This partnership supports West Virginia educators to strengthen implementation of the Empowerment Collaborative, a multi-faceted middle school reform initiative that aims to improve school-community relationships and strengthen work-based learning. REL Appalachia staff are providing technical support and coaching to increase the capacity of partners to (a) design a feasible research plan to measure school-community partnerships within the context of their overall program research plan, and (b) assess schools’ readiness to implement the Empowerment Collaborative program.
Current Projects
Strengthening Empowerment Collaborative Implementation and Research
This technical support project is building the capacity of Empowerment Collaborative program leaders to collect and use data to strengthen program implementation and decisionmaking. The project consists of two phases: (1) expanding their current research plan to incorporate approaches to measuring school-community partnership outcomes within the context of work-based learning, and (2) designing an assessment process to help schools consider their readiness to implement a complex school reform model as intended. This researcher-practitioner collaboration supports more consistent, data-informed program implementation and offers insights that may be useful to other work-based learning, school reform initiatives.
Completed Projects
No projects at this time.