UChicago UEI

Bio

UEI is dedicated to answering one question: how do we produce reliably excellent schooling for children growing up in urban America? To answer this question, UEI conducts rigorous research, trains outstanding teachers and leaders for urban schools, creates scalable tools and practices to improve student social and academic outcomes, designs and operates charter schools, and supports new schools across Chicago. UEI was established to create knowledge to improve the trajectory of children’s lives nationwide. UEI brings together expert practitioners working at the classroom, school, and system level with distinguished researchers and scholars from across University disciplines to improve K-12 education for children in urban schools. As John Dewey espoused, UEI “learns by doing.” We do not seek knowledge by “watching from the sidelines.” We are actively engaged and responsible for children's learning every day, we train and develop teachers and leaders who work in urban schools, and we undertake research designed to build knowledge to improve both practice and policy. In essence, UEI is designed to join research and practice to learn how to transform lives.