Research for Action conducts high quality research and evaluation with schools, districts, and communities. Our reputation for sensitive and thorough data collection, insightful interpretation, and analytic rigor is strong, both locally and nationally. Our research is divided among policy studies, formative evaluations, and action research and youth organizing.

GUIDING PRINCIPLES

• 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?