Chicago Transformation Teacher Institutes

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The Chicago Transformation Teacher Institutes (CTTI)involves five institutions of higher education (University of Illinois at Chicago, DePaul University, Illinois Institutes of Technology, Loyola University Chicago, and Northwestern University) and the Chicago Public Schools (CPS). CTTI provides mathematics and science leadership development for the CPS High Schools through support of the district's High School Transformation Project (HSTP) by expanding the school-university partnership. This project will develop teams of mathematics and science teacher-leaders in twenty high schools, chosen on the basis of an application procedure to determine school readiness and administrative support. The key outcome of the project within schools will be teacher-led work in the selection, refinement, and implementation of rigorous 12th-grade capstone and AP curricula. In addition, teacher leaders will have new competencies to coordinate curricula across grades 9-10-11. The CTTI is organized from a theoretically-focused and research-based logic model of school change, based on the idea that school capacity to carry out and sustain change requires specific inputs, including the teacher content knowledge and leadership skills that CTTI will provide to the teachers. This model describes how school capacity, with its dimensions of in-school collaboration, teacher reflection, and instructional development, directly affect both teacher practice and student outcomes. The faculty from the Universities will learn from the CPS teachers how to recruit, retain and support students from the schools. The CTTI teacher program develops leaders through three different experiences: (1) recruitment and initiation of cohorts of teachers; (2) courses in interdisciplinary content and educational research (3) workshops on linking content knowledge to reform curricula and school leadership. These will be given to 80 math and 80 science teachers over four CTTI cohorts, producing robust teacher-leaders teams in 20 schools. Teachers are in one of three tracks: mathematics (80 teachers), physical science (40 teachers), or life and environmental science (40 teachers). The CTTI's specific focus on teacher content knowledge and the application of that knowledge to teaching and school leadership is enhanced by its connection to multiple universities that are themselves at the forefront of STEM research, as will be reflected in the content of the CTTI courses.The project builds on a logic model that links program activities with teacher and student outcomes. The research program will coordinate with other district- and university-based studies of school reform, making use of extensive data already available in CPS, the HSTP, and the classrooms. A separate evaluation of the CTTI will include observations of teacher change and specific links to large assessment and accountability measures already in place as part of the HSTP.This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).