Navigating the Politics of Race,Research,and Role in a University-School District Research-Practice Partnership

Abstract

This paper examines the tensions and differences in perspective that emerged within a university–school district research–practice partnership in the process of codesigning and implementing an out-of-school college- and career-readiness educational program aimed at ameliorating racial inequity. By analyzing interviews with both research- and practice-side research–practice partnership leaders involved in the decision-making and development process, we identified a set of three domains of ongoing negotiation and disagreement that materialized during initial stages of development related to differing conceptions of how best to navigate racial equity, the purposes and goals of collaborative research, and the role of new programs amid a broader ecosystem of youth-focused initiatives. We highlight the ways that partnerships between universities and school districts are fraught political endeavors that necessarily entail recognition, negotiation, and compromise of differing priorities, values, and perspectives.

Introduction

Research–practice partnerships (RPPs) are long-term collaborations between practitioners and researchers that facilitate the production and use of research to address specific problems of practice and to advance educational improvement and equity (Coburn & Penuel, 2016; Farrell et al., 2021; Henrick et al., 2023; Wentworth et al., 2024). Often rooted in an improvement science paradigm in which educational problems are addressed through continuous cycles of inquiry (Lewis, 2015), dominant discourses in RPP work and research tend to emphasize the ideals of mutuality, reciprocity, collaboration, and trust between partner institutions. However, due to the optimism surrounding the potential of RPPs, the tensions and conflicts within, between, and external to partner institutions—all of which can work against the goals and mission of partnership—can be glossed over or overlooked (Denner et al., 2019; Duff et al., 2023; Yamashiro et al., 2023). In this study we examined the politics of RPPs—or the differences and conflicts that arise when making decisions and allocating resources—in the specific context of the implementation of a racial-equity-focused educational program, and in exploring these complex relational dynamics, we identified a set of domains of negotiation in which researchers and practitioners involved in the RPP entered into disagreement, conflict, and differences in perspective. Our goal was to underscore the ways that RPPs and the programs they codesign are highly political endeavors fraught with tension and disagreement in order to facilitate a broader conversation concerning the often-assumed compatibilities of interinstitutional collaborations and partnerships.

In the past few years, RPPs have proliferated in the field of education. Supported by organizational funding for RPP-related research (e.g., W. T. Grant Foundation and the Spencer Foundation), the soaring popularity of RPPs can be attributed to both their potential and promise to bridge the research–practice divide that has long plagued education, substantively address educational problems relevant to local school districts and communities, and function as a collaborative mechanism to advance educational equity (Arce-Trigatti et al., 2024; Gist et al., 2024; Ishimaru et al., 2022). Although RPPs are often construed in an idealized manner, a plethora of existing research (Booker et al., 2019; Farrell et al., 2019; Klein, 2023; Wegemer & Renick, 2021) along with our own experiences working closely with a RPP between a large public university located in the southeastern United States and a neighboring diverse school district has underscored the real-world messiness and complexity that partnership work entails. In addition, RPPs do not exist within a silo—independent of local and broader sociopolitical conditions and contexts. Instead, the ways that institutions navigate, negotiate, and respond to community- and national-level politics also can affect and shape RPP decision-making processes, particularly for RPPs with an explicit racial-equity focus given the salience of race in U.S. society.

To understand these processes more deeply within RPPs, we conducted a qualitative analysis of a university–school district RPP with which we are involved and affiliated. Starting in 2021, this RPP codesigned and implemented an out-of-school college- and career-readiness educational program for local middle-school-aged youth from racially minoritized backgrounds with advancing racial equity as a core mission. While the university and school district have collaborated on other initiatives, programs, and efforts since then, we focused specifically on the educational program that helped to launch the initial genesis of the partnership. Our inquiry into understanding the political dynamics of RPPs was guided by the following questions: (a) What areas, issues, or topics are highly contested in an RPP-led educational equity program? (b) How do various groups (e.g., researchers, practitioners, and community members) negotiate their interests and navigate both internal and external politics in this context? and (3) In what ways do power dynamics shape these contestations? By internal politics, we mean the preexisting interpersonal relationships and organizational cultures and histories that shape collaborative decision making, and by external politics, we mean the national pressures surrounding diversity and racial equity and attacks on educational institutions (both K–12 and universities). By conducting interviews (n = 19) with both research- and practice-side RPP leaders involved in the implementation of this out-of-school youth education program, we identified and discuss three critical domains of negotiation and disagreement drawn from our analysis and interpretation of the interview data—the politics of race, research, and role.

Theoretical Framework: A Political Approach to Understanding Educational Organizations

This study is theoretically informed by the micropolitics of educational organizations (Ball, 2012; Blase, 2005; Marshall & Scribner, 1991; Smeed et al., 2009). In advancing a theory of schools as organizations, which we apply to RPPs, Ball (2012) proposed a schema for analyzing school organization from the perspective of two paradigms: a micropolitical perspective and an organizational science view. An organizational science paradigm centers concepts such as goal coherence, ideological neutrality, consensus, and motivation, whereas a micropolitical perspective focuses on power, goal diversity, conflict, and interests. Rooted in sociological conflict theory (e.g., Balridge, 1971; Collins, 1975), a micropolitical approach to educational organizations focuses on the fragmentation of a given system with varying factions and groups engaging in negotiations resulting from divergent values and conflicting interests. Thus, while organizational science may emphasize unitary goal attainment, a micropolitical approach assumes “goal diversity” (Ball, 2012, p. 11) and the contestation of competing goals and aims.

