicate the Teacher Quality Index using the most recent data available for teachers – those who were working in the Illinois Public Schools in 2005-2006. Adding this longitudinal element to our TQI work has several advantages:
We will be able to see whether average teacher quality has increased (or decreased) in three years, and the types and locations of schools where such increases (or decreases) have occurred.
The analysis will provide an empirical measure to assess changes in Illinois students’ access to teacher quality from 2002-2003 to 2005-2006, and to identify the types and locations of schools where these changes have occurred.
We will be able to examine changes in school performance in relation to the baseline teacher quality index and changes in the teacher quality index.
Illinois Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 2002 Jennifer B. Presley. 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).
Study of Teacher Induction in the Midwest This study is supported by a grant from The Joyce Foundation. (Funded January 2006–December 2007). Brenda K. Klostermann and Jennifer B. Presley. The IERC joins with SRI International and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to conduct a research study to understand the types of induction support provided to new teachers in Illinois and Ohio, and to tease out those program characteristics that impact teacher retention, teacher practices, and student achievement. State policy contexts in which the induction programs operate will also be examined. A multi-method research design including analysis of existing state-level databases, interviews with state-level personnel, and case studies with 11 districts will be utilized. Interviews with district personnel, focus groups with new teachers and mentors, and classroom observations will inform our analyses. An in-depth focus on a subset of districts will also analyze teacher retention rates and student achievement data. The research findings will inform policy-makers and could help program developers focus their resources on those program elements that are tied most closely to desired outcomes.
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