Region 9 Comprehensive Center: Illinois and Iowa
AIR led the Region 9 Comprehensive Center, supported by a U.S. Department of Education grant from 2019-2024, to provide capacity-building services to state education agencies and other education partners in Illinois and Iowa.
AIR led the Region 9 Comprehensive Center, supported by a U.S. Department of Education grant from 2019-2024, to provide capacity-building services to state education agencies and other education partners in Illinois and Iowa. The center’s goal was to help regional leaders identify, implement, and sustain evidence-based programs and practices to address high-leverage problems and improve outcomes for students and educators.
Projects
The Region 9 Comprehensive Center’s projects addressed challenges identified by education leaders in the region in four main topics:
School Finance
The Region 9 Comprehensive Center facilitated a community of practice with state and district leaders in Iowa focused on effective and sustainable use of American Rescue Plan Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds. The Region 9 team worked with Illinois State Board of Education to facilitate a virtual peer-to-peer series to discuss how to strategically engage ESSER and Title I funds to support long-term resource allocation.
School Improvement
The Center worked with the Iowa Department of Education to gather insights from school and district leaders to identify what practices, interventions, or supports were needed to make improvements for Comprehensive Support and Improvement schools. The Region 9 team also worked with the Illinois State Board of Education to support and develop their state’s School Improvement Process that aligns to their 2020–2024 Strategic Plan and Every Student Succeeds Act plan.
Social and Emotional Learning/Student and Teacher Wellness
The Region 9 Comprehensive Center supported the Illinois State Board of Education in a variety of wellness-related work, including facilitating convenings, gathering and analyzing wellness initiative data, and structuring the agency’s social-emotional learning (SEL) standards revision process. The Region 9 team worked with districts in Illinois and Iowa to facilitate a community of practice for instructional specialists related to implementation of SEL practices.
Teacher Recruitment and Retention
The Center also worked with the Illinois State Board of Education to conduct stakeholder interviews and focus groups to identify common challenges related to educator recruitment and retention in Illinois. The Region 9 team developed resource briefs that outline common challenges related to recruitment and retention of educators from underrepresented backgrounds.
