District-Charter Partnerships in New York City: A Model for Instructional Practice Sharing

• In Event: Lessons Learned About Instructional Practice Sharing Between District and Charter Schools

Abstract

Objectives. This paper examines the programs the NYC Department of Education (DOE) created to facilitate and support meaningful collaboration across the district and charter sector, known as the District-Charter Partnership (DCP) initiative. DCP involves several partnerships at the school, district, and systems level aimed at facilitating the exchange of innovative instructional ideas across sectors to increase capacity for all New York City public schools. This paper will look at the implementation of DCP in Year 1. It highlights promising practices for structuring and fostering deep and meaningful cross-sector collaboration around instructional best practice, as well the challenges and early outcomes of these efforts.

Perspective. Charters were initially intended to serve as labs of innovation that could transfer new, promising practices to district schools. However, as charters expanded, collaboration was often overshadowed by competition between the two sectors (Wohlstetter et. al., 2013; Finn et. al, 2016). This study will shed light on the DOE’s efforts to encourage cross-sector instructional sharing and relationship-building to improve system-wide teaching and learning, and emphasize that, working collaboratively, district and charters can enhance practices for all children.

Methods and data sources. Evaluators used a mixed-methods approach to understand first year DCP implementation. Researchers administered surveys to program participants, led focus groups and semi-structured interviews with participants and DOE facilitators, and conducted field observations of program activities, including school intervisitations and collaborative meetings. Evaluators analyzed data across sources in order to determine themes.

Results. Evaluators will share findings related to the key components and challenges of instructional practice-sharing across sectors.

Key components:
- Engaging in open and honest conversations about district-charter collaboration and differences at the outset.
- Developing deep cross-sector relationships, where participants can sensitively express debate and feedback, take risks, and share with others without fear of rejection.
- Ensuring equal status across school teams, i.e. emphasizing that every school – district and charter – has something to share and something to learn

Challenges:
- Building meaningful relationships and communication structures between district and charter staff that continue between formal collaboration activities
- Transferring systems, policies, and practices between schools that have different levels of autonomy, accountability, and, in some cases, funding.
- Different levels of school capacity around collaborating with others, in terms of levels of expertise in facilitation, transparency, willingness to accept feedback, and overall buy-in.

Significance.
There is an emerging research base highlighting the structures, systems, and processes necessary to support interschool collaboration (Atkinson et. al., 2007; Connolly et. al., 2016). To date, however, this research has not focused on the essential components of collaboration between district and charter schools. In this way, it does not take into account the complex dynamics involved in forging collaborative relationships across sectors, dynamics often affected by a history of competition and misconceptions. This study seeks to add to the research by codifying the elements that support cross-sector instructional practice sharing and the challenges that exist in this work. The study also seeks to provide strategies to other localities around how to structure effective district-charter collaboration initiatives.

Authors

• Jamie Alter Litt, New York City Department of Education

• Gwen A Fishel, New York City Department of Education

• April Gariepy, New York City Department of Education