KEY MILESTONES FOR ESTABLISHING A RESEARCH-PRACTICE-PLATFORM PARTNERSHIP

Research-practice-partnerships (RPPs) are “long-term collaboration[s] aimed at educational improvement or equitable transformation through engagement with research [that are] intentionally organized to connect diverse forms of expertise and shift power relations in the research endeavor to ensure that all partners have a say in the joint work” and can take myriad forms and variations in how they are structured (Farrell et al., 2021). At New York City Public Schools, the nation’s largest school district, strong partnerships with external organizations are essential for ensuring our students have access to high-quality instruction and materials, backed by robust evidence, to facilitate their learning. Because digital learning platforms have become an integral part of today’s classrooms, it makes sense that an RPP might include an education technology partner, making them a research-practice-platform partnership – or RPPP.

RPPPs –that is, partnerships between researchers, practitioners, and digital learning platform providers– are still a relatively recent addition to the RPP world. They are fostered by efforts such as SEERnet, funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences; SafeInsights, funded by the National Science Foundation; and the AIMS Collaboratory, funded by the Gates Foundation. Collectively, RPPPs nurtured by these networks create and expand the capacity of digital learning platforms (DLPs) to serve as research infrastructure, enabling equity-focused and rigorous education research. 

In this article, we explore what it means to establish and launch an RPPP, drawing from our experiences at NYC Public Schools. We reflect on the unique features of our efforts, how it straddles the line between partnership and collaborative project, and possible implications for partnering. We share these lessons learned through framing provided by the Milestones Guide for emerging RPPs, a self-directed guide developed by the National Network of Education Research-Practice Partnerships (NNERPP) with NNERPP members, which invites new RPPs to reflect on key milestones they might want to prioritize in year one of their partnership. Join us as we explore what it might mean to work in and through this emerging RPPP structure.

ABOUT OUR PARTNERSHIP

Our RPPP is the NYC Partnership for Math Equity, which was catalyzed by a grant specifying a project with a school district, a research organization, and a digital learning platform. New York City Public Schools’ math team and research office, research partners Metro Center’s Center for Policy, Research, and Evaluation, and The Research Alliance for New York City Schools at NYU Steinhardt, and Amplify, our digital learning platform partner, comprise the partnership. The partnership work is supported by a three-year grant from a foundation. This is our sole source of funding, though each organization provides in-kind contributions. The RPPP has been working to improve math teaching and learning with technology in grades 6-Algebra I over the past two years, with an emphasis on supporting students who have historically been marginalized in mathematics.

Coming out of the pandemic, disengagement and unfinished learning disproportionately affected Black and Latinx students and students experiencing poverty. NYC Partnership for Math Equity addresses these issues in middle-grade mathematics classrooms by supporting New York City Public Schools (NYCPS) teachers in implementing supplemental digital activities from Amplify Desmos Math that foster collaboration and discourse and provide entry points to key middle-grade mathematics content. Building on NYCPS’s investment in culturally responsive- sustaining mathematics education, the NYC Partnership for Math Equity centers engagement and inclusivity. It applies instructional improvement evidence that points to stronger outcomes when teachers are supported by learning to use curriculum materials, improving their content knowledge, understanding how students learn, and coaching to troubleshoot and discuss classroom implementation (Lynch, et al., 2019).

USING THE MILESTONES TOOL TO REFLECT ON LESSONS LEARNED

As we began our partnership work, we employed principles and used tools developed by NNERPP and other leaders in the RPP field to help guide us. In addition to being useful then, the tools continue to be insightful as we reflect on the lessons learned from the first year (and beyond) of our partnership – including reflections on whether the addition of a digital learning platform to an RPP might require different tools or perhaps revised versions. Here, we use the Milestones tool to help us organize our reflections on the lessons we learned and what those might mean going forward for us and others working in RPPPs.

“What Are the Essential Milestones New RPPs Might Work Towards in Their First Year?” is a guide intended to help teams in the initial phases of starting an RPP to navigate and prioritize suggested first-year RPP activities and goals. It was created by NNERPP with input from a group of research- and practice-side RPPers engaged in partnership work and with guidance from Beth Vaade and Sara Slaughter. The guide is divided into three parts, with Part 1 sharing key milestones an RPP may wish to prioritize, organized across three levels of suggested attention (strongly consider doing, nice to do, and leave for later). Part 2 shares potential challenges an RPP may encounter during its first year, organized across three levels of attention (watch out, be aware, relax). Part 3 shares a discussion protocol and self-reflection activity to provide a structure for RPP teams to discuss and prioritize Year 1 Milestones according to partnership need. 

