My name is Matt Linick, and I am the Executive Director of Research and Evaluation at the Cleveland Metropolitan School District (CMSD). We are excited that the American Evaluation Association is coming to Cleveland this year!
As many embedded researchers and evaluators in school districts know, we are often under-resourced and over-committed, so partnering with research organizations is an important tool for meeting the needs of the community. Last year, CMSD along with the Center for Urban Education at Cleveland State University and the American Institutes for Research formed the Cleveland Alliance for Education Research (CAER). This partnership is helping the district investigate questions about our work in social-emotional learning and school culture with our Humanware team, answering questions about our students that are English language learners with our Multilingual Multicultural Education team, and helping us prioritize our research and evaluation questions.
Rad Resource:
Creating a partnership between a local or state education agency and research organizations is hard work and can be overwhelming. Don’t Panic![1] Others have struggled with this task and there are organizations and resources available to you. One such resource is the National Network of Education Research-Practice Partnerships (NNERPP). Their website has resources, information, and guidance for those in education organizations and the organizations they partner with. The guidance they provide can also help serve as a template for partnerships that happen outside of the education landscape. For those new to this work, NNERPP provides a guide to building the foundation of your partnership and walks you through the important questions. For those that have already started partnering informally, but are looking to create a more formal structure (like CAER), sample MOUs, charters, and job descriptions are provided. They even have an Education Week blog that features researchers and practitioners and their reflections as they pursue this productive struggle.
Hot Tips:
Over six years ago, Cleveland embarked on Cleveland’s Plan for Transforming Schools. During that time, we have launched and expanded many innovative new schools and brought a diversity of options to Cleveland’s students. While at the conference, attendees will be within walking distance of several of CMSD’s high schools with exciting programs. MC2 STEM is an exciting STEM school with three campuses located within a Fortune 500 company, a college campus, and the Great Lakes Science Center (next to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame). The Cleveland High School for Digital Arts is located downtown and provides students with an exciting opportunity to master academic content through project-based learning focused on digital arts. Located in the same building is the Davis Aerospace and Maritime High School. Davis is a STEM school that focuses providing students with a curriculum that emphasizes college and career readiness through real-world opportunities in aerospace and maritime careers.
(http://www.mc2stemhighschool.org/) is an exciting STEM school with three campuses located within a Fortune 500 company, a college campus, and the Great Lakes Science Center (next to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame). The Cleveland High School for Digital Arts is located downtown and provides students with an exciting opportunity to master academic content through project-based learning focused on digital arts. Located in the same building is the Davis Aerospace and Maritime High School. Davis is a STEM school that focuses providing students with a curriculum that emphasizes college and career readiness through real-world opportunities in aerospace and maritime careers.
We hope you enjoy our fantastic city, visit the wonderful entertainment options near the conference center, and learn some more about the exciting new things Cleveland is doing for students and families.
[1] To quote the wonderful Douglas Adams.
We’re looking forward to the fall and the Evaluation 2018 conference all this week with our colleagues in the Local Arrangements Working Group (LAWG). Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to contribute to aea365? Review the contribution guidelines and send your draft post to aea365@eval.org.