We are taking a short summer break this week from our regular posting schedule. In place of a typical post, we’ve put together a quick re-cap of the blog posts we’ve shared since May 8, organized by topic. We’ll see you back next week when we return with all new posts!
COLLEGE-RELATED RESEARCH
LOS ANGELES
Kyo Yamashiro describes several recent research projects undertaken by the Los Angeles Education Research Institute (@LAEdResearch), a research-practice partnership with the Los Angeles Unified School District (@LASchools). Among these, she highlights two recent reports that document college enrollment, persistence, and completion patterns in the district, and another that analyzes college readiness supports in Los Angeles. A two part-interview with Carol Alexander then follows: Part 1 discusses how the district used research to shape their initiatives around college readiness, while Part 2 discusses their use of research to improve college counseling supports.
NEW YORK CITY
Kristin Black previews findings from recent research by the Research Alliance for New York City Schools (@RANYCS) investigating rates of college access and success for New York City students over time. She also introduces a new four-part framework for how to describe the landscape in terms of college outcomes. Kevin Stump then reviews and comments on this research, and additionally proposes some next steps for how to change practice in light of the findings.
RESEARCH ON ACCELERATED COURSES
MINNESOTA
Lyzz Davis shares research findings from Minnesota for how accelerated courses (i.e., Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate, and state-sponsored postsecondary enrollment options (PSEO) programs) influence college readiness, persistence, and success for Minnesota’s high school students. Meredith Fergus then discusses how the partnership with Regional Educational Laboratory Midwest (@RELMidwest) changed practices at the Minnesota Office of Higher Education (@MnOfficeHiEd) and extended their capacity to be able to engage with their data in meaningful ways, particularly with their efforts to improve college readiness for their students.
GRESHAM-BARLOW SCHOOL DISTRICT (OR)
Nicole Ralston describes recent research the Multnomah County Partnership for Education Research (MCPER) conducted with one of the six school district partners that forms part of the collaboration, the Gresham-Barlow Public School District (@greshamschools), on district participation in Advanced Placement classes. Teresa Ketelson then follows up with how the district used the findings, documenting steps taken by the district as a direct result of the research, as well as key takeaways from their experiences working with an external research partner.
RPPs: LESSONS LEARNED
KENTUCKY
Michèle Foster shares the researcher perspective of three lessons learned while trying to launch a research-practice partnership between the University of Louisville and Jefferson County Public Schools in Kentucky. Krista Drescher-Burke then talks about the initial pilot study to be conducted within the partnership, which will focus on the social emotional learning benefits of out-of-school time programs.
MADISON (WI)
Dominique Bradley and Eric Grodsky share the researcher perspective for how the recent formation of a formal research-practice partnership between between the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Wisconsin Center for Education Research (WCER) and the Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) came to be, with their initial efforts focused on understanding the participation patterns and short term outcomes of four-year-old kindergarten (4K) at MMSD. Jaymes Pyne, Beth Vaade, and Andrew Staatz then follow up with the practice-side’s perspective on the value of the partnership, highlighting three key functions they hope the collaboration will fulfill.
OREGON
Vicki Nishioka shares six key lessons learned to build and maintain a successful research-practice partnership culled from a five-year collaboration studying disciplinary practices in Oregon schools between REL Northwest (@relnw) and the Oregon Leadership Network. Jon Bridges then highlights how the partnership was instrumental in helping his particular school district reduce exclusionary discipline practices and the steps taken to achieve their objectives.
RESEARCH ON TEACHER PREP PROGRAMS AND PROFESSIONAL LEARNING
STEM-FOCUSED
Melissa Dodson introduces the research conducted by the partnership between the American Institutes for Research (@Education_AIR) and UTeach (@uteachinstitute) in order to investigate the effectiveness of the university-based STEM teacher prep program; she additionally shares key findings. Kimberly Hughes then comments on these findings and shares the value of the partnership’s research efforts in contributing to the direct improvement of practice.
STATE-LEVEL (TN)
- Erin O’Hara and J. Edward Guthrie describe the initial launch of the recently formed Tennessee Education Research Alliance (@TNEdResAlliance), a partnership between Vanderbilt University and the Tennessee Department of Education (@TNedu), where practitioners, researchers, and policymakers came together for a two-day meeting to converse about and define problems of practice related to teacher professional learning. Nate Schwartz then explores how the practice-side of the partnership could integrate this research to support the scaling up of effective teacher professional learning across the entire state of Tennessee.