As readers already familiar with the work of the Building a Partnership (BP) team know, SCALE’s development as a project based on cross-institutional interactions is the focus of our study. We further this study in this report by providing SCALE leaders a sequel to our first organizational mapping report. The 2004 report provided a snapshot of SCALE’s participants, organizational structure, and working groups as of April 2004, 16 months from the start of NSF funding. That snapshot was based on data entered into an Excel spreadsheet, and was presented in terms of text, tables and graphs, and organizational maps. By contrast, this report provides more complex data, some of which is longitudinal, based on a relational database called SCALEbase. (The data element definitions used to design SCALEbase and to analyze the data used for this report appear in Appendix A.) Also in contrast with the 2004 mapping study, organizational maps are not included here. A full set of organizational maps will be provided in a final mapping report after SCALEbase data is completed in spring 2008.

In this document, we define “partnership” to mean “an inter-organization group formed to accomplish goals and tasks that a single organization, working alone, could not accomplish.”

In order to help ensure that each organization that joins a partnership achieves its goals for partnering, we suggest that you consider the following questions, which we pose in the first person voice, prior to agreeing to the partnership.

In 2007, the RET case study entitled the SCALE/QED Study of Science Immersion in LAUSD became a significant focal point for interaction across RET partners and role groups sharing a common interest in planning and conducting data collection on immersion, conducting and providing feedback on preliminary analysis, providing formative feedback to Immersion Unit and Professional Development Design teams, and understanding the nature and mechanisms of impact of partnership-wide work on science immersion.

This presentation shares preliminary analysis of the SCALE study of Grade 6 Plate Tectonics Immersion Unit Implementation in LAUSD. The results are preliminary because teacher surveys are still coming in, and because we have not had time to do many necessary secondary analyses (e.g.,disaggregating data on various dimensions).

Federal programs, such as the National Science Foundation’s Math and Science Partnership program, are promoting K–20 partnerships (partnerships between K–12 and higher education institutions) in hopes of fostering greater alignment and cooperation among participating institutions, and pooling resources within institutions to address persistent problems associated with poor student performance. To identify what is known about K–20 partnerships and assess the rigor of the available research, the authors undertook a literature review. They identified 36 research articles that met pre established selection criteria, reviewed all articles, and conducted an analysis of the literature. The analysis addresses the following questions: (1) What inquiry methods have been used to study K–20 partnerships, and what is the rigor of the methods?; (2) How is partnership defined?; (3) What do we know about the formation, process, and results associated with partnership? The authors conclude that the K–20 partnership literature lacks methodological rigor and scope, that partnership is inadequately defined in essentially all cases, and that the research about how K–20 partnerships form and function, and what they achieve contains significant gaps. Despite these weaknesses in the literature, a strength is that multiple, independent qualitative researchers working with a grounded approach and in different contexts arrived at similar conclusions about factors associated with success and failure. They recommend that future research articles begin with a clear definition of the term partnership, build upon and extend available research through replication studies and diversification of samples, pay closer attention to the contexts in which K–20 partnerships operate, and include findings on how K–20 partnerships form, and how they function.

The SCALE Quality Indicator System (SQIS) was designed to monitor key indicators in the four participating school districts over time. While the system's design incorporated components such as outcome variables, process variables, organizational variables, and interactions among variables, it is acknowledged that a number of years would be needed to develop such a system in full. The development of the indicator system began with the gathering of student achievement data from all four districts for up to four years prior to the inauguration of SCALE in the district. The plan was then to monitor student achievement in the four participating school districts over the course of the project’s involvement with the school district. Student achievement data generally is available about a year after the administration of the test. This report has data for each of the four school districts through 2005, or for two years of SCALE participation in the districts.

Institutions of Higher Education (IHE) play an important role in math and science education by providing undergraduate instruction, operating teacher training programs, and providing in-service training for K–12 teachers. The National Science Foundationfunded System-Wide Change for All Learners (SCALE) project sought to effect change in its partner IHEs by creating a “transformative culture” in IHEs through the creation of “cross-cultural working teams” that worked at the intersections among K–12 districts, colleges of education, and colleges of mathematics, science, and engineering (SCALE,