Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Roundtable: Evidence and Action through Research-Practice Partnerships: Perspectives from State and District Leaders

(Education)

From prekindergarten through postsecondary and adult education, there is growing pressure for education leaders and providers to use evidence-based policies and practices. Although policy makers and practitioners may want to ground their decisions in evidence, the research they discover may seem disconnected from the questions they face on a daily basis. In response to this challenge, policy makers and practitioners at all levels are becoming more involved in research, not only through participating but also by formulating the questions and guiding the entire process. This intense involvement from the inception through the dissemination of research is helping to address local-, state-, and national-level questions about how to improve education services for all students.

During this roundtable, state and district representatives who have worked successfully in research partnerships will discuss their  experiences and lessons learned. The participants include:

• A former Executive Director of a state board of education. This individual led and managed the daily activities of an ongoing Researcher-Practitioner Partnership to evaluate services provided to the state’s lowest performing schools, and to provide relevant professional development to these schools’ teachers and principals.
• A Director of Research, Policy, and Practice in an urban school district. This individual oversees internally-led research projects, manages requests from external researchers, and is currently working on developing organizational structures and norms to consistently share research findings in ways that fit within a busy District environment.
• A state Director of Accountability for Adult Education. This individual represents the state in a researcher-practitioner partnership with an external firm to build capacity for using data to improve case management services for the state’s highest-need adult education participants.
• A former World Language & Dual Language Immersion Specialist for a state board of education. This individual spearheaded the design and implementation of Dual Language Immersion (DLI) programs that have been implemented widely throughout the state, and currently participates in a researcher-practitioner partnership to evaluate the programs’ effects.

The participants will discuss how they have collaborated with different organizational partners to identify and address an education issue or problem of high priority, including the processes by which they formed and maintained their partnerships, the issue or problem they needed to address, the barriers and opportunities that arose during the research process, and the ways that the collaboration helped their systems. The conversation will invite questions and reflections on the different forms that partnerships may take, and the various ways that different partners and partnerships have found to work together to generate evidence to support informed action.