Experts Call on Legislators to Link Education Funding to Student Achievement

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. -- Principals and teachers, legislators, and local and national education leaders gathered today for the From Here to Excellence education policy forum to share bold strategies for increasing student achievement across Illinois. Participants discussed four education policy fields that have shown some of the greatest promise: improving educator quality, rewarding great performance, using data to improve learning, and creating and supporting more public charter schools. 

“Illinois has an important chance now to move its education policies forward and bring them in line with what has been shown to work in the classroom,” said Ellen S. Alberding, president of the Chicago-based Joyce Foundation, a sponsor of the forum, along with The Chicago Community Trust and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. “More money alone won’t create successful schools. We need to link any new funding with high-impact reforms that work, particularly when it comes to teacher quality, which research shows has the most impact on student achievement.”

Among the teacher quality policy recommendations are two promising practices: 1) To provide a two-year induction/mentoring program for beginning teachers; and 2) To establish a teacher compensation pilot program to reward teacher excellence. Research performed in Chicago shows that teachers who receive comprehensive support in the first two years are three to four times more likely to remain in their school. This is particularly significant since 40 percent of Illinois teachers currently leave the classroom in the first five years.

“Supporting new teachers not only improves educator quality, but also increases faculty retention,” said Dr. Barnett Berry, founder and president of the Center for Teaching Quality and a panel participant. “We need to invest in our teachers as we would any other valuable resource and create a statewide induction and mentoring program for first and second year teachers.”

Other state-level recommendations included:

• Create a state data system that collects student performance data over time.
  
  
• Encourage teachers and schools to use relevant data to improve instruction.
  
  
• Increase the number of high-performing charter public schools.

According to a 2006 survey by the National Center for Educational Accountability (NCEA), Illinois has only four of the ten components required for a high-quality data system. “Before you can implement reforms, you need to have information on how students are doing. There are many basic questions—such as how many students are reading at grade level—that we just don’t have answers to,” said Dr. Timothy Knowles, executive director of the Center for Urban School Improvement (University of Chicago) and a panel participant. “Common-sense solutions like tracking data on student achievement to identify trends and enact reforms are within reach of Illinois schools.”

High-performing schools are often data-driven schools. Being data-driven means going beyond using standardized test scores as the key source of information, and looking at attendance rates, discipline reports, extra-curricular activities, failing grades and counselor contacts to get a more complete picture of how students are doing. 

Participants in the forum also discussed how charter schools in Illinois have produced some of the strongest student results to date.

“Charter schools allow for greater flexibility and innovation in the classroom,” said Nicole Gales, principal of Springfield Ball Charter School. “Illinois’ charter schools have one of the best track records of performance in the country and there are long wait lists to get into them, but we have an arbitrary limit on how many can open. We need to support a diverse portfolio of innovative schools if all students are to achieve.”

Today’s forum built on many of the ideas featured in the recent seven-part Chicago Tribune editorial series “From Here to Excellence,” which outlined a comprehensive plan that called for an increase in statewide education funding in exchange for spending new money on proven education reforms and accountability.

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The Chicago Community Trust
For more than 92 years, The Chicago Community Trust has connected the generosity of donors with the needs of the community by making grants to organizations working to improve metropolitan Chicago. With assets of $1.6 billion, the Trust has given more than $1 billion in grants since 1915. From strengthening community schools to assisting local art programs, from building health centers to helping lives affected by violence, the Trust continues to enhance our region.

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Joyce Foundation
Based in Chicago with assets of $900 million, the Joyce Foundation supports efforts to improve the quality of life in the Great Lakes region. It invests approximately $8 million annually in work to improve public education in the Midwest, especially by improving the quality of teachers in low-performing schools. Other program areas include environment, workforce issues, money and politics, gun violence prevention, and culture.