The Digest

Doing better by children: Studying ways to fully leverage ideas and findings from research

“Research can contribute to better child outcomes, but waiting for ideas and findings from research to make their way onto the desks of decision-makers is a flawed approach. We need strategies that intentionally nurture conditions that support the use of …

Kim DuMont

Doing better by children: Studying ways to fully leverage ideas and findings from research

Studying the use of research evidence: In conversation with Program Officer Anupreet Sidhu

“I think all researchers who produce research to improve youth outcomes should think about the ways that their research can be taken up and used. Who are these findings meant for and who are the decision-makers that would benefit from …

Lenore Neier

Studying the use of research evidence: In conversation with Program Officer Anupreet Sidhu

Community-engaged research to reduce inequality: The Institutional Challenge Grant

“Our goal as a grantmaker is not merely to fund high-quality research studies, but to shape the environment for research and its relationship to policy and practice. The Institutional Challenge Grant is central to this strategy.”

Institutional Challenge Grant Task Force

and Adam Gamoran

Community-engaged research to reduce inequality: The Institutional Challenge Grant

Interview with an Institutional Challenge Grantee: How can you support community-engaged scholarship within an academic discipline?

“Collaborating with our partners, we’ve crafted a vision of the world where marginalized and disadvantaged members of society feel seen, heard, understood, and prioritized.”

Foundation Staff

Interview with an Institutional Challenge Grantee: How can you support community-engaged scholarship within an academic discipline?

Sustainable change: Reflections on the inaugural Institutional Challenge Grant

“As our grant comes to a close, we are reflecting on the evolution of our research-practice partnership and our plans for the future. We have launched efforts to broaden our networks of engaged researchers and research-informed practitioners within our respective …

Laura Tach

and Anna Steinkraus

Sustainable change: Reflections on the inaugural Institutional Challenge Grant

Issue 8

Building Evidence Systems to Integrate Implementation Research and Practice in Education

Whether framed as a problem of practice or research use, understanding implementation is critical for identifying and redressing the inequitable distribution of resources, facilitators, and barriers in our systems, which give rise to disparities in student outcomes.

Norma Ming

Building Evidence Systems to Integrate Implementation Research and Practice in Education

Emergency Exits: Avenues for New Research to Improve Youth Outcomes After COVID

As the effects of COVID linger on, researchers have a crucial role to play in cataloging them. Even more important, by developing knowledge about exactly who is affected and how, researchers can provide evidence that points the way toward successful …

Anya Kamenetz

Emergency Exits: Avenues for New Research to Improve Youth Outcomes After COVID

Learning Across Contexts: Bringing Together Research on Research Use and Implementation Science

The fields of implementation science and the study of research use in policy and practice travel on many of the same roads and share similar goals, chief among which is …

Lauren Supplee

Allison Metz

and Annette Boaz

Learning Across Contexts: Bringing Together Research on Research Use and Implementation Science

Reducing Educational Inequality After the COVID-19 Pandemic: What Do We Know, and What Research Do We Need?

Today, as the pandemic recedes, its effects are still with us, in education as well as in other domains. We have considerable knowledge about how to respond to growing inequality, …

and Richard Murnane

Reducing Educational Inequality After the COVID-19 Pandemic: What Do We Know, and What Research Do We Need?

Issue 7

Contending with Complexity: How Two Grantees are Approaching Studies of Mechanisms

Former William T. Grant Scholar Mesmin Destin is an associate professor at Northwestern University in the Department of Psychology and the School of Education & Social Policy. Rob Smith is a research grantee and professor of sociology, immigration studies, and public …

Opening the Black Box: Overcoming Obstacles to Studying Causal Mechanisms in Research on Reducing Inequality

Although many of today’s disparities have their roots in policies or actions initiated generations ago, there is much we can do today. And new research on causal mechanisms can …

Research on Research Use: Building Theory, Empirical Evidence, and a Global Field

Research can play a vital role in pointing policymakers, civil society, and communities toward a stronger, more sustainable, and just world. But getting there means building on what we know about what it takes for research to be useful, used, …

Strengthening Methods and Improving Collaboration: The Use of Research Evidence Methods Repository

Introducing an open, centralized resource to help strengthen methods and enable greater collaboration among researchers studying the use of research evidence in policy and practice.

