Author: kapengut

Reflecting on a Summer with the Research Alliance

I still cannot believe how quickly my time with the Research Alliance went by this summer! A couple of weeks ago, I completed my project at the Research Alliance and said goodbye to the team of researchers I had the pleasure of working with throughout the summer. During my last days, I distributed the school evaluation reports I had been working on all summer to principals participating in the Expanded Success Initiative (ESI), an initiative that aims to tackle the achievement gap and increase the number of Black and Latino young men who graduate high school prepared to succeed in college and careers by using new, creative solutions. After looking through the data from the first year of ESI surveys, I became amazed and inspired by the information provided by students that would be relayed to principals in order for them to improve their school climate and policies. Students’ opinions and perceptions would be heard in a constructive manner – the reports gave them a unified voice and carry an undeniable influence in the shaping of the school climate in the upcoming school year. I truly felt as though I was a messenger between students, policy makers, researchers and principals by conveying the data results and as though I participated in a wave of positive change and improvement throughout New York City’s ESI schools.

In the rest of my time at Brandeis and beyond, I hope to leverage the inspiration I felt from working with the Research Alliance to pursue an academic and career path closely linked to education. This internship certainly reinforced my interest in education policy and research, however I hope to supplement this experience with one that is more clinically oriented to include interaction with students. In the future, I hope to combine my interest in policy, research and face-to-face interaction with students by pursuing a career path in educational psychology – helping to uncover which environments are most conducive to learning and figuring out ways schools can better inspire a love of learning and academic success in their students.

I would undoubtedly recommend interning with the Research Alliance to any student interested in education policy and research. The organization is certainly unique as it conducts rigorous research in the field of education on various topics ranging from high school achievement to contexts that support effective teaching with findings that are often featured in the news. (Read about Research Alliance in the News here.) Furthermore, the organization collaborates with policy makers in the Department of Education while being a part of NYU’s Steinhardt School – making it an academic center that successfully connects theory and practice.

Working on the ESI reports has made me a more skillful and effective problem solver as I came up with solutions to challenges that often arise when working with fresh, new data. The tasks and responsibilities given to me contributed to a fundamental social justice mission of education equity and the warm and welcoming environment makes it all the more enjoyable. I am honored to have had the opportunity to work with the group of researchers there, to have been welcomed with open arms and to have been entrusted with such a valuable project. Working with the Research Alliance team and collaborating with NYC’s Department of Education, even for a short time over the summer, was truly a rewarding experience. This experience reinforced my philosophies of social justice and my commitment to pursuing a career that contributes to the greater societal good of children’s well-being and prosperity. Fueled with inspiration from working with the Research Alliance this summer, never before has contributing to efforts that seek to tackle the achievement gap been more of a priority.

 

Midpoint Reflection

As is often the pattern when we embark on a new experience, it seems as though just as we settle into a routine and get comfortable in our new environment, it is already time to be uprooted and reflect on the elapsed time. As a summer intern at the Research Alliance for New York City Schools housed at New York University’s Steinhardt School, I am certainly experiencing this phenomenon. It is unbelievable to me that I am over half way done with my internship – how quickly time flies!

One of the major highlights of the first half of my internship was meeting with New York City’s Department of Education (DOE) team that is heading the Expanded Success Initiative (ESI). Three of us from the Research Alliance met with the DOE to discuss the experience of administering surveys in the ESI schools and to bounce feedback back-and-forth on how to best produce and distribute the survey results for the schools’ principals. Because the DOE ESI team leads schools through activities relating to the ESI program and advises schools on relevant policy changes, this meeting greatly inspired me as it demonstrated how the research-based work I was assisting on would be used on the ground to tangibly improve schools. I realized then how much of a collaborative effort education reform truly is as it takes great cooperation between researchers, policy makers, principals, and teachers to make a difference – not a single one of these positions alone could make the necessary change to improve New York’s public schools.

DOE
“The Expanded Success Initiative (ESI) uses new ideas and creative solutions to tackle the educational achievement gap and increase the number of Black and Latino young men who graduate high school prepared to succeed in college and careers.” PHOTO: NYC Department of Education.

