EXPLORING SCHOOL CLIMATE WITH NNERPP MEMBERS

We take you through a tour of the different ways research-practice partnerships in NNERPP are studying school climate, showcasing the many variations this type of work can take in a partnership setting by featuring work from Cleveland, Redwood City, CA, New York City, Iowa City, Baltimore, and Chicago.

SPOTLIGHT: AN RPP APPROACH TO COMPUTER SCIENCE WORK

In the rapidly developing Computer Science field, an RPP approach to the work can be particularly powerful, write Stacey Sexton, Rebecca Zarch, and Leigh Ann DeLyser, introducing the RPPforCS community which unites and facilitates learning among CS RPPs.

IMPROVING IMPROVEMENT: INTRODUCTION

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.

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 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.