Drew Gitomer

and Kevin Crouse

Strengthening Methods and Improving Collaboration: The Use of Research Evidence Methods Repository

Issue 6

Can Policy Interventions Reduce Inequality? Looking Beyond Test Scores for Evidence

Learning how particular government policies affect families requires well-designed and well-coordinated mixed-methods research that pays attention to a variety of indicators of success.

Richard Murnane

Can Policy Interventions Reduce Inequality? Looking Beyond Test Scores for Evidence

Forging Connections: Grantee Experiences Reaching Audiences Beyond the Academic World

After five years of supporting research on reducing inequality, we’re proud of the body of work that grantees are producing and we’re inspired by their efforts to inform thought and action beyond the university gates.

Lenore Neier

Forging Connections: Grantee Experiences Reaching Audiences Beyond the Academic World

Identifying and Testing Strategies to Improve the Use of Antiracist Research Evidence through Critical Race Lenses

Encouraging the use of evidence from antiracist research requires thinking differently about what is relevant, how antiracist perspectives are built into routines for using research, and what it means to …

Fabienne Doucet

Identifying and Testing Strategies to Improve the Use of Antiracist Research Evidence through Critical Race Lenses

Test Scores are Only a Symptom: The Challenge of Seeking to Close Educational Gaps While Ignoring Historical Legacies

In the quest to address income inequality and intergenerational poverty, it is critical to seek answers to the questions “What works?” and “For whom?” Education is a prime area in …

Lashawn Richburg-Hayes

Test Scores are Only a Symptom: The Challenge of Seeking to Close Educational Gaps While Ignoring Historical Legacies

Issue 5

Centering the Margins: (Re)defining Useful Research Evidence Through Critical Perspectives

Improving the use of research evidence will require ensuring usefulness—and use—toward ends that are congruent with the goals and visions that marginalized communities have for their self-determined benefits.

Fabienne Doucet

Centering the Margins: (Re)defining Useful Research Evidence Through Critical Perspectives

No Small Matters: Reimagining the Use of Research Evidence From A Racial Justice Perspective

We can no more afford methodologically rich research studies that lack racial consciousness than we can afford racially conscious studies that lack methodological rigor.

David Kirkland

No Small Matters: Reimagining the Use of Research Evidence From A Racial Justice Perspective

Shifting the Lens: Why Conceptualization Matters in Research on Reducing Inequality

To begin shifting the underlying structures of inequality, scholars can harness the power of rigorous research to produce innovative, ground-breaking research that might further upend the narratives that inequality is inevitable or explained by individual differences.

Jenny Irons

Shifting the Lens: Why Conceptualization Matters in Research on Reducing Inequality

The Long Shadow: Considering How Racism Shapes Justice System Inequality and Efforts to Disrupt it

What is needed is not a one-off intervention, but an informed understanding of how racism makes its way into encounters between youth and police and a commitment to addressing the …

Nikki Jones

The Long Shadow: Considering How Racism Shapes Justice System Inequality and Efforts to Disrupt it

Issue 4

A New Agenda for Eliminating Racial Inequality in the United States: The Research We Need

A genuine confrontation with racial inequality will require a new way of thinking that challenges the structural roots of racial disadvantage and the consequences of generations of anti-Black discriminatory policies.

William Darity

A New Agenda for Eliminating Racial Inequality in the United States: The Research We Need

Once More from the Top: Examining Macro-Social Structures of Inequality to Improve Youth Outcomes

In this essay, Tim Smeeding discusses how new research may aim toward finding policy solutions that disrupt the larger foundations of inequality in the United States in order to improve …

Timothy M. Smeeding

Once More from the Top: Examining Macro-Social Structures of Inequality to Improve Youth Outcomes

Reframing Evidence-Based Policy to Align with the Evidence

In this essay, Kim DuMont urges advocates for evidence-based policy to attend to the evidence on getting evidence used, and calls on researchers to test new models that take into account the social side of evidence use.

