Northern Illinois University has teamed up with Rockford schools and Rock Valley College to educate future teachers, enhance teacher quality and student performance.

A $4.8 million Teacher Quality Enhancement grant was given to NIU by the U.S. Department of Education to help recruit teachers to Rockford and to encourage students to become teachers, said Christine Sorensen, dean of NIU’s College of Education.

“It will also provide funding for four professional development schools, which are places where students will have extensive clinical experiences, and provide professional development to teachers in the building, focused on content expertise as well as technology integration and teaching,” she said.

These professional development schools also will develop a curriculum, and be a place where NIU faculty and other teachers will do research, Sorensen said.

Students involved in the partnership program will be able to make a seamless transition to the next level of their careers with the help of the grant, said Diane Kuehl, acting dean of liberal arts and sciences at Rock Valley College.

In about three years, nearly 500 Rockford-district teachers will be qualified to retire.

“Locally this will cause a real need in our area,” Kuehl said. “Our hope is that the partnership will benefit future teachers in our district and therefore will keep them here.”

The move helps even more during a budget crisis.

“All the groups – the community college, the K-12 district and the university – are all struggling with budget issues, so we’re all working together to pull resources trying to accomplish something that none of us alone could do,” Sorensen said.

The overall goal is to improve student performance from kindergarten to 12th grade. The way to do this is to improve the quality of the teachers in the classroom.

“This is why much of the grant is focused around giving teachers more tools to use in the classroom, ensuring that they are highly qualified,” Sorensen said. “By improving leadership and teacher quality, in the end we will improve student performance.”