Elaine Allensworth is the Lewis-Sebring Executive Director of the UChicago Consortium and Research Professor, Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice. For more than 25 years at UChicago, she has conducted research on educational policy and practice. She 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 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. Elaine 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. She has received a number of awards from the American Educational Research Association, including the Palmer O. Johnson award Division H awards outstanding publications. She was once a high school Spanish and science teacher.
