ACI's Center for Success in High-Need Schools seeks to close the achievement gap between low-income students and their more affluent peers by providing a key ingredient for success: excellent teachers for high-need schools. By helping low-income students make the grade today, we can create a more productive society and ensure America's future in the global economy.

The Associated Colleges of Illinois (ACI) is uniquely qualified to help improve teaching and learning in schools serving primarily low-income students. Teacher preparation is a core competency at ACI's 24 member colleges and universities, which enroll more than 55,000 students and graduate nearly 3,500 new teachers each year. These new teachers are among the most sought-after by Illinois' high-need school districts, because they know both content and pedagogy; because they remain in the profession at nearly twice the rate of teachers graduating from other programs; and because ACI member colleges motivate students not just to work – but to serve society.

Current research shows that effective teaching actually can overcome the deficits of poverty. Unfortunately, schools serving low-income students often suffer the worst shortages of qualified teachers.

The Center addresses this challenge through four program areas:

• Alternative and Accelerated Certification Programs – partnerships among member colleges and school districts aimed at attracting talented college-educated adults to new careers teaching in high-need schools, especially in shortage areas, such as math and special education.
• Recruitment and Retention Programs – collaborative efforts to identify and recruit diverse talent to teaching in high-need schools, as well as networking, mentoring and professional development programs that support new teachers during their first critical years in the classroom. These programs range from Diversity at the Blackboard, a statewide recruitment effort to attract more men and minorities to teaching, to ACI's Teacher Induction Academy, a four-year professional development program specifically targeted to new teachers in high-need schools.
• Curriculum Transformation Initiatives – major initiatives based on eight member campuses, which seek to redesign teacher education curricula for the special challenges of high-need schools, with funding from ACI's USDOE Teacher Quality Enhancement grant.
• Innovation Projects – pilot projects that test the usefulness of specific approaches or techniques, pursued by ACI campuses or their partner high-need school districts with funding from ACI's USDOE Teacher Quality Enhancement grant.

All Center programs are implemented through partnerships among colleges and universities, K-12 schools and educators, businesses, and not-for-profits, who share the belief that a well-educated population is critical to building strong communities and a healthy economy. The Center is advised by the Center Education Council, a group of leading educators, business leaders and policy experts whose observations and suggestions enrich and broaden ACI's perspective on the issues.

ACI's Center for Success in High-Need Schools already is producing exciting results:

• More than 125 aspiring teachers are enrolled (or have just completed) nine alternative or accelerated certification partnerships specializing in math, science, special education and bi-lingual education.

• More than 200 new candidates will be placed in Illinois schools by September 2006 through new and ongoing partnerships specializing in bi-lingual education, math/science, special education, and library science and media.

• More than 200 new teachers representing more than 75 schools have benefited from ACI's Teacher Induction Academy. 91% of these new teachers planned to return to teaching positions in high-need schools next fall, and an independent evaluator has found that ACI's Teacher Induction Academy has met teacher's identified needs for induction support.

• More than 60 education majors from ACI institutions have participated in ACI's Inner-City Practicum, which provides hands-on clinical experience in high-need schools. Research has now shown the Inner-City Practicum has an extraordinary impact on participants, influencing many candidates to choose teaching positions in hard-to-staff, urban schools.

By identifying, testing and evaluating best practices, ACI's Center for Success in High-Need Schools will create a new body of knowledge, which we will share through workshops, conferences, the Center's web site and Success in High-Need Schools, the Center's online journal. Our hope is that the Center's work will inspire others both to replicate our successful models and to develop their own creative solutions – solutions that improve teaching and learning in high-need schools and provide all students with the opportunity to reach their full potential.