“When City Connects began,” explained founder Mary Walsh, “we wanted to see if the idea of supporting the whole child – which came from theories of child development – would actually make a difference if we could do it systematically in schools. How could we know? How could we measure a multifaceted intervention? And how could we be accountable for student outcomes? When we embarked on a partnership with the Boston Public Schools 25 years ago, we had no idea whether it would work.”
To test and refine the City Connects model of student support, Walsh, who was also a professor of clinical-developmental psychology at Boston College, tapped the expertise of colleagues.
“Since we were based at Boston College, we had an important opportunity,” Walsh said.
“We created a research-practice partnership (RPP) to study and measure the efficacy of what we were doing in schools as we were simultaneously developing a practice to address the out-of-school challenges that impact school performance and behavior. The City Connects RPP would actualize the hyphen between research and practice. The practice could drive research on questions related to child development and student support, and what we were learning through research could inform how school practices and processes could better support students.”
What is a research-practice partnership?
At its core, a research-practice partnership is a collaborative, long-term relationship between researchers and practitioners, designed to improve the workings of an education practice. Often, these are partnerships between public, private, or charter schools where the practice is implemented and a university where the research is conducted.
When City Connects began, this partnership was built into its core. Boston College (BC), where City Connects is housed, partnered with Boston Public Schools (BPS) 25 years ago. BPS allowed researchers at BC to gather data as City Connects was implemented in Boston schools.
Since then, researchers at BC, who are independent of the City Connects program in schools, have worked with school districts and state education agencies nationwide to evaluate City Connects’ effectiveness particularly on academic and attendance outcomes. They also developed a system to survey school administrators, teachers, and community partners to get feedback on the practice. They, and researchers outside of BC, have also published and collaborated on nearly 20 papers in academic peer-reviewed journals like AERA Open, Child Development, American Journal of Evaluation, Prevention Science, and Applied Developmental Science. As part of the process of publication in these outlets, independent experts evaluated the research.
“There have been so many exciting findings to come out of the research into City Connects,” Center for Thriving Children director Eric Dearing said. “Over the years, researchers have shown that City Connects has a beneficial impact–improving test scores, increasing graduation rates, decreasing dropout rates and chronic absenteeism, and yielding a significant return on investment. Being able to understand its effects, and increasingly to understand why those results are being produced, is important to reshaping our understanding of what is possible for students when they get the right support.”
One of the seminal figures in creating the City Connects RPP was professor George Madaus. He helped the team at City Connects understand right from the start how to study the practice’s impact.
Madaus was a research professor at Boston College and an internationally known expert on educational evaluation and measurement. He laid the groundwork for measuring the new intervention in academically rigorous ways.
“Thanks to the late, legendary BC Professor George Madaus,“ Walsh said, “we learned that students who’d had City Connects in elementary school did significantly better on standardized tests through the rest of their education, and that their high-school dropout rate decreased by half.”
How is the City Connects RPP unique?
The City Connects RPP is uncommon in a number of ways.
Most RPPs are between one school and one university. This research-practice partnership extends to multiple schools across multiple states. It also sometimes spans research institutions, allowing other scholars the opportunity to learn from City Connects in schools. For example, Indiana University is working on an evaluation of the intervention in that state, and Mary Immaculate College in Limerick, home of the National Center for City Connects Ireland, is collecting data to examine some of the wide-ranging impacts in that country.
The City Connects RPP is also unusual in how closely the research and practice influence each other. Many RPPs can turn into one-way streets: researchers gather data from practitioners and study effects or trends, but have very limited direct influence on the practice. The City Connects RPP was set up “at the hyphen” to provide a two-way flow of information. The research conducted in City Connects schools offers valuable insight into how the City Connects practice can be refined, improved, or streamlined, while the practice and its impacts inform important questions like: Does an elementary school intervention impact high school graduation rates? And what is the effect of addressing the out-of-school factors on student academic achievement?
“We have learned so much and continue to learn so much about what works for students,” Walsh said. “There have been some things that came out of the research where we said, ‘Wow, I never would have thought of that.’ It’s been so important to understanding how to best support students. The core principles of our practice haven’t changed in 25 years, but how we implement is constantly being influenced by what we learn from the research.”
The insights don’t just help City Connects; they also influence the field of integrated student support, which is a class of interventions that address the whole child in school settings. By understanding what works, the research contributes to informing best practices, such as those encapsulated in the first National Guidelines for Integrated Student Support. The research also contributes to reshaping decision makers’ understanding of the importance of addressing the out-of-school factors that can inhibit a student’s readiness to learn and succeed, informing choices at the district, state, and national policy levels.
A continuing legacy of change
The City Connects RPP continues to provide questions and insights for researchers, best practices for schools, and insights for policymakers. This year saw the publication of a synthetic randomized control trial (RCT), providing strong causal evidence of City Connects’ significant impact on student learning. “As an author of what has been described as the first large-scale RCT in the field of educational measurement, George [Madaus] would have been delighted with this new evidence: students randomly assigned to City Connects schools significantly outperformed their peers randomly assigned to comparison schools in statewide test scores,” said Walsh.
In addition, the 2024 City Connects Progress Report detailed two new studies looking at impacts on students. In the first study, new evidence shows that City Connects helps students and schools with a perennial challenge: over-identification of students for special education. This has significant implications for students and for school budgets. Another new study found that students who receive the City Connects intervention after moving to a new middle school have better achievement and lower rates of chronic absenteeism than students who never receive the City Connects intervention after changing schools.
The strength of City Connects practice and evidence of impact demonstrates the potential power of this model of integrated student support to help transform student outcomes and to help schools to more effectively and efficiently use existing school- and community-resources to promote student wellbeing and learning. More than half of the U.S. states are at some stage of policymaking on integrated student support, including 11 states that are investing in specific evidence-based approaches.
When City Connects began, it was grounded in a belief: with the right support, every student can thrive. In its 25th year, City Connects has more than belief: it has evidence of the strongest kind. As we look ahead, City Connects aims to continue making a difference for children served directly through the City Connects program in schools, and through its RPP, which allows for learning that influences what is possible for students everywhere, helping them to achieve and thrive in their classrooms and communities.
