Determined to improve the city's public schools Mayor Rahm Emanuel has set a two-year goal to double the number of Academy for Urban School Leadership teaching academies from seven to 14.
He made his long term education plans known Saturday while speaking at National-Louis University's commencement ceremony.
“AUSL has made immediate and significant impacts on their turnaround schools, as evidenced year after year with encouraging test score gains,” Emanuel said. “Expanding successful models like this will help us give our children a world-class education in communities that many thought didn’t have a chance to succeed.”
And by expanding the AUSL it would allow 200 residents to be trained and prepared to teach in some of Chicago’s most challenging schools, he added.
“I am excited at the prospects of this program and I am excited that a University like yours is taking proactive steps to ensure that more of Chicago’s students have a chance to sit where you are sitting today,” explained Emanuel.
Preliminary data from the Illinois Standards Achievement Test show that test score gains at AUSL schools, which formerly were among the lowest performing in Chicago, are twice that of the Chicago Public Schools' average. AUSL’s five elementary schools showed ISAT score gains of nearly 7.9 percentage points while the CPS average was 3.8 percentage points.
When a turnaround occurs, a new administration and staff are brought into a school that has traditionally underperformed. As an example, the Morton School of Excellence on the West Side had the lowest scores in the entire school district before being designated for turnaround three years ago.
But after AUSL worked with Morton School staff, which included placing a significant number of AUSL teacher residents at that school, the percent of students meeting or exceeding ISAT score standards went from 33 percent to 49 percent a year later. And by the second year, students had met or exceeded ISAT standards by improving to 74 percent from 49 percent.
Across Chicago, AUSL schools show 68 percent of students who meet or exceed state standards on the ISAT. The CPS Office of School Improvement, which also manages two turnaround schools, showed 56 percent of students meeting or exceeding state standards, an increase of 6.8 percentage points from 2010.
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