NIU received a $5 million federal grant to work with partners in Rockford on a five-year initiative to enhance teacher quality and student performance in the city.
Project REAL gives classroom teachers hands-on experience with new teaching techniques that help students do their best.
NIU leads the statewide “P-20” initiative that promotes better teacher training and higher student achievement from pre-school through graduate school.
One of NIU’s newest programs under the “P-20” umbrella is leadership of a statewide initiative to improve math and science education in Illinois.
NIU president John Peters served on a blue ribbon panel named by the U.S. Department of Education to study lagging student performance in math and science.
Most first-year teachers with NIU degrees believe they were prepared well to teach their primary subject areas and to implement developmentally appropriate instruction.
Nearly 98 percent say they feel they meet the Illinois Professional Learning Standards regarding education as a profession and its benchmarks of professional conduct. They give good grades to their classroom instruction at NIU and their pre-service clinical experiences.
A book by Literacy Education professor Alfred Tatum, “Teaching Reading to Black Adolescent Males: Closing the Achievement Gap,” is earning great attention among U.S. educators and netting speaking engagements for the busy author.
The mounting weight of the federal No Child Left Behind law and its focus on test scores is fueling Tatum’s insistence that a successful school experience involves more than good grades.
NIU is a partner with the Illinois State Board of Education, the Chicago Public Schools and the Illinois Resource Center in a federally funded initiative to recruit and train bilingual teachers.
Students will need two-and-a-half years to complete the rigorous curriculum, and new cohorts will start each semester through the fall of 2007. The Title II grant, part of No Child Left Behind, addresses the critical shortage of bilingual teachers in Illinois by identifying and assisting candidates from other fields who wish to change careers and become bilingual teachers.
