University-community partnerships have gained popularity in the United States as a means of extending university research resources and collaborative opportunities. However, research-driven partnerships between universities and K-12 school districts that prioritize the research needs of K-12 schools are unique. Recently, education scholars have been exploring partnership models with potentially greater benefits for various school district stakeholders. To date, there is limited research on how these partnerships can be leveraged as a pedagogical approach to effectively support the Doctor of Education (Ed.D.) students who are emerging as practitioner-scholars. This qualitative study helps fill that gap by examining the impacts of one newly formed research-practice partnership that utilized a service-learning model. Our findings suggest that conducting authentic K-12 district-driven research projects may be one avenue for providing transformative learning experiences to practitioner-scholars while also meeting the needs of the school district partners in the community through the production of public scholarship.