What is the role of university researchers in improving public education systems? As members of an applied field, effective education scholars explore beyond their labs and university campuses. The idea that educational research should impact policy and practice, and that researchers can partner with practitioners to facilitate this work, is not new. Yet, ongoing collaborative work poses new challenges, and education researchers have an important role to play in directly supporting the democratic, economic, and social justice goals of public education systems. One way to engage in this work is through collaborative evaluation with state education agencies.
As researchers of school resource allocation and college access, we are collectively interested in understanding how educational policies use limited resources to promote student success in high school and beyond. Our article in a recent issue of The Educational Forum, titled “Do early warning systems help high school students stay on track for college? Mixed methods evaluation of the Ninth Grade Success Initiative,” examines the impacts and implementation challenges of one such policy that was implemented in five high schools in Washington State. Ninth Grade Success (NGS) is a dropout prevention program that emerged from research showing the importance of the ninth grade year. NGS involves forming a Success Team of teachers, administrators, and staff who, with support from a coach, track ninth grader data, identify students who need support, and develop interventions. The backstory on how this paper came to be highlights the value of collaborations among researchers and state education agencies to assess, inform, and scale meaningful educational change.
In the fall of 2019, we had an opportunity to meet with leaders in Washington’s state education agency, the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, or OSPI, to participate in an early planning meeting for NGS. We initially agreed to join a one-hour Zoom meeting to provide insights into a potential evaluation plan for a pilot project. What grew from that initial meeting was long-standing mutually beneficial and rewarding collaboration with multiple team leaders in OSPI as well as a partnering non-profit educational organization, Stand for Children, which provides external coaching support in schools.
In our collaboration with OSPI, we meet through video conference every two weeks and maintain close communication. The first meeting of each month is an all-hands collaborative with state agency partners, external coaches, and policy advocates, to discuss progress on implementation and issues arising with data access for evaluation. Every other meeting is a direct one-on-one with our state agency partners, discussing initial findings from qualitative data analysis, going over real-time dashboard student outcome data from the prior semester or term, and reviewing student outcome data from prior years.
As our ongoing evaluation now enters its fifth year, we have further developed communication and data sharing systems that have streamlined our work. We have participated in legislative work sessions, provided testimony during legislative session, presented findings at regional and national conferences, and directly shared insights with coaches and practitioners. State agency leaders allocated federal stimulus funds to sustain the expansion of this program, and we are now informing efforts to secure state funding support. Meanwhile, we re-designed the Policy Evaluation course in our master’s degree program at the University of Washington as a quarter-long case study of this collaborative evaluation project, featuring Kefi Andersen and other guest speakers from OSPI as well as other stakeholders involved in implementation. Our manuscript is co-authored with our OSPI collaborators, Kefi Andersen and Matt Frizzell, in recognition of their intellectual input and contributions to the study’s framing, design, and interpretations. Co-authoring this manuscript with our OSPI collaborators was a natural decision, and we were honored to share this work with the Educational Forum readership. Please read our article which describes the evaluation of the initial year 1 pilot and be sure to watch out for additional ongoing evaluation work.
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Dr. David Knight is Associate Professor of Education Finance and Policy and co-Director of the Education Policy Analytics Lab at the University of Washington College of Education. His research focuses on the economics of education and school finance. He studies educational systems through the lens of economic theory and methodologies. David’s work emphasizes distributive justice, racial/ethnic and socioeconomic finance equity, and policies aimed at reducing inequality and addressing longstanding racial and income-based disparities in educational opportunity. David is a Fellow at the National Education Policy Center and a member of the Board of Trustees of the National Education Finance Academy. |
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Dr. Julia Duncheon is Associate Professor of Educational Policy at the University of Washington College of Education. Her work explores issues around college access and equity for students from historically underrepresented populations. I examine policies and practices designed to facilitate students' preparation for, transition into, and persistence in higher education, with a focus on the interplay between structure and agency. Her research is published in Review of Educational Research, American Educational Research Journal, American Journal of Education, and Teachers College Record, and has received media attention in National Public Radio and Inside Higher Education.
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