Long-term partnerships allow schools and researchers to work together to address seemingly intractable problems. 

 

As COVID-19 spread across the United States, researchers quickly got to work, producing a whole range of studies highlighting the ways in which the pandemic has magnified existing inequities in public education, and reminding readers of a lesson learned many times before, over many generations: Disease, disaster, and disadvantage tend to go hand-in-hand (Dang & Viet Nguyen, 2021; Engzell, Frey, & Verhagen, 2021; Kristal & Yaish, 2020; Nassif-Pires et al., 2020; Perry, Aronson, & Pescosolido, 2021).  

This is, of course, what researchers typically do: They see a problem, study it, and report what they’ve found. But then they tend to move on to the next research project, only to find out later that their earlier work failed to get much of a reaction at all, much less bring about the social change they expected.  

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In large part, this is because research tends to go on in siloed academic departments, think tanks, or other centers of intellectual power that are wholly disconnected from the practitioners who reside in the day-to-day world of schools and classrooms. As a result, even the highest-quality research tends to go overlooked and unused (Cohen, Huffman, & Knauer, 2009; Magnuson & Waldfogel, 2008; Reardon, 2011; Reardon & Portilla, 2016). Many great studies and powerful findings never get shared with teachers, principals, superintendents, and other practitioners at all; or they do get shared but fail to speak to those practitioners’ most pressing problems and priorities; or they do speak to their pressing problems but not to their present circumstances, since the only relevant data the researchers could find was 20 years old. Whatever the reason, if research fails to engage the practitioners who make education happen, it will rarely (if ever) be put to use.  

Of course, some might defend researchers’ detachment from the everyday world of education, arguing that this is how they maintain the independence and objectivity that allow them to study a topic properly. Perhaps. But in an age when researchers appear to be content with describing the disasters they see, then acting shocked when the next disaster reveals that nobody has applied the lessons learned from the previous one, it is crucial to know that there are other ways to do research — ways that maintain the necessary independence and rigor, while also tapping into the knowledge and expertise of individuals whose everyday work touches on the given research topic, and who have the power to make real-world changes. 

As described in detail elsewhere in this issue (Coburn, Penuel, & Farrell, 2021), research-practice partnerships (RPPs) offer one approach to the pursuit of such research — and it’s the model that guides our work at the Houston Education Research Consortium (HERC). Founded in 2011, HERC is a partnership between Rice University and 11 public school districts, which serve more than 700,000 students in and around Houston, Texas. We aim to connect researchers with education decision makers to ensure that the research produced is relevant, accessible, and actionable, and, most important, that it contributes to the overarching goal of promoting educational equity.  

As in many other RPPs, HERC’s research agenda is developed jointly by researchers and district partners, and the work entails a long-term collaboration, not a short-term project. This is critical for two reasons. First, it allows us to undertake large, multiyear studies that address complex and multifaceted challenges facing Houston-area schools, focusing on problems that are far too big to be solved by conducting a single study. Second, because HERC has built such strong, long-term relationships among local partners, it is well-equipped to help the area’s schools respond to sudden and unprecedented challenges — such as a global pandemic.  

Two of HERC’s research projects illustrate how this sort of RPP can produce independent and rigorous research that not only studies inequality but also helps reduce it.  

The Equity Project 

In early 2020, the Houston Independent School District (HISD) asked HERC to help ensure that its resources are distributed in an equitable manner, so that all students receive the support they need to succeed in school, work, and life. Together with HISD leaders, HERC developed The Equity Project, a series of studies that aims to identify, understand, and monitor inequities and progress taken toward addressing them. And note that for the purposes of this project, we define equity not as having access to equal resources, but as having access to needed resources, recognizing that some students have greater needs than others. 

In partnership with HISD, HERC identified a number of topics for teams of researchers to study, including access to preK programs, teacher characteristics, postsecondary outcomes, course and program offerings, and campus resources. To begin their work, each research team then met with district representatives to ensure that their research questions were aligned with the district’s goals and priorities, and with its capacity to take action in the given area (since it would do no good to conduct a study and produce a set of recommendations, only to find that the district cannot follow through on them). 

