The Math and Science Partnership (MSP) Program at the National Science Foundation (NSF) promotes the development, implementation, and sustainability of exemplary partnerships to advance high-quality math and science education. The MSP Program anticipates that the partnerships will be instrumental in improving K-12 student achievement, as well as reducing achievement gaps among diverse student populations differentiated by race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, gender, or disability, a strategy advocated by Haycock et al. (1992). The importance of being partnership driven with science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) faculty engagement is apparent not only from the name of the program, but also in the National Science Foundation's (NSF's) decision to include it as one of the five "key features" of the program." To prepare for an assessment of MSP partnerships and to examine the start-up and implementation phase, this report provides "an overview of the relevant literature on partnerships, beginning with the basic and most noted definitions of partnerships, integrated with a discussion about the development of an evaluation framework.
Scherer, J. July 2006. Cosmos Corporation.