Kim DuMont

Reframing Evidence-Based Policy to Align with the Evidence

Research on reducing inequality: Why programs and practices matter, even in an unequal society

Ultimately, with an eye toward the root of the challenge, approaches to reducing inequality at the branch can lead to change in the long run.

David Yeager

Research on reducing inequality: Why programs and practices matter, even in an unequal society

The Rewards of Studying the Use of Research Evidence

Here, two distinguished researchers and past grantees of the Foundation describe why they chose to study the use of research evidence and how that work has benefitted from and contributed to their respective fields of study.

Issue 3

A Piece of the Action: Three District Leaders on Fostering Research Use

What are the actual conditions and processes of research use in school districts?

Billy Hunter

A Piece of the Action: Three District Leaders on Fostering Research Use

The Next Big Leap for Research-Practice Partnerships: Building and Testing Theories to Improve Research Use

Research-practice partnerships and RPP funders are positioned to move education into the next frontier, but to do so they will need to complement their attention to evidence production with an …

Vivian Tseng

The Next Big Leap for Research-Practice Partnerships: Building and Testing Theories to Improve Research Use

Advancing Learning Opportunities for English Learners: The Next Generation of Research

When we zero in on knowledge-based competencies, we find that language and knowledge are two sides of the same coin—ideas and concepts can’t be separated from the language used to represent them.

Nonie Lesaux

Advancing Learning Opportunities for English Learners: The Next Generation of Research

Engaging English Learners with Rigorous Academic Content: Insights from Research on Tracking

Lessons about mitigating the effects of tracking on inequality may point the way toward reducing inequality for English learners.

Engaging English Learners with Rigorous Academic Content: Insights from Research on Tracking

Issue 2

Meditations on Language and Learning: ESSA in Policy and Practice

As we approach policy changes that present important opportunities for researchers, I would like to share some “meditations” about language, as well as the worlds of education policy and practice, which I have repeated to myself over the years as …

Kenji Hakuta

Meditations on Language and Learning: ESSA in Policy and Practice

Integrating Rigor and Relevance in Research: Three Questions

How can research to improve the lives of youth in the United States also benefit the other 95 percent of the world’s youth? Questions like this highlight the urgency of bringing the highest levels of rigor to relevant research.

Hirokazu Yoshikawa

Integrating Rigor and Relevance in Research: Three Questions

Toward New Research and New Data

Strengthening practice and policy in state and local education systems will be an essential part of reducing inequality for young people in the coming years. And a fundamental piece of the effort to raise student outcomes will be building and …

Vivian Louie

Learning English in the Era of the Every Student Succeeds Act

By moving accountability systems from the federal to the state level and highlighting the importance of English learner progress in accountability, ESSA provides an opportunity to develop state accountability systems that better support the learning of ELs. Assessments and data …

Vivian Louie

Learning English in the Era of the Every Student Succeeds Act

Promoting Research That Is Both Rigorous and Relevant

We recognize that no single effort will be transformative, but we hope that our collective efforts as researchers, research funders, universities, and professional associations can support research that, over the long term, improves the lives of young people.

Digest, Issue 1: Summer 2016

and Vivian Tseng

Promoting Research That Is Both Rigorous and Relevant

Issue 1

Harnessing Discovery: Writing a Strong Mixed-Methods Proposal

For researchers and their teams, it’s important to appreciate that when seeking to incorporate mixed methods, the forms and challenges vary from project to project.

Eli Lieber

Harnessing Discovery: Writing a Strong Mixed-Methods Proposal

Digest, Issue 1: Summer 2016

Moving from Data to Research to Policy: What Does it Take?

The potential of big data is multiplied when researchers are able to use it to produce work that is relevant to the leaders who make decisions about policies and practices that affect young people.

Kim DuMont

and Timothy M. Smeeding

Moving from Data to Research to Policy: What Does it Take?

Digest, Issue 1: Summer 2016

Investing in Tools to Create Evidence and Improve Policy

A key approach in our efforts to support impactful research is to invest in the development of tools that enhance the work of many researchers engaged in a common enterprise.