Using data from a participatory ethnography of an urban high school slated for closure, this article examines the impact of comprehensive transformation on the university-school partnership’s goal to change from a culture of underachievement and negativity toward a culture of collaboration and excellence. We explore these question/s: How do comprehensive changes in infrastructure, policies, leadership, and instructional practices shape school culture? What role do shifting power relations (generative frictions) and authentic trust play in developing shared ownership of outcomes? We argue generative frictions produced changes in culture that impacted changes in outcomes.
The University of Rochester and East High School in Rochester, New York, entered into a partnership in 2015, hoping to transform the school to prevent shut down by the state. Both partners were wary because of the district’s failed attempts at reform and the history of similar partnerships elsewhere. A new state-level reform option allowed the partners to form an educational partnership organization (EPO) so that they could become equal partners with some autonomy from the district. The partners decided that to succeed, they would need to involve the community. They learned from listening sessions that the community wanted the school to remain open but also wanted everything about it to change. So, instead of taking an incremental approach, they chose to transform the school’s structures, culture, leadership model, and curriculum and instruction. Valerie L. Marsh, Shaun C. Nelms, Sarah Peyre, and Joanne Larson describe how the university and the school worked together to transform East on all these fronts.
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