Elaine Allensworth is senior director and chief research officer at the Consortium on Chicago School Research at the University of Chicago. She conducts research on the factors that affect high school students’ educational attainment, including high school graduation and college readiness, as well as the structural factors that affect school improvement. She is best known for her work on early indicators of high school graduation, including the study What Matters for Staying On-Track and Graduating, which has been used to develop tracking systems in Chicago and in districts across the country. Allensworth is one of the authors of the book Organizing Schools for Improvement: Lessons from Chicago, which yields a comprehensive, set of school practices and school and community conditions that promote improvement. Currently, she is working on studies of high school curricula and middle grade predictors of college readiness. Allensworth has served on several committees for the National Academies, is a standing member of the Scientific Review Panel of the U.S. Department of Education, and was on the board of the Illinois Education Research Council. She holds a Ph.D. in sociology from Michigan State University, and was formerly a high school teacher.
This project is funded by the National Science Foundation, grants # 0822241, 1449550, 1650648, 1743807, and 1813076. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in these materials are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.