Further, researchers have continued to meet regularly with district leaders throughout their work, to share findings as they become available, to discuss their possible implications, and to allow the district to act on findings quickly, without having to wait for a formal report to be released. When research findings are published, they are posted on the district’s and HERC’s websites and shared with local media outlets and other stakeholders to engage the broader community in the district’s efforts to improve equity.  

In short, the Equity Project is designed to inform the district about patterns of inequity so that its leaders will have timely, evidence-based information to use when making decisions about how best to increase equitable access to programs, opportunities, and services for students. However, it can be challenging to make effective use of research findings. So, HERC is also working with the district to identify, for each study, a number of specific, research-supported actions that the district might choose to take. And finally, HERC will work with the district over time to monitor progress toward these goals and make course corrections as needed.  

Student engagement during COVID 

In March 2020, school districts in Texas shifted to 100% online instruction in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Since then, districts have worked to reduce the digital divide that prevents some students from accessing online learning, as well as to offer options for in-person instruction that provide a consistent and safe schooling experience. Yet, despite these efforts, many students are not showing up, with enrollment in Texas down about 3% overall, and down by more than 20% in preK (Carpenter, 2021). Students who are showing up are experiencing unprecedented failure rates, whether they opted for online or in-person instruction. The percent of students failing at least one class during fall 2020 doubled, tripled, and even quadrupled in Houston-area school districts relative to previous years (Carpenter, 2020). Disengagement has been particularly pronounced among students of color and students from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds (Smith & Reeves, 2020).  

To gain a better understanding of how the pandemic has shaped students’ educational experiences, Houston-area public school districts collaborated with HERC to develop a student engagement survey. The goals were to connect with students directly, asking them to identify the obstacles that prevent them from attending and/or engaging with school, and to identify what schools and districts can do to support their learning and minimize any inequities that have emerged or worsened during the pandemic. To ensure that the survey items were already tested and validated, the research team borrowed questions from several well-established studies, such as the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, and the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System. Then it worked with districts to adapt the questions to fit the current context and ensure that the questions included would address the district’s most immediate and pressing needs.  

The questions on the survey fell into five broad categories: (1) participation in online or in-person instruction; (2) attitudes toward and engagement with learning (in each setting); (3) experiences with the digital divide and other technology issues, particularly for students engaging in online learning; (4) barriers to learning (e.g., familial responsibility, student well-being), and (5) supports for learning (e.g., teacher and parent assistance). To ensure that the survey could reach all students, regardless of literacy skills and primary language spoken, the survey was written in multiple languages at about a 4th- through 8th-grade reading level.  

Immediate findings were shared on interactive dashboards that allowed schools to examine their results in comparison to neighboring campuses and the district overall. The dashboard also showed how results differed according to students’ race/ethnicity, economic status, and language minority status, which allowed leaders to see the disparate ways the pandemic has affected students’ learning, particularly for those from historically underserved groups. For example, economically disadvantaged students doing online instruction were almost 25% more likely than non-economically disadvantaged students to report also having to care for siblings or older family members in the home. And reflecting the efforts of districts to make digital devices and the internet available to all students, more than 97% of students reported having a device and internet for schoolwork, though almost one-quarter of economically disadvantaged students reported that more than one person in the household used the student’s device regularly.  

To understand the potential longer-term consequences of the pandemic on student learning, the survey data were also linked to other student information, such as grade progression, state assessment results, and high school dropout records. Combined with these other markers of educational success, the survey results should help leaders understand what the pandemic means for education now and into the future — and how its effects might vary by student group. Ultimately, the goal is to enable districts and state education agencies to monitor the consequences of the pandemic and find ways to address them effectively. 

Big problems, big solutions 

Moving the needle on educational inequality requires long-term partnerships. Neither of these HERC research studies could have been developed without the long-term relationships and partnership infrastructure that were in already in place. For instance, many district leaders would likely have been reluctant to share their data with HERC if they did not already know and trust the research team to produce informative research and to publicly share those results in a constructive manner.  

Similarly, in the COVID-19 student engagement project, HERC’s preexisting infrastructure allowed its research team to create and implement its student survey even as the districts were struggling to implement online learning. Without having such resources in place, this project would have taken much longer to set up, possibly missing the window of opportunity to produce information that the district could use during the pandemic. Especially during times of crisis, it is impossible to move from merely studying inequality to taking action to reduce it unless researchers already have this sort of long-term partnership with the local educators who can put their findings to use.  

