David Hersh and Jennifer Ash introduce a new series that will focus on leveraging the power of research-practice partnerships to build schools’, districts’, and states’ capacity to improve and share lessons about bridging the research-practice divide drawn from the work of two continuous improvement networks.
Extra Articles
Post Type Description
WHAT IS YOUR DISTRICT’S COLLEGE ENROLLMENT RATE? …IT DEPENDS [PART II]
Continuing our examination of college enrollment rates across four of the largest urban school districts in the U.S. (New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston), we take a closer look at how ‘college enrollment’ is defined across several RPP reports and discuss the ramifications of different definitions both on policymaking and any attempted comparisons of enrollment rates across studies/districts.
THE IMPORTANCE OF EXPANDING EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH PARTNERSHIPS WITH COMMUNITY
Sarah Winchell Lenhoff, Larry Simmons, and Christine Bell describe how their RPP actively partners with the community from conception to evaluation through community-based participatory action research, and discuss the unique perspective and important contributions the community brings to RPP work.
THE VALUE OF ENGAGEMENT: HOW TO SET UP AND FACILITATE AN EFFECTIVE PARTNERSHIP MEETING
Following a few key steps when setting up partnership meetings can make a big difference for engaging participants and ensuring effectiveness, write Felicia Hurwitz and Joanne Pfleiderer, who propose a number of recommendations for planning and facilitating RPP meetings that bring stakeholders together to learn about, strategize, and tackle important issues.
WHAT IS YOUR DISTRICT’S COLLEGE ENROLLMENT RATE? …IT DEPENDS [PART I]
Examining college enrollment rates across four of the largest urban school districts in the U.S. (New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston), we go deep into how the seemingly straightforward question “What’s your district’s college enrollment rate?” can have vastly different answers depending on who’s asking, why they’re asking, and how they’re asking – all of which makes for different policy implications, and for findings that may not lend themselves to direct comparison.
ATTENDING TO ISSUES OF EQUITY IN EVALUATING RESEARCH-PRACTICE PARTNERSHIP OUTCOMES
Erin Henrick, Steven McGee, and Bill Penuel discuss how RPPs can address equity goals prioritized by their partnership using the “5 dimensions of RPP effectiveness” framework and demonstrate how by working towards each dimension of effectiveness, those engaged in partnership work are also inherently working towards equity-focused goals.
DEVELOPING BRIEFS THAT BRIDGE THE GAP IN UNDERSTANDING AMONG RESEARCHERS AND PRACTITIONERS / POLICYMAKERS
To effectively engage multiple audiences with research findings and implications, an initial conversation with the researcher, structured around the key takeaways that policymakers or practitioners should understand from a particular study, can be a crucial first step towards developing a nontechnical research brief, write Jessica Holter and Jeff Archer, sharing their partnership’s process.
HOW TO LAUNCH A RESEARCH-PRACTICE PARTNERSHIP
Sharing their experiences around getting a partnership off the ground, Michèle Foster, Matt Linick, Michael Strambler, Joanna Meyer, Clare Irwin, and George Coleman provide insights on navigating this sometimes daunting and seldomly straightforward task.
EXPLORING ENGLISH LEARNERS’ TIME TO PROFICIENCY THROUGH TWO RESEARCH-PRACTICE PARTNERSHIPS
We bring together work on English learners, highlighting two studies done by NNERPP members – in Philadelphia, PA, and New Mexico – that assess students’ progress towards English proficiency. Findings around initial English (and Spanish, in one of the studies) proficiency, around students’ time to proficiency, around which students were more likely to reach English proficiency, and around the relationship between English/Spanish proficiency and other measures of student achievement can help inform district and state efforts in understanding how best to support English learners.
WHAT ARE THE DIMENSIONS OF DISTRICT CAPACITY THAT ENABLE EFFECTIVE EVIDENCE-BASED DECISION-MAKING?
With partnerships often advocating for and working towards supporting evidence-based decision-making, Norma Ming highlights the need for a better understanding of ‘research use capacity’ and the full scope of roles, processes, and evidence types involved in practitioners’ effective use and generation of evidence.
TRANSITIONING TO KINDERGARTEN: WHAT 3 RPPs FIND ON DISTRICT-LED PROGRAMS
Taking a closer look at the connections across early childhood education research produced by three NNERPP members – in Portland, OR, Madison, WI, and San Francisco, CA – we examine different versions of district-led kindergarten transition programs and what the partnerships’research tells us about how each program approaches the preparation of students for kindergarten. We also highlight policy implications and use in practice of the research studies. Bringing together these related studies allows insight into the spectrum of possibilities for how a district might approach the transition to kindergarten and illuminates how partnership research can impact such efforts.
MEASURING THE VALUE OF A RESEARCH-PRACTICE PARTNERSHIP
In response to one of the RPP field’s most pressing challenges – quantifying the positive impact of research-practice partnerships – Faith Connolly presents the comprehensive approach her partnership takes to capturing the essence of its value.
