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We are proud to announce four new research grants for studies on reducing inequality. Approved at the Foundation’s October Board meeting, these awards will help build theory and empirical evidence on promising strategies for reducing inequality in the outcomes of young people ages 5-25 in the U.S. Sign up for the Foundation’s mailing list to […]

Newcomer unaccompanied youth in the U.S. The United States defines an unaccompanied minor as an immigrant who is under the age of 18 and not in the care of a parent or legal guardian at the time of entry, who is left unaccompanied after entry, and who does not have a family member or legal […]

On October 28th, two panels of illustrious scholars participated in a virtual forum, From Understanding Inequality to Reducing Inequality. At the center of this dynamic forum was the Special Collection of Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World, which explores ways for social scientists to move beyond describing and quantifying the problem of inequality and […]

We’re pleased to announce that Hirokazu Yoshikawa has joined the Foundation’s Board of Trustees, effective October 2021. Yoshikawa is the Courtney Sale Ross Professor of Globalization and Education at NYU Steinhardt and a University Professor at NYU, and Co-Director of the Global TIES for Children center at NYU. He is a community and developmental psychologist […]

Although there are dots that have yet to be linked explicitly, the connection between fee-for-service reimbursement models and supply-induced demand is the sort of explanation one should expect to find when looking for the connection between system structure and disparity.

We are proud to announce six new research grants, including four to support studies on reducing inequality in youth outcomes and two support studies on improving the use of research evidence. Approved at the Foundation’s June Board meeting, these grants will build theory and empirical evidence in our two focus areas. Sign up for the […]

Community-engaged research is not the norm for social scientists. When it comes to faculty career advancement criteria, research institutions typically value studies that advance the field and generate publications more than collaborative knowledge-building that advances the public good. But research designed to address real-time policy and practice problems can be as methodologically rigorous as any […]

“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?”

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.