1www.nctq.org/edschoolreports/illinois

Findings and Recommendations for School DistrictsAs a principal or staffing specialist in a school district, no doubt you have the best of intentions while trying to fill school vacancies. You hope that the crop of teachers recently graduated from Illinois’ education schools will: a) be good fits for their new schools; and b) meet the qualifications their jobs demand.

But you also know that the best of intentions is not enough.

Many ed schools do a bang-up job of either producing specific kinds of teachers—elementary vs. secondary, for instance—or preparing teacher candidates in certain ways—e.g., with well-supervised, local student teaching. But have you ever been offered a comprehensive picture of how schools compare on all these fronts?

That’s where the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) comes in. Ed School Essentials: A Review of Illinois Teacher Preparation is the latest in a series of reports we’ve released to inform consumers like you of which teacher prep programs produce the best possible teachers. After all, if a teacher doesn’t know the subject she’s teaching, or isn’t able to keep a classroom under control, it’s not good for the teacher and fellow teachers, the school’s principal and the school itself could feel the reverberations.

For these reasons, you want to make the most informed decisions possible when turning to Illinois’ education schools for hires.

NCTQ’s report measures 111 programs at 53 schools against 39 standards (explained here [link to report]), including those relevant to the types of teachers you’re looking for. As an example, here’s how we rate certain schools—on a scale from 0 to 4—on specific standards:

Effective reading instruction for elementary teacher candidates

Loyola University Chicago — Fully meets standard because it fully prepares candidates in effective reading instruction

Illinois State University — Fails to meet standard because preparation in effective reading instruction is very inadequate

Classroom management training for secondary teacher candidates

Eastern Illinois University — Fully meets standard because it prepares candidates before they enter the classroom for practice teaching in a course focused on the secondary grade levels

Judson University — Fails to meet standard because it waits to prepare candidates until they are already practice teaching.

Ed School Essentials: A Review of Illinois Teacher Preparation

NCTQ Ed School Essentials: A Review of Illinois Teacher Preparation

2 www.nctq.org/edschoolreports/illinois

2010

Careful screening and selection of cooperating teachers for student teachers

Aurora University — Fully meets standard because school principals confirm that this ed school plays a pivotal role in screening and selection

Augustana University — Fails to meet standard because school principals indicate that they simply ask for volunteers to serve as cooperating teachers

For a detailed look at programs and their standards ratings, visit the website’s Consumer Guide, where you can search for programs by zip code or generate your own reports on several programs. Once you focus in on a few programs you can check out our Ed School Reports, which provide more details such as rating sheets that tell why a program received the rating it did, standard by standard. A careful perusal of these pages will help you determine whether a particular program or school produces teachers that meet your needs.

NCTQ believes that teacher preparation is a key component in improving public schools. So we encourage you to choose wisely when considering education-school programs from which to hire. In that way, you can help take the first crucial step toward providing every classroom with a highly effective teacher.

1420 New York Avenue, Suite 800Washington, D.C. 20005Tel: 202 393-0020 Fax: 202 393-0095 Web: www.nctq.org

The National Council on Teacher Quality advocates for reforms in a broad range of teacher policies at the federal, state and local levels in order to increase the number of effective teachers.

Subscribe to NCTQ’s free monthly electronic newsletter, Teacher Quality Bulletin, (www.nctq.org/p/tqb/subscribe.jsp), to stay abreast of trends in federal, state and local teacher policies and the events that help to shape them.

This report is available online from www.nctq.org/edschoolreports/illinois