Karen Morris

Karen Morris has been involved in the field of education in Chicago for more than forty years.  She served in the Chicago Public Schools since 1964 as a teacher, reading coordinator, guidance counselor, assistant principal and principal.  Karen retired from the Chicago Public Schools in 2001, and helped establish the Scaling Up Best Practice and Focused Instruction model for SLI, where she continues to serve as the Director of Educational Programs.

As the Principal of the Maria Saucedo Scholastic Academy, a predominately Hispanic/low income Chicago Public School, from 1985 to 2001, Karen led school improvement efforts that resulted in substantial increases in student achievement in both reading and mathematics. Karen attributes much of this success to the implementation of the shared leadership and high-quality teacher and parent development programs that were key to Saucedo’s improvement efforts.

In the sixteen years that she was a principal, Karen acted as a mentor for new principals in the LIFT (Leadership Initiative Transformation) program and a coach for aspiring principals through LAUNCH (the Leadership Academy and Urban Network for Chicago). She also served was a probation manager for schools that were not meeting system-wide goals in reading and mathematics. As a retiree, she continues to work in new principal preparation in the ED.D. Urban Leadership program at the University of Illinois-Chicago.

Karen has received several awards for her service as a principal and peer leader.  She received the Citizens School Committee Elementary Principals Award in1987, the Whitman Award for Excellence in Educaitonal Managementin 1990, the Principal of Excellence Award in 1993, the Master Principal Waward in 1996 and the School Leadership Award in 1997.

Karen Morris earned a B.S. in Elementary Education form Western Michigan University and an M.Ed. in Instructional Leadership from the University of Illinois-Chicago.  She has also done post-graduate work in Instructional Supervision through the University of California-Los Angeles.  Karen was awarded national certification as a principal mentor by the National Elementary Principals Association in June, 2005.  Karen has contributed articles, reviews and research to a number of journals and other professional publications, and is the co-author of School Leadership in Times of urban Reform (Erlbaum, 2001).