The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB, 2002) establishes ambitious goals for increasing student learning and attaining equity in the distribution of student performance. Schools must assure that all students, including all significant subgroups, show adequate yearly progress (AYP) toward the goal of 100% proficiency by the year 2014. In this paper, we illustrate an alternative way of evaluating AYP that both emphasizes individual student growth over time and focuses on the distribution of student growth between performance subgroups. We do so through analyses of a longitudinal data set from an urban school district in the state of Washington. We also examine what these patterns tell us about schools that have been designated as meeting their AYP targets and those that have not. This alternative way of measuring AYP helps bring to light potentially important aspects of school performance that might be masked if we limit our focus to classifying schools based only on current AYP criteria. In particular, we are able to identify some schools meeting Washington state's AYP criteria in which above‐average students are making substantial progress but below‐average students making little to no progress. In contrast, other schools making AYP have below‐average students making adequate progress but above‐average students showing little gains. These contrasts raise questions about the meaning of “adequate” progress and to whom the notion of progress refers. We believe that closely examining the distribution of student progress may provide an important supplementary or alternative measure of AYP.

The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) serves a large majority of socioeconomically disadvantaged students who are struggling academically and are underprepared for high school graduation and college. This article describes the partnership between LAUSD and the Los Angeles Education Research Institute, and how this collaboration endeavors to produce accessible and high-quality research to inform pressing problems of practice. The article also presents findings from an ongoing partnership research project analyzing a district policy focused on improving college readiness by aligning high school graduation and college-eligibility requirements. In a cohort that went through high school before the policy became mandatory for all students, less than 1/5 of all students (and 30% of graduates) met the college eligibility criteria. Our findings indicate that academic and behavioral indicators from 8th and 9th grade can help identify for possible intervention students who are not on track to meet these new graduation requirements.

The challenges of transforming our educational systems to fulfill enduring needs for equity, justice, and responsiveness will take a multitude of partners. Research-practice partnerships (RPPs) arrange collaboration and engagement with research to bring about shared commitments and resources to tackle these challenges. Just as sociocultural and political dynamics can shape educational politics generally, without close and intentional attention to the politics of starting, operating, and sustaining RPPs, those political dynamics can potentially derail a partnership. In this article, we consider the emerging research on the politics in and around RPPs pursuing educational transformation and propose a framework to reflect these dynamics. To introduce this special issue, we also deconstruct RPP politics into four major phases of RPP work, and describe the articles addressing each phase. This compilation of articles contributes a wealth of expertise and evidence illuminating how politics can shape both RPPs and their goals of equity and transformation.

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