• High quality education opportunities should be available to all including those traditionally disadvantaged by poverty and racial discrimination.
• Democratic participation in education decisions is important to successful, sustainable, and publicly accountable school reform.
• Researchers and practitioners can learn from each other.

Research for Action (RFA) employs multidisciplinary, rigorous research, diverse teams, and feedback that challenge stakeholders and researchers to interrogate assumptions and listen to multiple voices. We share our research with educators, parent and community leaders, students, and policy makers in order to build a shared critique of educational inequality and school reform that is socially just. Through reciprocal relationships with these stakeholders, we expand knowledge, foster collaboration, and provoke public dialogue at local, state, and national levels to promote equity, organizational learning, democratic participation, and accountability for school improvement.

RFA works to:

• Build public knowledge about economic, political, and social contexts in order to understand the opportunities for and barriers to greater equity in education.
• Increase the capacity of districts and practitioners to make strategic decisions that improve instruction.
• Broaden the discourse about accountability in order to foster shared responsibility for improving learning outcomes and opportunities for students.
• Enhance democratic participation in school reform by making decision makers aware of the perspectives of those public education stakeholders who are often disenfranchised
• Contribute to cross-sector dialogues that improve civic capacity to think creatively about education reform.

How do particular policies, partnerships or initiatives contribute to high quality teaching and learning in urban public schools?  How do they contribute to building strong, respectful, and mutually accountable relationships among diverse students, parents, and educators?

What strategies used in schools, in districts, in communities, and in the larger social and political environment, foster equitable educational opportunities for urban youth?  What strategies in these different sites sustain public accountability for urban schools and urban school systems?

What processes for reflection, communication, and feedback work to sustain continuous improvement in urban schools and urban school districts?  How do community groups, students, and partner organizations as well as those working within schools and districts, participate in these learning processes?  

RFA is a Philadelphia-based, non-profit organization engaged in education research and evaluation.  Founded in 1992, RFA works with public school districts, educational institutions, and community organizations to improve the educational opportunities for those traditionally disadvantaged by race/ethnicity, class, gender, language/cultural difference, and ability/disability. Research for Action was founded by women who aimed to connect their social activism, feminist beliefs, and professional practice as education researchers.  Basic tenets for RFA's approach to evaluation emerge from feminist theory.

RFA continues to draw national attention as an organization that exemplifies the value of being a locally-focused, applied research organization. We were mentioned in a recent issue of Voices in Urban Education (VUE), published by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform, as being an organization that typifies the kind of close relationship that helps bridge the gap between research and practice and ensures that research is attuned to local conditions.

ANNUAL REPORTS 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004

FUNDERS*

RFA is grateful to the following foundations which support our research.

Annenberg Foundation | Carnegie Corporation of New York | Samuel S. Fels Fund
Edward W. Hazen Foundation | Charles Stewart Mott Foundation | William Penn Foundation
The Pew Charitable Trusts | The Philadelphia Foundation | Spencer Foundation | Surdna Foundation

* The statements made and views expressed on this site and in RFA publications are solely those of the authors.

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