In the first six months of our project, we attended to the seven key “strongly consider doing” milestones as well as the two “nice-to-do” milestones as we launched the partnership through a series of activities. These activities set us up for success. At the same time, we experienced many of the milestones’ “watch out” and “be aware” stumbling blocks. In reflecting on the milestones, we wonder whether some of the features of our partnership that make it more of a collaborative project (as opposed to a partnership), such as not having full-time partnership staff, a governance structure, or regularly scheduled all-hands meetings, led to some of the challenges we experienced. We also speculate that once we launched the partnership, we were not able to sustain some of the structures suggested by the Milestones Guide. 

Below, we organize our reflections on each of the seven key “strongly consider doing” milestones by highlighting some of the actions we took to attend to the given milestone and then briefly discussing our learnings related to those actions.

Cultivate trust among partners and attend + respond to power dynamics
Actions	Learnings
Held a series of hybrid and virtual all-hands meetings* *All involved staff from partner organizations attended; these initial meetings were key in building connections, developing a shared understanding of NYCPS’s approach to mathematics and of how the Amplify Desmos Math platform worked and generated data, and establishing other structures for this work, such as subcommittees.	Holding all-hands meetings allowed key staff from the partner organizations to get to know each other through the shared work of co-creating a vision, developing the learning priorities, and mapping out the work. This helped develop resilience when the inevitable happened, for example, the friction that arises when three partner organizations, with different organizational cultures and norms, work together. All-hands meetings served another critical purpose: clarifying respective roles and responsibilities within the partnership, establishing clear ownership of specific work components, identifying appropriate points of contact for questions or concerns, and delineating decision-making authority created a shared understanding of accountability structures. While not explicitly naming the power dynamics in the group, we attempted to address them through extensive norming, both in the ways we agreed to work together and in terms of our shared vision.
Co-create a shared vision with all partners
Actions	Learnings
Started a shared Theory of Action	Collaborators from all partners discussed and provided feedback on a Theory of Action drafted by staff from the research partner at an early all-hands meeting. The intention was to guide our work by spelling out the partnership's goals along with the activities that would lead to achieving the goals. However, as a group we neither finalized the initial Theory of Action, nor did we iterate on it as we moved forward; moreover, we did not use it in our dissemination or communications. A solidified and frequently revisited Theory of Action might have helped anchor the work of the partnership.
Co-develop learning priorities for the partnership's work
Actions	Learnings
Fine-tuned research questions as a team	The research partners shared overarching research questions and refined them based on the feedback of the all-hands group. Late into the first year, the research team – this time including some quantitative researchers – shared a draft quantitative analysis plan and related research questions addressed solely through quantitative data for discussion and review in the research subcommittee. This more detailed approach to sharing the draft analysis plan and actively soliciting input from all partners revealed important differences in how stakeholders understood the research goals and priorities, and their perspectives on appropriate data collection and analysis methods. Sharing detailed methodological plans early in the process exposed potential crucial conceptual misalignments that might otherwise have remained hidden until later stages, allowing the partnership to address these fundamental differences before they impacted the research implementation.
Identify + create feedback loops to support RPP health and shared goals
Actions	Learnings
None	We did not focus on this milestone. To be honest, it was a blind spot. Being new to this work, it was not something on our radar. Subsequent problems emerged that would likely have been prevented or at least ameliorated by having feedback loops in place to support RPP health and shared goals.
Initiate processes to establish data infrastructure
Actions	Learnings
Explored digital learning platform data	We collaboratively explored digital learning platform data at the beginning of the project, with a lens toward creating both a process and an export tool by which digital learning platform data could be more easily shared with researchers in alignment with federal, state, and local data privacy and security policies. This led to the development of a process map, uncovering which data could and could not be shared via an export tool, a data dictionary, and bringing in a secondary research partner with the established data infrastructure necessary for the analyses. The focus on digital learning platform data obscured issues that arose after the launch, including IRB requirements, legal aspects of data sharing agreements, multiple students using the same device, challenges analyzing engagement from clickstream data, and matching platform data with district administrative data.
Recruit or hire key personnel
Actions	Learnings
The platform partner was able to recruit and hire key personnel; the district and research partners encountered issues	The platform partner had flexibility to hire a project manager right away, while the research partner needed to wait until the funds were in hand to commit resources to hiring, causing delays in their ability to staff up the project. The district encountered internal obstacles to hiring full or part-time personnel due to restrictions on increasing headcount for projects funded for less than three years, and ultimately turned to a fellowship program to supplement staff efforts toward this project. We learned how critical it is to have dedicated staff to ensure strong collaboration and coordination. Funders may want to consider staffing constraints at different organizations as part of the grantmaking process, perhaps providing funding for longer-term projects and partnerships (i.e., beyond 3 years) that might allow more flexibility to add staff committed exclusively to the work.
Initiate funding discussions
Actions	Learnings
This partnership was funded by a private foundation grant to the district that was managed by an office dedicated to raising and administering philanthropic funds aligned with the strategic priorities of NYCPS	Executing subcontracts between the district and the research and platform partners took more time than anticipated, because of legal and contractual issues related to scopes of work and data sharing. Accounting for the time needed for contracting would help future projects.

