Participants in the Massachusetts Institute for College and Career Readiness (MICCR) gathered in Boston last month for their second annual convening.  MICCR is a unique and innovative experiment in education.  A collaboration effort led by the Boston University School of Education, the Rennie Center for Education Research and Policy, MassINC, and the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, MICCR helps schools, youth-serving organizations, and communities design, implement, and evaluate college and career readiness initiatives.

MICCR’s Senior Research Fellows are the distinguishing feature of the program. Recruited from universities throughout the US, these accomplished academic researchers bring expertise in a variety of fields. MICCR has embedded Fellows in 15 high-need Massachusetts school districts for three years. The Fellows lend their knowhow to help these districts develop evidence-based college and career readiness initiatives, implement these strategies with fidelity, and diffuse effective practices through communication with educators, policymakers, and other researchers.

The second annual convening began at the State House. MICCR Senior Research Fellows and their school-district partners met with legislators to talk about their experiences working together over the course of the past year and share thoughts about how the type of data and evidence these partnerships produce can help build consensus around effective educational practices and improve policymaking.

On day two, Fellows travelled to their host school districts for meetings with local educators and community leaders. These visits allowed the project teams to build support for their work and draw attention to the value of research-practitioner-policymaker partnerships.

The annual convening concluded with a final day in Boston. Fellows gathered to exchange ideas about how they could most effectively support their school districts. With the project entering its final year, the researchers have also begun to reflect on how this innovative model informs future efforts to link school leaders with academic expertise to foster and support continuous improvement, an essential ingredient to effective learning environments in this era of constant change.