What are the conditions under which research-practice partnerships succeed?

Research-practice partnerships (RPPs) are long-term collaborations between researchers and practitioners aimed at educational improvement and transformation through engagement with research. Yet RPPs can be challenging to implement, and even long running RPPs experience bumps in their work together. Caitlin Farrell, Laura Wentworth, and Michelle Nayfack discuss what conditions helped school district leaders and researchers from the partnership between Stanford University and San Francisco Unified School District be more or less successful in influencing school district policies and practices, and they share recommendations on how to develop or support conditions for successful partnerships.

Making the Cut: The Effectiveness of Teacher Screening and Hiring in the Los Angeles Unified School District

Many schools and districts have considerable discretion when hiring teachers, yet little is known about how that discretion should be used. Using data from a new teacher screening system in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), we find that performance during screening, and especially performance on specific screening assessments, is significantly and meaningfully predictive of hired teachers’ evaluation outcomes, contributions to student achievement, attendance, and mobility. However, applicants’ performance on individual components of the screening process are differentially predictive of different teacher outcomes, highlighting challenges and potential trade-offs faced by districts during screening.

Under the Law: Favoring a religion or encouraging respect? A legal challenge to an antibullying program

When the San Diego Unified School District implemented an antibullying program in response to reports of bullying of Muslim students, a group of citizens complained that the program constituted an unconstitutional promotion of one religion. Julie Underwood discusses the resulting case, Citizens for Quality Education v. Barrera (S.D. Cal 2018) and explains what it teaches educators about the appropriate responses to religion-based bullying.

A mixed-methods study: Districts’ implementation of language classification policies and the implications for male, Hispanic, and low-income middle school students

California state policy requires English language learners (ELL) to pass the California English Language Development Test and the California Standards Test in English Language Arts to be Reclassified Fluent English Proficient (RFEP). However, most districts make it more difficult for ELL students to reclassify by setting reclassification requirements that are more stringent than the state-mandated requirement. In this paper, we examine the reclassification process for two California school districts. In Manzanita Unified School District, administrators describe a system that explicitly provides a role for parents and teachers to influence reassignment decisions. In Granada Unified School District, administrators describe a system that is exclusively test-driven. Nevertheless, these two approaches yield similar reclassification outcomes. In both districts, male, Hispanic, and low-income ELL students are less likely to take or pass the required assessments. Even among students who do pass the assessments male, Hispanic, and low-income students are still less likely to be reclassified. We draw upon the notion of tight- and loose-coupling in educational organizations to make sense of this disconnect between ELL reclassification policies and reclassification outcomes in these two districts. We recommend administrators and teachers work together to establish but also implement their district’sobjec language classification policies.

Inequality in the Los Angeles Unified School: Ethics and Public Responsibility

This research paper defines the problems facing Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). The district does not address the concerns of lower-class students, and as a result their education system is inadequate. It is urgent for people to recognize the assistance that the district and each of its schools can provide in order to abet the process of educating children from lower-class neighborhoods. This paper explains the situation existing in LAUSD, examines different alternatives to improve education for lower-class students, and suggests a course of action.