Informed by a micropolitical paradigm, we conceptualize the RPP as an emerging organization that, while bridging two (or more) institutions together, collaborates in making educational decisions and policies on a joint endeavor and/or designing and testing interventions or programs—all of which are processes that necessarily involve negotiations of power and conflict. In other words, the RPP fundamentally involves politics, which can be defined as “simply the realistic process of making decisions and allocating resources in a context of scarcity and divergent interests” (Bolman & Deal, 2003, p. 181). Similarly, in their explanation of a micropolitical analysis of schooling, Marshall and Scribner (1991) suggested that organizations must make decisions about “who gets what, when, and how” (p. 348) and engage in policymaking processes that emanate and derive from existing power relationships and conflict situations.

We suggest that the dominant paradigm in existing RPP research aligns more with Ball’s (2012) summary of organizational science, and thus, advancing research from a critical epistemological stance and conflict perspective, which seek to interrogate power dynamics and dominant narratives, can illuminate issues, taken-for-granted assumptions, and divergences that otherwise remain hidden. Many RPP guidelines and frameworks focus on cultivating trust and fostering conditions that facilitate goal attainment and effectiveness (Booker et al., 2019; Farley-Ripple et al., 2018; Henrick et al., 2023) and use of collaborative research (Hopkins et al., 2019). However, some scholars have critiqued this emphasis on effectiveness, arguing that a greater attention to power, inequality, and broader politicized conditions is needed (Denner et al., 2019; Diamond, 2021; Tanksley & Estrada, 2022). In response to this critique, a burgeoning research base has started to take a political approach to examining RPPs, centering conflict and power dynamics and focusing on both internal and external politics (Duff et al., 2023; Klein, 2023; Villavicencio et al., 2023; Yamashiro et al., 2023). In centering the concept of power, we conceptualize power relations as dynamic, fluid, and multidirectional processes in that both research and practice sides possess resources, capacities, and positionalities to influence decision making.

Research on RPP collaboration and conflict often has focused on interpersonal tensions between researchers and practitioners. Varying institutional cultures can manifest in differences in expectations regarding norms and roles for RPP leaders when collaboration is attempted (Coburn & Penuel, 2016; Coburn et al., 2008; Rosen, 2010). For instance, in their critical and self-reflective analysis of their own RPP, Denner et al. (2019) found that staff involved in the RPP often perceived a power differential with the researchers and felt skepticism and distrust toward their privileged expertise and position. Prior research also has emphasized the ways that RPP leaders negotiate their roles in the partnership, paying attention to how differing levels of authority and power shape who makes decisions, who participates in setting the agenda, and so on (Farrell et al., 2019; Vakil et al., 2016; Wegemer & Renick, 2021).

In addition to research that focuses on interpersonal interactions between RPP leaders, other work is beginning to examine the political dimensions of partnerships beyond interpersonal power dynamics, focusing more broadly on internal institutional and external politics. Without a critical examination and interrogation of the sociopolitical contexts of schools, communities, and universities, RPPs are unlikely to realize their transformational and equity aims. When partner institutions are brought together to engage in RPP work, each institution brings particular priorities, values, and goals that can conflict with those of the partner organization while also impacting the local communities in which they are situated. For instance, Duff et al. (2023) identified goal misalignment among researchers, practitioners, and funders and found that these divergent goals were never resolved. Such divergent goals and priorities therefore can lead to disagreements about the work of the RPP, the research agenda, and how to accomplish shared goals (Finnigan, 2023; Meyer et al., 2023; Yamashiro et al., 2023). A micropolitical paradigm to RPPs pushed us to examine and uncover the divergences in goals, interests, and priorities that can emerge in subtle and hidden ways in the process of collectively making critical decisions within a joint effort.

Furthermore, RPPs operate within highly politicized local and national contexts. Racism is a contemporary social formation that imbues every facet and institution of U.S. society (Bonilla-Silva, 2001; Feagin, 2006), including education and schooling. Thus, one of the key tensions in education is the persistent impact of structural racism that produces inequitable outcomes, resources, and opportunities across racial categories (Ladson-Billings, 2006; Lewis & Diamond, 2015) and yet the hegemonic dominance of colorblind ideologies and racial silencing in educational practice and policy (Castagno, 2008; Cobb, 2017; Pollock, 2004; Wells, 2014). Consequently, race is highly politicized in school contexts, which often serve as arenas in which national issues, debates, and culture wars are negotiated (Zimmerman, 2022). For RPPs that are focused on racial justice, members of partnerships must learn to navigate the tense and ever-changing sociopolitical climate around issues related to race and racism (Villavicencio et al., 2023). In university–school district collaborations there may be differences between institutions in the extent to which racism and educational inequity are freely discussed, prioritized, and/or censored.

This study focused specifically on the differences in perspective and viewpoint that emerged from the divergent goals, interests, and priorities of partner institutions as these collaborations endeavored to jointly design and implement racial-equity-focused educational programs and interventions. These differences in perspective and negotiations become more visible or apparent when partnerships make joint decisions related to their collaboration, such as the design and implementation of new programs, the types of research pursued and their purposes, pragmatic choices related to funding and other resources, and involvement of other nonprofit organizations. These differences can emerge across several overlapping layers: (a) the internal politics within each partner institution, (b) the intra-institutional politics between partner organizations, and (c) the external politics at both the local and national levels. Thus, RPPs are not only political because they involve competing goals in collaborative work between partner institutions but also because they involve navigating both internal and external politicized conditions. Our analysis examined this complex web of politics.