 

Throughout the summer, I have been reflecting on what I’ve learned and the skills I have gained from my internship. At the start of my internship, my goals included gaining a better understanding of the behind-the-scenes process of education research and of the collaborative efforts of a professional research team. It is undeniable that I have learned a great deal so far in my time at the Research Alliance. Thus far, I have led the effort in designing the report template for the ESI survey data that will be distributed to principals of participating schools. I helped select the survey questions and data constructs that will be included in the reports by determining which findings I thought would be most relevant and interesting to principals, and after much discussion on the best findings to report on with both my co-workers and our partner Department of Education ESI team, I have gained a much better understanding of how to present research findings and what sort of findings have the potential to engage a principal’s attention and ultimately, influence school initiatives and policies.

By being involved with the Research Alliance from preliminary steps of selecting the most indicative survey constructs to report on to the anticipated final stage of report distribution, I have certainly gained a much greater familiarity with the many steps it takes to implement and administer an education survey with the goal of obtaining concrete, tangible and processed results for school and policy use. As an intern I have also been granted the privilege of collaborating with a close team of researchers, survey managers and data analysts in weekly meetings in order to track our progress, give feedback to one another and ultimately, to ensure the successful distribution of the Expanded Success Initiative reports.

It has been very eye-opening to be a part of a dynamic research organization that plays a significant role in the movement to advance education equity in New York. My experience to date with the Research Alliance has equipped me with skills that I will undoubtedly carry on in both my academic pursuits in graduate school and, more importantly, with a reinforced commitment to working for an organization with a social justice mission.

I am eagerly looking forward to what my last couple weeks at the Research Alliance have in store for me!

Read more about the Research Alliance’s work in the news here. 

Bridging Research and Education Policy

When starting my summer internship search this year, I reflected on how I could contribute to and what exactly I wanted to learn from a potential summer internship. After much introspection, my commitment to further the effort in closing the academic achievement gap in America inspired me to find an organization dedicated to improving public education. This determination led me to correspond with and talk to several such organizations and brought me to the site where I am currently interning – The Research Alliance for New York City Schools. The Research Alliance is a research center housed at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development. The center works in collaboration with the New York City Department of Education to advance equity in education by identifying important questions for research and by providing reliable evidence about policies and practices that promote students’ academic success in order to build capacity in schools throughout New York City. Finding the organization’s mission overwhelmingly compelling, I eagerly set off for my first week as part of the Research Alliance team.

My responsibilities for the summer primarily center on working on the Expanded Success Initiative (ESI), a program that seeks to close the educational achievement gap and improve college readiness and career outcomes for Black and Latino young men in New York. This effort is the cornerstone of Mayor Bloomberg’s Young Men’s Initiative, which is the nation’s most comprehensive effort to tackle the broad disparities slowing the advancement of Black and Latino young men.

Explore the Research Alliance’s recent report “Moving the Needle: Exploring Key Levers to Boost College Readiness Among Black and Latino Males in NYC.”

Forty high schools throughout the city were selected as part of the ESI. In the spring, students at these schools filled out surveys administered by the Research Alliance on topics ranging from future goals and college planning to perceptions of fairness and equal treatment in their school. Using the data from these surveys the Research Alliance hopes to better understand the impact of school climate on the challenges facing many Black and Latino young men and identify opportunities to intervene and support students more effectively. This praxis between theory and practice is critical to the greater success of any such initiative, and forming this bridge between raw data and on-the-ground policy is exactly my task for the summer.

My project for the summer is to create and distribute individualized reports for each school’s principal that focus on key findings in the data and highlight why the data is relevant to ESI and how it can be leveraged to improve school policies and students’ academic success. My first week included assisting in correspondence with the principals to thank them for their participation in the survey administration and conducting research on similar education-centered publications.

My first week excited me for the prospect of bringing principals such valuable insight on their school population and for the possibilities of policy change in schools as a result of the data and information acquired over the summer. From the very first day, my enthusiasm was further ignited by the welcoming, knowledgeable and compassionate close-knit team of researchers, data analysts and professionals I would be working with. And it was on my first day, while getting to know my supervisor and fellow colleague over lunch at Washington Square Park on an idyllic, blue-skied summer day with the faint echoes of a nearby jazz musician, that I thought to myself about how excited I am for the summer that lay ahead.

– Dina Kapengut ’14