the 1990s as two of the worst schools in Chicago in terms of math and reading achievement. Only two miles apart, the schools are in bordering neighborhoods and appear similar in many ways. Both enrolled nearly 100% minority students from families considered low income.During the 1990s, both launched an array of initiatives aimed at boosting student achievement. Hancock moved impressively forward, while Alexander barely moved the needle on improvement. How did Hancock "beat the odds" while Alexander failed to do so?This puzzle led us to undertake a systematic longitudinal investigation of hundreds of elementary schools in Chicago, just like Alexander and Hancock. Beginning in 1990, the Consortium on Chicago School Research initiated an intensive longitudinal study of the internal workings and external community conditions that distinguished improving elementary schools from those that failed to improve. That unique 15-year Organizing Schools for ImprovementResearch on Chicago school improvement indicates that improving elementary schools requires coherent, orchestrated action across five essential supports.

P eople have long bemoaned the silos of research and practice. Researchers express frustration that practitioners do not use or misuse research. Practitioners respond that research is not relevant to their work, or is not easily accessible or understood. Research-Practice Partnerships (RPPs) across the country are seeking to undo these patterns. Many partnerships involve agencies working in longterm collaboration with external researchers. Others are partnerships between research and program offi ces within government agencies. In this paper, we discuss how partnerships challenge researchers and practitioners to work together in new ways in order to improve education and human services, and ultimately to enhance child and youth outcomes.Discussion covers various types of partnerships, strategies and conditions for success, and exemplar models.Research-Practice Partnerships: Building Two-Way Streets of Engagment Over the past two decades, efforts to promote the use of research in practice have emphasized a one-way street approach: bringing research to practice (with a heavy focus on evidence-based programs). These efforts have fostered signifi cant advancements while also revealing limitations. The one-way-street approach has directed overwhelming attention to three strategies: 1) improving research rigor (i.e., by setting standards of evidence); 2) improving strategies to push out research (i.e., dissemination, scaling, communication, and marketing); and 3) increasing incentives and requirements for the adoption of evidence-based programs (Tseng, 2012). What the one-way street approach neglects is the need for practice concerns to drive research at the outset.The proliferation of research-practice partnerships (RPPs) represents a major shift in ideas about research production and use (Spencer Foundation, 2016). The focus in RPPs is on building two-way streets of engagement. It is not about bringing research to practice, but about sustaining a dynamic relationship between research and practice (Granger, Tseng, & Wilcox, 2014). Instead of focusing primarily on research-push strategies, RPPs seek to pull from practice so that key problems of practice shape research agendas. Such partnerships strive for mutual understanding and shared commitments from the outset as partners identify their joint research goals. They foster continued engagement as fi ndings emerge and are rendered into changes in programs, curriculum, or professional development. They integrate research and practice perspectives on mutually traveled two-way streets.

This study examines 4 years of small school reform in Chicago, focusing on schools formed by converting large traditional high schools into small autonomous ones. Analyzing systemwide survey and outcome data, the authors assess the assumptions embedded in the reform’s theory of change. They find that these schools are characterized by more collegial and committed teacher contexts and more academically and personally supportive student contexts. There is some evidence of decreased dropout rates and increased graduation rates for the first cohort of students but not for the second cohort. The authors do not find stronger instruction, nor do they find student achievement has improved. They discuss implications for reformers and policy makers who are interested in small schools in particular and high school reform in general.

Relapse of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) remains a leading cause of childhood cancer-related death. Prior studies have shown clonal mutations at relapse often arise from relapse-fated subclones that exist at diagnosis. However, the genomic landscape, evolutionary trajectories, and mutational mechanisms driving relapse are incompletely understood. In an analysis of 92 cases of relapsed childhood ALL incorporating multimodal DNA and RNA sequencing, deep digital mutational tracking, and xenografting to formally define clonal structure, we identied 50 significant targets of mutation with distinct patterns of mutational acquisition or enrichment. CREBBP, NOTCH1, and RAS signaling mutations arose from diagnosis subclones, whereas variants in NCOR2, USH2A, and NT5C2 were exclusively observed at relapse. Evolutionary modeling and xenografting demonstrated that relapse-fated clones were minor (50%), major (27%), or multiclonal (18%) at diagnosis. Putative second leukemias, including those with lineage shift, were shown to most commonly represent relapse from an ancestral clone rather than a truly independent second primary leukemia. A subset of leukemias prone to repeated relapse exhibited hypermutation driven by at least three distinct mutational processes, resulting in heightened neoepitope burden and potential vulnerability to immunotherapy. Finally, relapse-driving sequence mutations were detected prior to relapse using droplet digital PCR at levels comparable with orthogonal approaches to monitor levels of measurable residual disease. These results provide a genomic framework to anticipate and circumvent relapse by earlier detection and targeting of relapse-fated clones. SIGNIFICANCE:This study defines the landscape of mutations that preexist and arise after commencement of ALL therapy and shows that relapse may be propagated from ancestral, major, or minor clones at initial diagnosis. A subset of cases exhibit hypermutation that results in expression of neoepitopes that may be substrates for immunotherapeutic intervention.

Using value-added models on data from Chicago Public Schools, we find that high schools impact students' self-reported socioemotional development (SED) by enhancing social well-being and promoting hard work. Conditional on their test score impacts, schools that improve SED in ninth grade reduce school-based arrests and increase high school completion and college going. For most longer-run outcomes, using both SED and test score value added more than doubles the variance of the explained school effect relative to using test score value added alone. Results suggest that high school impacts on SED can be captured using self-report surveys and SED can be fostered by schools to improve longer-run outcomes. (JEL I21, J24, K42)