Next, we briefly reflect on the two “nice-to-do” milestones that we also attended to.

Explore types of partnership governance structures that will be supportive of your team's relationship and partnering goals
Actions	Learnings
Established committees by topical area	Establishing committees by topical area helped jump-start the work. Some committees evolved over the past two years and some dissolved once the partnership was fully launched. However, we never returned to all-hands meetings after the launch and lacked governance structures that would have been supportive of the partnering goals, such as a leadership team with a representative from each of the partnering organizations. One attempt we made to course-correct was the launch of an “internal newsletter” to keep everyone in the partnership apprised of committee actions. Although this has helped with information dissemination, a more interactive format, such as regular meetings, would likely be beneficial; with this article in mind, we will try to schedule an all-hands meeting to ensure all partners are clear on the priorities as we head toward the end of the grant.
Identify and produce an early win that is meaningful
Actions	Learnings
Conducted a pilot in the first six months	With strong encouragement by our funder, we conducted a pilot in the first six months, as we were establishing the larger vision. This brought us together by doing, not just talking and planning, and yielded critical insights for the larger project. At the same time, effort invested in the spring pilot diminished our collective ability to simultaneously plan for the next school year.

USING THE MILESTONES TOOL TO REFLECT ON STUMBLING BLOCKS

We also used the stumbling blocks identified in the Milestones document to help guide us through our first year; in fact, one of the partners first brought the Milestones document to our attention as part of a difficult conversation about how delayed contracting was affecting staffing. Some brief observations we would like to highlight are below. 

Stumbling Block	Reflection
WATCH OUT
Lack of resources: money, people, data, time, capacity	The research partner surfaced the Milestones document as part of a conversation about the risks posed by the protracted contracting process. We had implemented many but not all of the milestones, and wished we had used this document more intentionally and earlier as we were applying for the grant. While we were able to recover from the challenges posed during the contracting process and to continue carrying out the work, our experiences confirm this stumbling block as an important one to watch out for.
Turnover in leadership/key staff	When the principal investigator left the research partner a little less than a year into the project, partnership structures established at the launch supported the transition. However, we lacked an onboarding strategy for those who joined after our launch; we suspect that led to some of the issues in coherence and focus we mention elsewhere in this article.
Issues with data access or quality	The exploration of platform data for research purposes was an important part of the partnership. It was only through accessing and conducting preliminary analyses that the research team could assess how to best use the data – and this was not fully possible until after the pilot. In addition, the complexity of the platform and the data generated from its use provided a steep learning curve for the researchers who needed to fully understand what data were available before thinking through how they might be used. This proved to be a tension early in the partnership.
BE AWARE
Political pressures	As we launched the partnership, the leader who had championed the project from the initial proposal stage left the district. Because the partnership was aligned with the district’s mathematics policies, including guidance on mathematics instructional shifts, district leaders remained committed to the work of the partnership despite this transition.
No clear vision	Because our partnership focused on one grant and one main project, our vision was relatively clear. However, each of the partners had a unique slice of the vision – math teaching and learning, implementation research, research with platform data, making data accessible for research. Along with not having overarching governance structures or RPPP feedback loops in place, this meant that at times, the work of smaller groups or subcommittees went in directions not fully aligned with the overall vision.
Struggle to create partnership culture	After the initial launch, participating staff were busy on their parts of the project. Partner organizations sometimes pursued project-related work, such as presentations, publications, and small additional projects, with little consultation from others. This may have been due to time constraints, differing priorities among partner organizations, or the “project” nature of the work; with more “partnership” structures in place, it may have been more intuitive for participants to consult and collaborate in all aspects of the joint work.

