From Illinois State

A Teacher Quality Partnership grant for more than $1.5 million from the U.S. Department of Education has been awarded to Illinois State’s College of Education. The grant will fund a program aimed at redesigning and fundamentally transforming how teacher education majors are recruited, prepared, inducted, and supported for work in the Chicago Public Schools.

This is the third year of a five-year grant for The Chicago Teacher Education Pipeline (CTEP) at Illinois State. The grant will continue to support the TEACHER+PLUS program, which prepares future educators to teach urban school students in high-need subjects.

“The goal of TEACHER+PLUS is to enhance the idea of a community-centered classroom. It helps future teachers who are interested in serving schools of high need in Chicago navigate a large system,” CTEP Director Robert Lee said.

One component of the TEACHER+PLUS program is a four-week fellowship that the U.S. Department of Education noted “is one of the most intensive and innovative models they have seen for pre-service prep of urban teachers,” Lee said.