Context

Our RPP

In 2021, a newly established university-based research center at a large, public, predominantly White university located in the southeastern United States, referred to in this study as “the Center,” started an RPP with a neighboring school district with the shared purpose of designing and implementing a college- and career-readiness program for local middle school students, which we refer to as the “Community Youth Program” (CYP) in this study. Implementation of the CYP has involved a triad of stakeholders—researchers and staff affiliated with the university research center, practitioners and leaders from the school district, and local community partners and nonprofit organizations—working together and navigating an ecosystem of institutional contexts. Starting with a summer pilot program in 2021, the CYP has evolved into a multifaceted program including a 3-week summer enrichment program on the university’s campus focused on providing students with career-related experiences in fields such as architecture, science, culinary arts, medicine, multimedia, engineering, and so on; full-day programming on teacher in-service days; individualized weekly tutoring with undergraduate volunteers; and weekly in-school mentorship opportunities (e.g., socioemotional learning and college preparation).

As one of the key initiatives of the Center, the CYP was envisioned as a primary manifestation of the Center’s broader mission to tangibly redress economic and racial inequity in the local region through community-engaged research. Thus, the CYP aimed to serve students from historically marginalized and disadvantaged communities (although the exact meaning of this is contested) with the theory of change that these students may lack college- and career-related resources (e.g., opportunities, knowledge, and social capital) and the system of supports needed for future success. During the 2024–25 academic year (the program’s fourth year in operation), the first official cohort of students who started in 2022 entered tenth grade. One hundred and sixty-eight students enrolled in the CYP: ~10% White, 35% Black, 40% Hispanic/Latino/a, and 15% Asian (the partnering school district is ~60% White, 15% Black, 15% Hispanic/Latino/a, 5% two or more races, and 5% Asian).

Importantly, the CYP was a new, changing, and dynamic program, revising and expanding its services and offerings through yearly iterations. In this regard, the CYP was a highly suitable and conducive context for understanding why and in what ways researchers and practitioners involved in RPPs enter into disagreements and differences in perspective. As the CYP gradually became a more formalized and growing program through collaboration and discussion with the school district and community organizations, the Center and the school district were awarded an external grant by a national organization in 2023 to continue their efforts. In partnering in a mutually beneficial manner with the school district alongside local community organizations, the RPP team—over the several years of collaboration—has had to make a multitude of decisions regarding how to frame the CYP, who exactly the program should serve, how it should be structured, how the CYP should be researched, who should be involved, and what the ultimate aims and purposes should be. In this study, we focused specifically on the tensions and differences in perspectives that emerged among research- and practice-side leaders as they relate to specific decisions and events throughout the CYP’s development. Thus, examining the CYP can be an informative case for other RPPs in similar early stages of development that may encounter similar decision inflection points and negotiations.

Researcher Positionality

This study emerged out of our sustained engagement with both the Center and the CYP. We are uniquely positioned in the following ways: The first author is an Asian American education researcher with a specialization in the sociology of education who has been actively involved in the RPP since 2022. Working under the direction of both university and school district research team leaders, he has assisted with data collection and analysis and program evaluation and recently led an ethnographic study examining student experiences through long-term participant observation. As a result of these experiences, the first author possessed insider and firsthand knowledge about the university research center, its staff, the CYP as a program, and the students. The second author is an African American faculty member with expertise in mixed-methods research and marginalized adolescent health and development who has previous experience working with other unrelated RPPs on the university side. When the RPP was awarded the grant from the national foundation in 2023, she joined the RPP as a research fellow to offer her expertise on research methods.

Despite the first author’s experience and contextual understanding developed over 2 years of involvement with the RPP (Gitomer & Crouse, 2019; Guest et al., 2013), we also were relative outsiders to the RPP leadership team. We were not involved in the development of the partnership, the initial design of the CYP, or the writing and submission of the external grant. In fact, we were initially approached and tasked to lead this project on examining the inter-institutional collaboration precisely because the leadership team felt that we would be able to maintain a critical distance from those who would be participants in the study.

However, as researchers affiliated with the university, we recognize that we are indeed largely aligned with the research side of the RPP, a position that raises methodological and ethical challenges. Due to our knowledge and history with the university and more nuanced perspectives concerning the university’s capacities, resources, and agenda, we feel that we were more aptly positioned to be critical of the university-based research side. Furthermore, the second author’s previous experiences with a university-school RPP in a separate context shaped her interpretations and perspectives to be highly aware and cognizant of potential pitfalls. Our positionality as researchers affiliated with the university affected each stage of the research process, from recruiting potential participants, the level of candor during interviews, to our interpretations of the data.

Method

Drawing on basic interpretive qualitative methodology (Tisdell et al., 2025), we analyzed the relational dynamics between university and school district leaders involved in the design and implementation of the CYP. To do so, we conducted semistructured interviews (n = 19) with both research-side (i.e., the university) and practice-side (i.e., the school district) leaders. Following Klein (2023), we use the terms research side and practice side to clarify each individual’s organization and to account for the diverse roles and backgrounds within those organizations. We initially compiled a list of potential interviewees by starting with the members of the CYP community advisory board and then added individuals who were/are involved in the design and implementation of the CYP based on the suggestions of the RPP leadership. In total, we interviewed 10 full-time university researchers and staff, three faculty affiliates involved in CYP research, and six full-time school district leaders. To protect the anonymity of participants, we have elected to describe each as either a research-side or a practice-side leader, withholding specific descriptors about their positions.