NEXT STEPS FOR SUPPORTING RPPPs

The Milestones document was helpful for organizing our reflections on the establishment and launch of our Research-Practice-Platform-Partnership, yielding valuable lessons for us as we consider our role in existing or new partnerships. We recommend it for anyone standing up a partnership or collaborative project with partnership vibes. Our reflections surfaced that for us, more structure, baked into the partnership from the beginning, may have helped yield a more efficient and smoother working relationship between partners.

Our RPPP was both complicated and enriched by including three organizations, each of which had at least two groups or divisions participating in the project. Our recommendations to others launching RPP(P)s include: 

• Make sure that if you create distributed leadership structures, like we did through creating topical area committees, you plan for the group to come back together regularly. 
• Focus on setting yourself up for success and creating alignment across partners’ priorities throughout the course of the partnership, not just early on.
• Focus on structures you can put into place, e.g., schedule health checks and goal checks, as part of the larger project plan.

Partnerships are complex. Creating a partnership with three (plus) organizations adds to the complexity. And when one partner is a digital learning platform, opportunities and complications are multiplied due to the different organizational structures and ways of working these organizations bring to the table. As we put the finishing touches on this article, we have not settled the question for ourselves about whether issues arose from having a third organization in the mix or if it was specific to the third partner being a digital learning platform. Some of our growing pains may have stemmed from the dual foci on the quantitative digital learning platform data and the qualitative classroom data; the novelty of the partnership structure; and the at-times more "project" than "partnership" feel of our collaboration. Looking ahead, we are curious to see how others might reflect on their experiences in RPPPs.

Given the many varieties of emerging RPPs such as ours, we would love to see the RPP field tackle what new or modified tools and supports might look like for RPPPs and other types of partnerships. One example is providing nuts-and-bolts supports that might contribute to understanding and creating governance structures among three partners and what health checks and goals conversations might look like (this new NNERPP Extra article provides helpful guidance on exactly that topic!). The Milestones document links to a wealth of information; we still found it challenging to sort through and pinpoint what exactly we should use and how to implement the resources. To that end we could have benefited from an RPP mentor or coach with experience in establishing, launching, and sustaining RPP(P)s, who could have gotten into the nitty gritty of negotiating data use policies among three partners along with navigating the messy reality of complex datasets.

The role of digital learning platforms in K-12 education will only continue to grow, as will the need for research related to these tools and produced in partnership with providers. We welcome a dialogue with other district staff engaging in similar projects, as well as those who develop tools and supports for RPPs.

Lauren Goldenberg is a Senior Director for Research and Evaluation at the Research & Policy Support Group and Anna Poole is a STEM Research Specialist at the Division of Curriculum & Instruction at New York City Public Schools.

References

Farrell, C.C., Penuel, W.R., Coburn, C., Daniel, J., & Steup, L. (2021). Research-practice partnerships in education: The state of the field. William T. Grant Foundation.

Lynch, K., Hill, H. C., Gonzalez, K. E., & Pollard, C. (2019). Strengthening the research base that informs STEM instructional improvement efforts: A meta-analysis. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 41(3), 260-293.

National Network of Education Research Practice Partnerships. (N.D.). Research-Practice Partnerships: Basics. NNERPP RPP Knowledge Clearinghouse. Webpage.

NOTE: The NYC Partnership for Math Equity receives grant funds for this work from the Gates Foundation. The findings and conclusions contained within are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect positions or policies of the Gates Foundation. The authors thank all the colleagues in the partnership and within NYC Public Schools who reviewed the article and provided valuable feedback.

Suggested citation: Goldenberg, L. B., & Poole, A. R. (2025). Key Milestones for Establishing a Research-Practice-Platform Partnership. NNERPP Extra, 7(2), 9-20. https://doi.org/10.25613/Q1F3-5450