University Courses on
Mathematics and Science Content Knowledge
Sustainability: Funding Shifts
Stakeholders in Chicago’s systemic reform effort had to be flexible in collaboratively funding university content courses for teachers. Many university partners recognized by 2003 that they needed to seek additional funding sources for courses because the NSF CUSP grant would end in 2005. In addition, the private universities saw that they needed outside funding to pick up additional teacher tuition support for their courses. The 2003 levels of district partial tuition support for teachers, while partially accounting for price differences, created a program where teachers taking courses at the private universities had to pay more. The private universities wanted to be competitive with the local public universities that also offered content courses. By 2004, three private university partners had secured state and private funds to further subsidize tuition for their courses for teachers. These universities actively enrolled teachers through 2008. Other private universities had not obtained similar funding and were not successful in enrolling teachers in their approved programs.
In 2008, the district told stakeholders that it was developing a new program to replace their tuition payments to universities with low-interest loans to teachers, explaining that the cost of tuition was unsustainable long-term.