To provide a brief timeline, the Center was officially established in 2019, and the CYP was started as a pilot program in the summer of 2021. We conducted the semistructured interviews, which were ~45–60 minutes each, during the summer of 2024 (the CYP’s fourth iteration). In these interviews, we asked about each individual’s background and position, their perspectives about working with the partner organization, the challenges and tensions they perceived, and the purposes and goals of both the CYP and the ongoing research. In addition, we asked participants to retrospectively reflect on their involvement with the collaboration; some leaders had been actively involved since the inception of the Center (6 years), whereas others had been involved for a shorter period of time (1–2 years). As researchers not directly involved with implementation of the CYP, we attempted to adopt an open and reflexive stance in our interviewing and to honor each participant’s perspective (Brenner, 2012), urging participants to share their candid perspectives while being open to the nuances of each participant’s subjectivity. Informed by our theoretical framework and a critical epistemological stance, we were particularly interested in examining instances and reflections on conflict, negotiation, tension, disagreement, and so on. Consequently, we explicitly asked participants to detail and recount these instances by asking questions such as, “Have there been any moments of tension, misunderstanding, or conflict?” and “Is there anything you wish the other organization would do differently?” (full interview protocol can be accessed online; Hu & Debnam, 2025).

Data collection and analysis were concurrent dialectal processes. We first open coded an initial batch of three interviews with an inductive approach (Saldaña, 2013) using qualitative coding software (ATLAS.ti). We repeated the open-coding process to refine the initial open codes and engaged in memo writing to organize our interpretations, paying specific attention to the ways that specific organizational values, priorities, and goals were articulated (Charmaz, 2014). We used these initial insights as interview stimuli in subsequent interviews to probe deeper. We continued this iterative process of open coding, memo writing, and analyzing in batches of three to four until all the interviews were completed. Further along in this process, we organized the open codes into tentative groups and categories based on practice- and research-side priorities and interest divergence/convergence and discussed these emerging themes together.

As we conducted and analyzed the interviews, we noticed discrepancies and disagreements in individual accounts concerning many aspects of the CYP, such as its programmatic structure and its educational purposes, as well as the dynamics of the RPP, ranging from the perceptions of trust and collaboration, the purposes of the research, and how to navigate national politics. We sought to identify general patterns in these differences, aiming to hold conflicting accounts in tension with one another. Specifically, there were times when we observed a sharp contrast between the research and practice sides, whereas at other times we noticed conflicting views between factions on one particular side. In both cases, we attempted to draw out shared (but not necessarily universal) patterns. Thus, our findings are organized by the domains of negotiation and contestation—race, research, and role—that we saw as most salient in understanding the political dynamics of the RPP-led educational program. We engaged in member checking by sharing and presenting an initial draft of our findings to both research- and practice-side leaders as well as the community advisory board (composed primarily of practitioners), soliciting their feedback, comments, and suggestions. After receiving a positive response, we circulated the full-length manuscript to several key RPP leaders for further revision and approval prior to submission, incorporating their written and verbal feedback. We primarily used this feedback to clarify, contextualize, and add nuance to our explanations and representations of interview excerpts. For example, the feedback from leaders helped us to articulate the limitations of collecting data at an early phase of partnership development and to modify and nuance the “Findings” section to avoid homogenizing the practice- and research-side perspectives.

Limitations

While we feel that the domains of negotiation we identified and discussed in our analysis are highly relevant and salient to educational programming and interventions in the RPP space, we also recognize several key limitations of our study. First, we rely on a single data source (i.e., interviews) collected over a short period of 3 months. In addition, these interviews were individual accounts of subjective perspectives and experiences, with each participant’s perspective being only partial and limited. While we did attempt to gather multiple perspectives, a limitation we acknowledge is the lack of multiple alternative perspectives in that certain retellings of transpired events, particularly related to the initial partnership formation, were largely dependent n specific individuals’ accounts. Second, as researchers affiliated with the Center but not full-time staff, we also acknowledge that we were not privy to many of the insider conversations and other endeavors of the Center. Thus, our analysis involves a level of subjective interpretation as relative outsiders. Finally, as a consequence of the data-collection timeframe, our analysis represents a specific snapshot in time, situated in the early phases of a university–school district RPP. We recognize that these relationships and partnerships are constantly evolving and growing and that our analysis does not represent a final evaluative pronouncement on this RPP. Although the data lack a longitudinal perspective that traces a long-term trajectory of development and resolution, our analysis pinpoints common areas of contestation and disagreement, which need to be addressed to foster equitable and collaborative RPPs. Our findings have implications and broader relevance for RPPs in early stages and similar phases of development, which we discuss in the “Conclusion.”

Findings

In this section we begin by examining the divergent conceptions of the purpose of the CYP program from the perspectives of the research- and practice-side leaders. This divergence concerning the overall purpose and scope of the CYP is foundational to understanding the three domains of negotiation we identified (i.e., race, research, and role). We then discuss these domains successively, drawing attention to the ways that research- and practice-side leaders interpreted, responded, navigated, and/or entered into or avoided conflict at various key decision-making points in the design and implementation of the CYP.

The CYP was a small, selective program that annually enrolled ~150–175 students—primarily low-income students from racially minoritized backgrounds—from a predominantly White school district with >14,000 students. Research- and practice-side leaders articulated differing conceptions of the CYP’s purpose, a thematic divergence interconnected with the domains of negotiation to be discussed. On one hand, research-side leaders more often described the CYP in their initial descriptions as a program designed for youth from racially minoritized backgrounds with advancing racial equity as a core mission; for example, Derek, a research-side staff member who worked closely with the CYP, described its purpose as “addressing the achievement gap of Black and Brown students [by] tangibly supporting and uplifting the youth.” On the other hand, practice-side leaders tended to frame the CYP as a career-readiness program; for instance, Kayla, a school district leader, described the CYP as a “wonderful program that really focuses on . . . exposing students to different career pathways.” Neither characterization of the CYP is inaccurate, but each side tended to articulate and emphasize a differing program purpose.

