July 2021
“We had to ask ourselves: How do we respond to complexity that was always there but is now heightened? What knowledge is relevant in practice, and how do we produce that knowledge for use in the practice world?”
President’s Comment: Effective Programs are Not Enough, We Need Structural Change to Reduce Inequality
Since 2015, the William T. Grant Foundation has funded research on programs, policies, and practices that reduce inequality in youth outcomes. We have supported a diverse pool of highly accomplished researchers, including some who have produced affirmative causal evidence on specific ways to reduce inequality (and others who have provided equally valuable evidence on what […]
The team will conduct a series of macro-simulation exercises to investigate the effects of different configurations of a Black reparations, which will gauge not only the impact on the economic well-being of Black children and their families, but also the economy-wide ramifications for all Americans.
By bringing together university researchers with practitioners and community members, RPPs in education help to ensure that the processes and outcomes of research directly enrich educational practice and policy in ways that community members most desire.
Even to a casual observer, the research-practice partnerships “tent” has expanded considerably since the seminal 2013 paper by Coburn et al., Research-Practice Partnerships: A Strategy for Leveraging Research for Educational Improvement in School Districts.
RPPs have the potential to forge relationships that lead to new possibilities for racial justice. However, they also run the risk of reproducing the very inequities that many claim to challenge. To avoid the second scenario, we need to confront racial injustice directly and build RPPs that are committed to dismantling it.
Research-Practice Partnerships in Education: The State of the Field expands on the 2013 white paper Research-Practice Partnerships: A Strategy for Leveraging Research for Educational Improvement in School Districts by scanning the current landscape of partnerships, identifying points of variation, and outlining shared principles.