Chapter 2: A School District and College Collaborate to Develop Career Ladders for Educators: Features, Impacts, and Research

For those educators following the partnership movement, there is no doubt that the education community today has now entered into the next wave and phase of school-university partnerships in America. The new phase is characterized by an emphasis on research and processes, along with the need to generate data in a systematic way to inform our decisions and produce actionable knowledge locally and regionally. Historically, as depicted by Catelli (2005, 2006) in a review of the school-university partnership movement in America from 1983 to 2006, the movement has evolved in waves and phases (see also, for historical overviews, Albert, 1991; Albert & Wilbur, 1995; Haycock, Hart, & Irvine, 1992). Although formal school-university partnerships have dated back to the 1950s and early 1960s (Jones & Maloy, 1988), schools and universities have collaborated with one another for a host of reasons and agendas. Often reflective of the times and responsive to economic and political forces, school-university partnerships have ranged from such national efforts as the Sputnik Space Race in the 1960s to improve science education; the Holmes Group (1986, 1990, 1995) in the 1980s, created to reform the teacher education system; and more local and state efforts in the 1990s created to initiate improvements in school curriculum, education practice, and student achievement. Today, as in 2006, society and its institutions are undergoing a major restructuring initiated by national security concerns, domestic economic issues, and a keen awareness of the changing demographics. The organizational structures and managerial patterns of many corporations and institutions once found to be successful in the industrial age are continually breaking down the existing silos (Tett, 2015) and shifting to more integrative patterns, collaborative networking structures, and partnerships that are representative of a knowledge-based society (Brown, 2012; Brown & Duguid, 2000; Malone & Yohe, 2002; Thomas & Brown, 2011) and the information age (Ross, 2016).