The Politics of Race

Contextualizing External Political Conditions

This divergent conception of the CYP’s purpose is intricately tied to the politics of race (i.e., ongoing struggles over how racial inequities are framed, produced, justified, etc.). In accordance with the Center’s efforts to redress racial and economic inequity in the region, the CYP was initiated in 2021 to offer opportunities and resources to local youth with the explicit aim of ameliorating existing racial opportunity gaps. Notably, the CYP was framed initially in race-conscious terms. The Center’s 2022–23 Annual Report, for instance, presented its principal objective in this way: “Black, Indigenous, ethnic minority, and underrepresented youth [will] gain access to better educational resources and outcomes.”

The initial racial framing of the CYP in 2021 coincided with a heightened attention to race, racism, and racial inequality at the national level—a racial reckoning spearheaded by protests against police brutality (e.g., the murder of George Floyd) and the Black Lives Matter movement. However, political conditions have changed drastically from 2020 to 2024 with increasing white backlash (Glickman, 2020; Jefferson & Ray, 2022; Merritt, 2024) against issues of race and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), recent executive orders that dismantle DEI-related infrastructure and seek to enforce race neutrality, and termination of equity-related research funding. In particular, the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2023 against race-conscious university admissions, a political shift that was frequently referenced in our interviews, was a significant turning point for RPP leaders involved in the CYP.

Racial Blindness in the School District

One of the key ongoing points of tension and disagreement that involved continual decision making was how exactly the CYP should be described and characterized as an educational program (i.e., whether it should be framed in explicitly racial terms and goals). When asked to articulate the purposes of the CYP, the practice-side leaders we interviewed (such as Kayla, mentioned previously) by in large used race-blind or color-evasive discourse—a trend that reflects the broader status quo of “colorblind” educational policies and practices, such as racial silencing in schools (Castagno, 2008; Pollock, 2004). For instance, Brendan, a practice-side leader, described the CYP’s mission as “trying to find some students who don’t have a lot of access for a variety of reasons and . . . preparing for going to college [or] getting more information about how you would access something like a career.” This generic framing (e.g., “for a variety of reasons”) not only neglected to specifically name the structural educational inequities that students from racially and socioeconomically minoritized backgrounds face but also stripped the racial focus of the program. The Center’s core value of addressing racial equity was not seemingly taken up by the school district partner in the same way, diluting the explicit racial focus. Because the interviews were conducted in the aftermath of the Supreme Court decision on race-conscious admissions, it is possible that practice-side leaders were reluctant to use race-conscious discourse for fear of political backlash.

However, we argue that the tendency toward race-blind discourses can be attributed in part to public school commitments to serving all students, which can mask underlying racial inequities. Nicole, a research-side leader involved in the CYP who also had a previous employment history with the school district, strongly criticized the district’s focus on equality instead of equity (a personal position that long predated the Supreme Court decision). Nicole explained:

I am an activist, just an advocate for kids to do what’s right, to do what’s equitable, not the equality the [school district] calls equity. They always say, “Oh, it has to be equitable. It has to be the same for everybody.” And I keep saying, “That’s not equity. That’s equality. Let’s get it right.”

From Nicole’s perspective, the school district had focused on implementing policies and practices that purportedly benefit all students, calling this commitment “equity,” but her contention is that educational equity can only be achieved when resources and opportunities are not distributed equally. Nicole sought to practice an unapologetic form of praxis explicitly committed to racial educational equity, serving the most disadvantaged students, whereas the school district, from her view, was more concerned with equality of experiences and resources. Although the same buzzword “equity” is used, a fundamental source of disagreement emerged due to contrasting conceptions of equity. Thus, while a university and a school district may agree to develop an educational “equity” program, what each institution envisions this equity to entail and involve can differ greatly.

Similarly, Rose, a research-side faculty member involved in researching the CYP, also noted the dominance of colorblindness in the school district. Hoping to collect survey data from both CYP-participating and nonparticipating students, Rose said, “We’re not sure if we’re going to be able to ask questions about race and racial identities because we don’t know what the climate of that type of content in the schools is going to be at the time.” In response, Rose and her research team strategically reworded survey questions to avoid the negative politics of explicitly mentioning race and to increase the chances that their research would be approved by the school district.

There were, however, exceptions to this color-evasive tendency on the practice side. For instance, Greta, a practice-side leader involved with the development of the CYP from the beginning, explicitly recognized the racial inequity in their school district, stating, “We are in the bottom of the state when it comes to the performance of our Black students.” Furthermore, Greta was the only practice-side leader who described the CYP in race-conscious terms, stating that the program was specifically designed for “students from disadvantaged backgrounds and students who identify as Black and Brown.” Although both were practice-side leaders intimately involved with the CYP, Brendan and Greta articulated contrasting conceptions of the intended audience of the CYP—the former presenting the program as one that helps generic students who lack access and the latter framing the program for racially minoritized students who have been disenfranchised.

