Year in Review: 2022
Hello!
What a year we’ve had here at the St. Louis Research-Practice Collaborative. The last time you may have heard from us was late 2021, when we were taking our first steps into the pilot research project around student mobility. Now, we’re happy to say we’re hitting our stride. 2022 was a year of hard work mostly behind the scenes, but we also had our first public event.
In partnership with the Institute for School Partnership, we presented the work happening in St. Louis at the National Network for Research Practice Partnerships’ Annual Forum. We’re now gearing up to publish our first public brief, which will set the scene for what student mobility looks like in St. Louis and how the city stacks up to other parts of Missouri. Keep an eye out early next year for the report!
Research and Data
This year, we’ve been collecting data and formalizing agreements with our university and school partners. Our initial public brief is based largely on analyzing broad stats and existing research. We have finished collecting more granular data and are getting to work on analyzing it. We are also hard at work mapping what mobility looks like for schools and the neighborhoods they serve. The work won’t just hinge on what the numbers say. Also early next year, we’ll kick off a series of interviews with families affected by mobility to bring context and experiences to the figures.
We’re also happy to tell you about a $3.6 million grant award from the James S. McDonnell Foundation to our partners Washington University, Saint Louis University, SLU’s PRiME Center, the Institute for School Partnership, St. Louis Public Schools, KIPP St. Louis, Confluence Academies, and Ritenour School District. This grant will fund post-doctoral fellows’ work to help us with our research over six years.
Knowledge Engagement
This past spring, we had a great turnout at a forum we held at Washington University to describe the SRPC and its work. We continued to explain how we work and what we’re working on with presentations to the boards of our school partners.
Speaking of Wash U, their Arts & Sciences magazine interviewed Andrew Butler, chair of their education department and member of our advisory council, in May about the SRPC. Read the article here!
We’re now on social media so you can stay more informed on our work and research. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. We plan to send out newsletter updates more frequently as we begin to have research and analysis to share.
Need a refresher on who we are?
Since you may be new to finding us and signing up for newsletters (welcome!), or maybe it’s just been awhile, here’s a reminder of who and what the SRPC is!
The SRPC is a long-term collaboration between three of St. Louis’s largest public education providers and higher education institutions to help improve K-12 education. Our goal is to conduct rigorous research driven by educators’ needs and to inform practices that foster systemic improvements in how we educate children in St. Louis.
We have a FAQ page, timeline, and who’s who, all on our website, so poke around to find out more!
Even in the midst of this cold-snap, it continues to warm our hearts to see all the collaboration across the many institutions that make up the SRPC. This important work wouldn’t be possible without the time and effort from our practitioners and university researchers.
Enjoy the quiet and relaxation of the end of the year. We look forward to having lots more to share next year. We’ll talk to you all then!
