Research-Practice Partnerships to Strengthen Early Education 3 21 39 57

Here we highlight three of our own ECE At the heart of the reform was mandatory partnerships—with the New York City accountability via a Quality Rating and Division of Early Childhood Education in Improvement System (QRIS), which focused the Department of Education, the Louisiana on the quality of teacher-child interactions Department of Education (LDOE), and the in all publicly funded programs. [...] research, and support the application of These organizations collaborate with the research to policy and practice in its partner management team to define and refine the 24 THE FUTURE OF CHILDREN Seeking Questions from the Field: Connecticut Partnership for Early Education Research partnership’s research agenda, guide the Because of the challenges faced by development of research projects, collect. [...] For example, the the possible approaches to the research; researchers who initiated the ParentCorps generating research topics; prioritizing, partnership (see the article in this issue by categorizing, and voting on the most Laurie Brotman and colleagues) wanted to relevant topics; and generating and refining study a researcher-designed intervention, and researchable questions. [...] Though the and each of the partner organizations, even question doesn’t define “successful,” the before convening the entire group to set the concept of success is measurable and the agenda. [...] During the course of a Research Agenda project, the advisory committee also meets with the researchers to help them interpret The research agenda defines the findings from the analyses and identify the partnership’s direction, and knowing implications of those findings.