The Conflict on the Research Side

Despite the initial commitment to framing the CYP as a racial-equity program, the leadership team was forced to make critical decisions in response to external political conditions, specifically the growing national backlash against DEI in 2023 and 2024. In the aftermath of the 2023 Supreme Court ruling against race-conscious admissions policies, the CYP team on the research side discreetly changed the framing of the program from serving youth of color to more race-evasive and class-based terms such as “first-generation college student,” “under-resourced,” and “low wealth”—a decision that generated multiple viewpoints and disagreements. For some of the research-side leaders, the erasure of explicit racial discourse was a necessary political move to avoid backlash, perhaps a decision influenced by pressure from the university administration. Frank, a research-side leader with significant decision-making power, openly explained this strategic shift:

When we started this program, we were pretty bold about that this is a program for Black and Brown students . . . because of the Supreme Court decision and because of just the . . . target, the type of language puts on you. We shifted it to first-generation and students of low income on the back end. . . . and again, one of the big things around this is we talked about educational equity and now [we] more and more talk about educational opportunity. To me, it’s the same thing, right?

Due to the political backlash against racial justice and DEI, Frank explained their decision to substitute race-conscious and equity discourse for more palatable language such as “first-generation college student” or “opportunity” as a strategic maneuver to avoid the potential consequences of losing funding or sparking local and national controversies. For Frank, however, this was merely a semantic issue; he explained, “I think you can fight . . . the wordsmithing battle, . . . but I think if you focus your attention on that all the time, the language and saying the right thing, then that takes away from just doing the work.” For him, altering the public-facing language did not change the core mission of the CYP.

From Frank’s point of view, racial-equity “work” can be done no matter the semantic language, and although many leaders followed Frank’s lead on this framing, other research-side leaders expressed their disagreement in private. For instance, Raymond, a research-side faculty leader, was more critical of this turn, explaining, “We talked about that the whole point is actually to redress racial inequities. . . . it’s unfortunate. We use these coded terms [like] first-generation students . . . but now I think you lose the real purpose of the program. I think you lose [the] meaning of the program.” Similarly, David, another leader on the research side, articulated, “If your intervention is class based, your initiative is going to fail because you’re not accounting for the different ways that oppression gets foisted upon students of color who are class marginalized.” Although Raymond, David, and others were willing to express their discontentment in private, the race-neutral framing of the program became the dominant and accepted way to acquiesce to the external politicized conditions of a national backlash against DEI and racial justice.

The Question of Semantics

With the changing political conditions of racial backlash, the research-side leadership team acquiesced to race-blind discourses as a preventative measure against potential risks. While some felt as though this did not fundamentally change the work of the CYP, other research-side leaders were more reluctant and disagreed with this political maneuver, feeling as though this change departed from the original mission of the CYP. Certain leaders had no qualms about converting to more palatable class-based language, but other leaders wanted to resist and push back instead of simply complying, viewing racial-equity work as a critical form of resistance. In this case, the public erasure of race in the midst of politicized conditions engendered a level of hidden disagreement and discontentment among the RPP leadership. From a more pragmatic view, because the CYP could only exist in partnership with the local school district, a colorblind framing may have been perceived as more likely to avoid both local and national controversy and to garner the support of practice-side leaders who, of those we interviewed, were much more likely to frame the CYP as race neutral. In a few years’ time (from 2021 to 2024), the CYP transformed from an unapologetically race-conscious program focused on educational equity to a race-neutral program focused on providing “opportunity.”

The Politics of Research

In addition to racial politics, the second domain of negotiation we identified in our analysis was the politics of research. A guiding principle in RPPs is the ideal of facilitating the production and use of research, but research processes (i.e., who is construed as a research subject, what is researched, and why) are fundamentally political struggles that involve making decisions with limited resources. As we will illustrate with selected excerpts from participants, the control of what is researched, how research is initiated and conducted, and the conception of research purposes were all areas of contestation and disagreement in the CYP.

The Research Process as a Negotiation

As a research agenda was being discussed and established in the years (2022–24) following the launch of the CYP, a core concern was rectifying the historically tense relationship between the research university and the school district. In fact, a recurring theme in our interviews was the historically extractive and exploitative relationship between the university and the local community. Regarding university faculty who, in the past, extracted data from the community, Raymond said that he heard “horror stories of [the university] and just what they were doing in the schools and in the community. . . . there were studies that were written up that were very deficit based, so it was just red flags.” Warren, a practice-side researcher, further corroborated this account, stating that “university professors came in and did a study and really didn’t give anything back to the school,” which is why many school leaders have reached the position of “No research from us here. Not at my school.” Because of this history of research extraction, the school district and the community writ large have been rightfully cautious and apprehensive about participating in university-led research.

Echoing this sentiment, Diane, a practice-side administrator involved in the CYP who also had led various community organizations, explained, “I have issues. [In her previous role], we were constantly being asked by students and professors who wanted us to do this survey. . . . And then they would take the data, they would go get a grant, and we would never hear what happened.” In light of this pattern of research extraction, deficit portrayals, and the lack of a long-term partnership and reciprocity, many community organizations simply rejected all research. Diane explained, “You wind up being the city schools where you say, ‘No, we just don’t want anybody here.’”

Within this context of institutional histories, the CYP was established with the goal of rectifying this previously extractive relationship by conducting research relevant and useful to the school district. This new form of community-engaged research in which both school district and university-based leaders equitably collaborate in every phase of the research process was perceived by both sides as a way to alter the historical pattern of the university misusing and abusing their relationship with the local schools. That is, instead of university researchers conducting research only for the community to “never hear what happened,” as Diane put it, the intention was to co-construct community-engaged research that might be both “useful for our community and useful to these public schools,” a phrased used by both Rose and Warren.