As much as researchers and their educator partners might strive to use data to understand and address inequities, they cannot do so alone. Schools cannot continue to be asked to play the role of the “great equalizer” (Cebolla-BoadoRadl, & Salazar, 2017; Downey, von Hippel, & Broh, 2004; von Hippel, Workman, & Downey, 2018), while inequalities and inequities go largely unchecked outside their doors. Unless we do more, as a society, to address rampant disparities, schools will always and forever be faced with having to ameliorate the symptoms of inequality, not its causes. Although such factors as differential access to effective teachers and administrators, or differential access to advanced courses, are extremely important, they do not explain why educational inequality persists. The next step for HERC is to work across sectors to address the causes of inequality, such as the concentration of poverty in neighborhoods. By drawing in additional partners from the wider community, RPPs can work toward the kinds of systemic change that will be required to put an end to educational inequality. The time has come not just to address the symptoms but to confront the causes of inequality, and partnerships such as HERC have a critical role to play in making this happen.    

References 

Carpenter, J. (2020, November 20). Houston-area schools see surge in failing students as COVID wreaks havoc on grades. Houston Chronicle 

Carpenter, J. (2021, January 8). Texas public school pre-K enrollment tumbles 22 percent. Houston Chronicle 

Cebolla-Boado, H., Radl, J., & Salazar, L. (2017). Preschool education as the great equalizer? A cross-country study into the sources of inequality in reading competence. Acta Sociologica, 60 (1), 41-60. 

Coburn, C.E., Penuel, W.R., & Farrell, C.C. (2021). Fostering educational improvement with research-practice partnerships. Phi Delta Kappan, 102 (7), 14-19. 

Cohen, P.N., Huffman, M.L., & Knauer, S. (2009). Stalled progress? Gender segregation and wage inequality among managers, 1980‐2000. Work and Occupations, 36 (4), 318-342.  

Dang, H.-A.H., & Viet Nguyen, C. (2021). Gender inequality during the COVID-19 pandemic: Income, expenditure, savings, and job loss. World Development, 140, 105296.  

Downey, D.B., von Hippel, P.T., & Broh, B.A. (2004). Are schools the great equalizer? Cognitive inequality during the summer months and the school year. American Sociological Review, 69 (5), 613-635.  

Engzell, P., Frey, A., & Verhagen, M.D. (2021). Learning loss due to school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic. SocArXiv Papers. 

Kristal, T. & Yaish, M. (2020). Does the coronavirus pandemic level the gender inequality curve? (It doesn’t). Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, 68, 1-5.  

Magnuson, K. & Waldfogel, J. (2008). Steady gains and stalled progress: Inequality and the Black-white test score gap. Russell Sage Foundation. 

Nassif-Pires, L., de Lima Xavier, L., Masterson, T., Nikiforos, M., & Rios-Avila, F. (2020). Pandemic of inequality. Levy Economics Institute of Bard College.  

Perry, B.L., Aronson, B., & Pescosolido, B.A. (2021). Pandemic precarity: COVID-19 is exposing and exacerbating inequalities in the American heartland. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118 (8), e2020685118. 

Reardon, S.F. (2011). The widening academic achievement gap between the rich and the poor: New evidence and possible explanations. Whither Opportunity, 1 (1), 91-116. 

Reardon, S.F. & Portilla, X.A. (2016). Recent trends in socioeconomic and racial school readiness gaps at kindergarten entry. AERA Open. 

Smith, E. & Reeves, R.V. (2020, September 23). Students of color most likely to be learning online: Districts must work even harder on race equity. How We Rise. Brookings Institution. 

von Hippel, P.T., Workman, J., & Downey, D.B. (2018). Inequality in reading and math skills forms mainly before kindergarten: A replication, and partial correction, of “Are Schools the Great Equalizer?” Sociology of Education, 91 (4), 323-357.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

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Daniel Potter

DANIEL POTTER is an associate director of the Houston Education Research Consortium at Rice University, Houston, Texas. 

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Erin Baumgartner

ERIN BAUMGARTNER  is an associate director of the Houston Education Research Consortium at Rice University, Houston, Texas.

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Ruth N. Lopez Turley

RUTH N. LOPEZ TURLEY is director of the Houston Education Research Consortium at Rice University, Houston, Texas.