MDRC President Gordon Berlin and Rekha Balu, a senior associate in MDRC’s K-12 policy area, recently coauthored a brief essay, “Research-Practice Partnerships: The Future of the Evidence Movement,” for the “Evidence at the Crossroads” series on the W.T. Grant Foundation blog. The essay begins:

One of the most unheralded aspects of the recent federal investments in scaling evidence-based programs is the novel partnerships formed between researchers and program developers. Both the U.S. Department of Education’s Investing in Innovation (i3) grants and the Corporation for National and Community Service’s Social Innovation Fund (SIF), for example, supported expansions that have more than doubled the participants served in funded programs, while also funding evaluations involving new partnerships between researchers and program developers. These alliances have provided new ways for researchers and program staff to work together and have supported programs in their efforts to continuously improve and refine their interventions….

The piece highlights three partnerships that MDRC has developed in recent years – with the Center for Employment Opportunities, BELL (Building Educated Leaders for Life), and New Visions for Public Schools.