Academy for Urban School Leadership

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Academy for Urban School Leadership
The AUSL Chicago Teacher Residency program
demands commitment, passion, and perseverance,
all of which each resident must possess to be
successful. In order to do so, one of the best
(and most unique to AUSL) support factors I have
this year is my fellow residents. The Common
Core State Standards (CCSS) have raised the bar
significantly for our students. For this blog I
want to focus on CCSS Anchor Standard 10, as it
demonstrates one way in particular that these
standards have raised the bar. Standard 10
establishes a staircase of text complexity, and
expects that by the end of each year students .
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AUSL (Academy for Urban School Leadership),
created in 2001, is a nonprofit organization
whose mission is to improve student achievement
in chronically failing schools, primarily in
Chicago, through its disciplined transformation
process, built on a foundation of specially
trained AUSL teachers.
AUSL currently manages 29 Chicago Public Schools
serving over 17,000 students and has graduated
over 650 residents from AUSLs Chicago Teacher
Residency. Steady, positive improvements in
academic achievement, student engagement, and
parent satisfaction are hallmarks of all
AUSL-managed CPS schools. AUSL turnaround
elementary schools have outpaced the Chicago
Public School district growth in ISAT
meets/exceeds gains every year since our first
turnaround school in 2006. The University of
Chicago Consortium on School Research found that
turnarounds, including those managed by AUSL,
closed the gap between their test scores and the
CPS average by over half in reading and by
two-thirds in math after four years.
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Preparing Highly-Effective Teachers
Teachers are central to our theory of change.
Through professional development for our teachers
and the Chicago Teacher residency, AUSL develops
highly effective teachers for the challenging
urban environment. Many of the teachers at our
turnaround schools are graduates of the AUSL
Chicago Teacher Residency which is a year-long
program during which residents train under the
guidance of a carefully selected and trained
mentor teacher in the classroom and complete
coursework at National Louis University to obtain
a Masters Degree.
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For more information please visit
http//www.auslchicago.org