The Every Student Succeeds Act builds on prior efforts to bridge the gap between research and practice through the imposition of evidence requirements. This article presents findings from a small-scale micro-process study of three districts in one state during their first year of implementing those requirements. Informed by past conceptualizations…

Education policy continues to press for increased use of research evidence in decision-making, yet decades of research point to weak links between research and practice. We see evidence-informed improvement not as a problem with schools, but with a larger evidence-use ecosystem. As a step toward building and strengthening multidirectional paths…

Many of the researchers in research-practice partnerships (RPPs) are drawn to them because of frustrations that their work--while esteemed by academic colleagues--too infrequently influences education policies or practices. Many district partners in RPPs also have backgrounds as researchers, and they too want to see research address stubborn…

The San Diego City Schools Research Cooperative is an attempt to integrate the work of practitioners, researchers, and community members to meet the individual needs of each group while providing programmatic, practical research findings to district officials. This paper discusses issues pertaining to the development of a research cooperative: the…

How can research and practice can be linked together to improve vocational education? Vocational education researchers should conduct research that can directly benefit policy makers and practitioners and present their findings in ways that influence the improvement of policy and practice. Three basic assumptions need to be recognized: (1) the…