The Significance and the Use of Research Based on 10 Years of Partnership: The Stanford–San Francisco Unified School District Partnership

• In Event: The Promise of a Long-Term Commitment to Research Practice Partnerships in Education

Abstract

Purpose: After ten years, the leaders supporting the Stanford University Graduate School of Education (GSE)–San Francisco Unified School District (Stanford-SFUSD) Partnership wanted to understand if the partnership was achieving its intended goals. Therefore, this study explores: 1) What have researchers learned in this partnership that advances theory? 2) What have school district leaders learned in this partnership that was used in decisions to rationalize changes to policies and practices in hopes of improving student outcomes?

Framework: The Stanford-SFUSD Partnership is a research practice partnership defined by Coburn, Penuel, and Geil (2013) as a long-term, mutualistic, strategic relationship between researchers and practitioners using original analyses to examine practitioners’ problems of practice. The partnership supports Stanford researchers and SFUSD school district leaders working together on research that is both methodologically sound and cultivates the mindset of being stronger by working together. The Stanford-SFUSD Partnership is firmly rooted in the concept that research when conducted in partnership can be both rigorous and relevant (Stein and Coburn, 2010; Tseng and Nutley, 2014).

Methods: This study uses three different research methods: 1) analysis of documents related to the Stanford GSE’s program that awards grants for faculty to work with SFUSD on research projects. The documents include selection criteria and notes from the decision-making process for selecting among the proposed projects; 2) cases selected from a sample of projects that were awarded grant funding. Cases studies aim to understand the phenomena when Stanford-SFUSD research findings are used in decisions by SFUSD leaders by analyzing data from our observations documented in meeting notes as partnership participants and from school district documentation; 3) a literature review of articles and white papers by Stanford researchers working in partnership with SFUSD from 2009-2018 published in peer-reviewed journals and in internal reports provided to the school district; Note, the authors’ positions as a school district leader, university researcher and partnership director in what Peshkin (1991) calls our “Subjective I’s,” have the potential to influence the data we analyze.

Results: We will present findings on three topics: English learners, mathematics instruction, and early education. For example, two findings about English Learners are: By middle school, students still classified as English learners are limited not just by their own achievement and language development, but by institutional constraints (e.g. scheduling and access to course content (Umansky, 2016a; Umansky, 2016b). Over time, bilingual programs accelerated English learner student achievement at a faster rate than English only programs. This is especially true for Latino students (Umansky and Reardon, 2014; Valentino and Reardon, 2015). The case study will describe how the district used these findings to justify spreading their bilingual program, and de-tracking course pathways in middle school.

Significance: There have been studies from participant observers about research practice partnerships (Roderick, et al., 2009; Lopez-Turley and Stevens, 2015). However, there is little research on the effects research practice partnerships have on educational theories as well as improvements in policies, practices and student outcomes (Coburn and Penuel, 2016).

Authors

• Hilda Borko, Stanford University

• Ritu Khanna, San Francisco Unified School District

• Laura Wentworth, California Education Partners