Pierre P

What is the best college for elementary education in or near Illinois?

tenisghs

@ Pierre P

You may want to consider Loyola Univ Chicago, Univ of Illinois-Chicago, and Univ of Illinois-Urbana Champaign. They all have majors in elementary education in the state of Illinois. Other good programs near Illinois are Univ of Wisconsin-Madison, Indiana Univ-Bloomington and Michigan State Univ.

world changer

Indiana is supposed to be really good.

That said, if you're going after an education degree, I'd recommend staying in-state so you can get low tuition. There's no point in racking up tons of debt if you're going to be a teacher.

Treetopleaf

Illinois State offers a Professional Development School with a year long in-school experience with selected districts.

http://www.teachereducation.ilstu.edu/pds/

collegehelp

Vanderbilt is within 500 miles. That's pretty close. They are the best for teacher education.

missypie

By all means, Illinois State. It used to be "Illinois State Normal"....a Normal is a teacher's college. Huge El. Ed. department. Don't worry that the school itself isn't highly selective...an education degree from ISU is very well respected.

gd016

The programs in the Northwestern School of Education and Social Policy are some of the best programs offered at Northwestern at large and the school itself also ranks 7 in the nation for education at graduate level.

U of I in Urbana-Champaign is also excellent to my knowledge, and their graduate placement is superb.

Otherwise, here is also the other 9 in the top 10 for education in USNews:

1. Teacher’s College, Columbia University
2. Stanford University
3. Harvard University and Vanderbilt University
5. University of California – Los Angeles
6. University of Michigan
7. Northwestern University
8. University of California – Berkeley
9. University of Washington
10. University of Wisconsin

world changer

I'd do Illinois state or UIUC.

It's just not worth it to pay OOS.

tenisghs

@ Pierre P

As a Northwestern alum, I also concur that it's better to get your elementary education master's degree at an in-state school. The starting salaries are not worth an out-of-state or private school tuition and debt.

Dennis173

Northwestern all the way!

mom58

I wonder about this. First I wonder what makes a college elementary ed. program good-- focus on theory, focus on practice, focus on policy, something else. I'm sure different people answer that question differently, so they will choose different colleges-- at least if they can figure out what the strong points of the particular colleges are.

As far as starting salary not justifying cost of a private college-- well, that is probably true for many fields. And even if *starting* salary in a field is higher for people from elite colleges, it is isn't a given that lifetime earnings will stay ahead. Whatever the data, I suppose in fields that don't have set pay schedules a person can convince himself that he will be in the top 1- 5% for pay. That's hard to do when there is a set pay schedule for a school district.

There is something more or other than potential salary that keeps people going to private schools. It could be prestige, smaller classes, the possibility stretching oneself academically, being around people of similar academic caliber, similar values and beliefs (these last two are kind of anti-diversity), or any of a number of other things, of course including perceived quality.

So, for someone who can afford it, a private college can be a reasonable choice even if that person intends to go into a low-paying field. On the other hand, when choosing the best, it might matter that some state schools have historically had teacher training as their mission focus.