However, in practice, the research conducted by the RPP on the CYP in the early stages was largely designed and initiated by the research side, only to be vetted and approved by the school district. Thus, research itself becomes a process of negotiation, with the research side creating and conducting new research studies and the practice side granting approval to research subjects and data if the research side can demonstrate practice-side benefits.

This point is made evident in the primary way that practice-side leaders involved in the CYP conceptualized their role in the research process: gatekeeping against university researchers and protecting the scarce resources of the school district. For instance, Warren explained his perspective concerning CYP research and his role within it:

You have to make a really strong [argument] that this data is going to be useful for our community. . . . We’re extracting a resource from the community. When we extract that data and its time, its implementation, it also puts additional strain on the limited resources of the district.

Rather than a collaborative relationship in which research is cogenerated across all phases, Warren’s framing reiterates a more traditional model: The research side proposes new studies by making an argument for why the findings will be “useful” to the school district, and then the school district deliberates on whether approval should be granted.

To offer a concrete example of how the research process itself involves dynamic negotiation and contestation, the research side of the RPP at one point wanted to collect comprehensive survey data on all CYP students and a comparison group from the school district, but Warren and his team did not grant their approval. He explained:

There were some surveys that they [the research side] wanted to give everybody this year, and I talked to people about it. I tried, but the answer was no. We can’t do that. We can’t do all of those surveys.

In this way, the practice side exercised their own power (i.e., not granting research consent and approval) to protect their own interests and scarce resources.

Although one of the stated goals of the RPP was to build the research infrastructure of the school district so that the district would be able to conduct its own research, the research process for the CYP program as it stands resembled a sequential and bifurcated process. In general, the research-side team designed, proposed, and carried out the research related to the CYP, whereas the practice-side team negotiated the research’s approval and provided access to research subjects. In terms of the division of research responsibilities, the research side dominated research idea generation and data collection and analysis, whereas the practice side was tasked with vetting and granting research approval. The research process as a whole was a large-scale negotiation in which the research side had an interest in advancing various studies and projects, whereas the practice side exerted its own power by attempting to defend its own goals and limited resources through vetting and approval or disapproval.

The Divergent Goals of Research

Furthermore, one of the critical areas within the research politics of the CYP that remained largely unresolved was the conflicting goals and purposes of conducting research. In general, the research-side leaders we interviewed sought data and research to address academic questions related to education, psychology, and human development disciplines in the hope of producing academic publications and securing additional grant funding. However, the practice-side leaders we interviewed in the school district prioritized and valued data from the CYP that might drive data-informed decision making related to district policies and programs. This conflict in priorities also manifested in the intended research subjects. While practice-side leaders hoped to translate research into evidence and practices that could be generalized from CYP students to all the school district’s students, research-side leaders prioritized the CYP as a unique research context filled with students from racially, linguistically, and socioeconomically minoritized backgrounds.

Regarding these divergent research goals, when we asked Warren, a practice-side leader, about the purpose of research on the CYP, he explained that the principal benefit was having personnel to “put together the data analysis and the research analysis and give them [school leaders] things that they can use to make good decisions.” This notion of data-driven decision making was a recurring theme across our interviews with practice-side leaders. Greta, a practice-side leader, also explained, “That’s really the only way that we can make really good decisions about how we move forward. I mean, we can’t go on, we think, or we feel. We need numbers.”

For research-side leaders, however, while the data may indeed be useful to the school district, the research conducted on the CYP needed to meet other prioritized goals, primarily securing grant funding and publishing academic research. For instance, when we explicitly asked Rose what her research priorities were, she responded, “Definitely papers. I have to write academic papers for this.” Furthermore, research-side leaders explicitly recognized this fundamental tension. Frank confessed, “I tend to lean toward what is best for the practitioner, . . . but I also live in the world of academia where what matters to the provost’s office, what matters to funders is the peer review.” Thus, the CYP research team was forced to balance these research priorities. On one hand, the research side felt pressure to produce academic publications and to secure further grant funding, but on the other hand, the research side also had to produce useful data and research for its practice-side partner organization. Raymond noted this fundamental conflict: “If it’s the community that dictates what are the priorities, what are the questions . . . that doesn’t always play nicely with peer-reviewed publications.” In this way, the research conducted across the broader RPP seemed more divided rather than collaborative in that CYP-related research was dominated by the university side, whereas the school district had other research priorities and thus proposed other projects related to professional development, teacher training, and so on.

While most research-side leaders conceptualized the CYP as a racial-equity program designed for a specific target population, many practice-side leaders viewed the CYP as a pilot program that would eventually be scaled up to serve all the students in the district. This incongruence concerning the purpose of the CYP manifested in the ways that leaders conceptualized the purpose of research. As a representative example of the practice-side perspective, Diane emphasized the scalability and generalizability of the research on the CYP, stating, “We would be able to, through the research, identify what it is that they’re doing and then, to the greatest extent possible, scale that across other places.” Diane hoped that the (assumed) effective teaching practices in the CYP could translate into more professional development for teachers, asking, “How does this become not just something from the outside, but something we do for all of our kids?” Diane’s statements reveal that she viewed the CYP as an experimental pilot program and assumed that the research findings could be translated to the broader student population in the district. By framing the ultimate goal as “all of our kids,” Diane invoked the equality discourse that Nicole strongly opposed.

