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District-Charter Collaboration Grant Implementation: Findings for Teacher and Principal Surveys
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District-Charter Collaboration Grant Implementation: Findings for Teacher and Principal Surveys

Summary Brief
Published: Jan 04, 2016
Publisher: Washington, DC: Mathematica Policy Research
Human Services Education School Choice and Charters Research & Evaluation Evaluation Design

Associated Project

Evaluation of the District-Charter Collaboration Grants

Time frame: 2013-2016

Prepared for:

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Authors

Scott Richman

Alyson Burnett

Erin Dillon

Lisbeth Goble

Moira McCullough

Christina Clark Tuttle

Key Findings

Key Findings:

  • Across the cities with schoolwide grant activities, about half of respondents in the schools collaborated with educators from the opposite sector. Across cities with grant activities that targeted individuals, more than three-quarters of grant participants collaborated across sectors.
  • Most respondents reported that the training they received in their grant activity was useful or very useful for their current job, they applied the activity information in their school, and they shared the activity information with others in their school.
  • Nearly all respondents reported that inadequate time dedicated by their school to collaboration and inadequate opportunities for collaboration made cross-sector collaboration more difficult.
  • Respondents viewed local foundations, businesses, and community groups as promoting cross-sector collaboration, whereas competition, political divisions, and teachers’ unions may hinder it.

As part of the District-Charter Collaboration Grant program, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation contracted with Mathematica to conduct an evaluation of its implementation and effects since July 2013. Using survey data from district and charter school educators (teachers and principals) sampled from 21 cross-sector collaboration activities across the seven grantee cities in 2014–2015, this report examined the extent to which cross-sector collaboration and the transfer of practices occurred and the contextual factors that helped facilitate or impede cross-sector collaboration.

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