Elaine Allensworth

Elaine Allensworth is the Lewis-Sebring Director of the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research, a research-practice partnership that supports improvement in Chicago's public schools. Dr. Allensworth works with policymakers and practitioners to bridge research and practice, providing advice to researchers across the country about conducting research-practice partnerships, and serving on panels, policy commissions, and working groups at the local, state and national level. She is nationally recognized as an expert in the areas of students' educational attainment, school leadership and school improvement. Her research on the factors that predict whether students will drop out of high school has shifted the conversation from factors that schools cannot control to factors that schools can influence; school districts across the country have adopted early warning indicator systems based on her Freshman OnTrack research. 

She is one of the authors of the book, Organizing Schools for Improvement: Lessons from Chicago, which documents the ways in which organizational structures in schools influence improvements in student achievement. Dr. Allensworth has been the principal investigator on research grants from funders such as the Institute of Education Sciences, the National Science Foundation, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Her work is regularly covered in the local and national media.