Due to the research side’s conception of the CYP as a targeted racial-equity program, the CYP was widely regarded as a rich and desirable context for research because of the specific students it served: low-income youth of color. Raymond explained: “This is the cream of the crop from a research perspective. It’s just hard to access these students . . . the students of color, the students from low-income backgrounds; it’s a researcher’s dream.” Thus, the ways that the research findings ought to be interpreted and generalized sharply differed across the research and practice sides: Practice-side leaders hoped that the research on the CYP would inform district-level policies and practices to benefit all students in the majority-White school district, whereas research-side leaders hoped that their research might shape other racial-equity-driven educational programs specifically designed for youth from minoritized backgrounds.

These divergent conceptions of the purposes and goals of the CYP and its research also impacted how leaders envisioned the future of the program. The research side maintained an interest in keeping the program focused on a specific group of low-income youth of color, whereas, due to their desire to frame the program as a pilot in which the data and findings then could be extended and applicable to all the students in the district, the practice side maintained an interest in expanding the program and reducing the selection criteria to be inclusive of more students. Therefore, we see that the divergent conceptions of the purposes and aims of the CYP ultimately produced downstream consequences that shaped conflicting perspectives on the goals, meanings, and interpretations of research.

The Politics of Role

The final domain of negotiation we identified was determining the CYP’s programmatic role and function in relation to other community organizations and school district initiatives. Particularly during the initial design stages of the program (2019–21), research-side leaders had to navigate justifying the program’s unique contribution in the context of other existing programs within the school district and local community. To gain the support of the school district and the partnership of local community organizations, research-side leaders engaged in many negotiations and much political maneuvering to create the CYP.

Negotiating with the School District

During the initial process of designing and proposing the CYP program in 2020 and 2021, the research-side team sought to tailor the emphasis of the program to the school district’s goals. To increase the chances that the district would support the program, research-side leaders landed on framing the CYP as a “college- and career-readiness” program, which would align not only with existing school district initiatives but also with the state Department of Education’s career and technical education framework. Frank recounted how he strategically approached the school district with the proposal: “We took the strategic plans of [the school district], and I did a crosswalk of here’s the things we’re doing that [are] filling the espoused goals and strategies of the district. This is how we’re supporting your mission.” In other words, in keeping with the ideal of mutual benefit, the research-side team purposefully presented the program as a partnership that would be beneficial to their district goals and initiatives.

However, as a consequence of this initial pitch to negotiate support, most practice-side leaders we spoke with a few years later viewed the CYP as a new supplementary career-focused program. In fact, the school district was already in the process of building and refining their own career learning program. Warren, who entered his practice-side role after the CYP was created, observed many similarities between the CYP and the school district’s career learning program: “I think it’s similar in goals, certainly to [the] CYP. There’s a lot of overlap. Where it’s different is that it’s starting so much later, . . . so I think it’s sort of the same goals as [the] CYP and some of the same type of programming added later in the student’s trajectory.” In addition to the career learning program, the school district also previously implemented a program called “Advancement Via Individual Determination” (AVID). Brendan, a key practice-side leader, viewed the CYP as a supplementary overflow program to AVID, noting, “There [are] a lot of places where . . . these two programs could join . . . because sometimes there is going to be a need to say, ‘Well, we don’t have enough seats in AVID for you to participate, but here’s this other program.’”

To garner school district support for their program, research-side leaders felt that their best course of action was to design the program as a career-readiness program, but the question of role emerged as a downstream consequence of this pragmatic decision. Whereas research-side leaders felt that the CYP offered a unique contribution, many practice-side leaders felt as though the CYP was merely a supplementary add-on program that could potentially bolster already existing programs such as the district’s career learning program or AVID. In a context of limited resources and time, the existence of a plethora of additional student support programs constructed a tension of priority: The research side highly prioritized building the CYP, whereas the practice-side leaders were more ambivalent toward the CYP beause it represented only one of the many programs and initiatives within the school district.

Negotiating with Community Organizations

During the initial design process of the CYP in 2019 and 2020, the university-led team—despite shoring up school district support—encountered skepticism from local community organizations that felt that the CYP was merely duplicating their efforts. In fact, research-side leaders involved in the initial planning stage recounted disagreement about whether a new program should even be constructed. Jerome, a research-side leader, recounted that “[the CYP] wasn’t pitched necessarily as a program . . . but more so as something to supplement the work that was already being done in [the city].” Some felt strongly that the university ought to support ongoing community-based efforts, whereas others cited the legitimacy and recognition associated with a new program.

During this initial stage, a local youth-focused organization called “Pathfinders” (pseudonym), which had already established a college- and career-readiness program that has operated for several years, expressed their concerns to the leadership. Raymond explained what he remembered about this conflict:

Other programs are kind of bringing that up in the community. . . . they’re [the Center] stealing some ideas. . . . In the beginning, the career idea, there were other organizations that were like, “Hey! We are doing this right now.” Pathfinders . . . I know we had a conversation because they were doing a career thing. . . . I think it got smoothed over, and I know that’s because we gave the money and we developed a partnership.

In this instance, Pathfinders felt that the newly proposed CYP program was going to encroach on their domain of work, but once the decision to create the program was finalized, Pathfinders, a small non-profit organization, had limited ability to contest the decision.

From the perspective of the RPP leaders, there was a concerted effort to find a mutually beneficial solution to resolve this tension. Frank led the negotiations with Pathfinders in the initial stages, emphasizing the RPP’s desire to make a positive impact on the local community and asking how the university might be able to support the organization. In the end, the RPP leaders negotiated a compromise with Pathfinders: “We used our funding to fund a middle school position for Pathfinders that is staffed at Pathfinders. . . . they only had had a coach that was doing basically upper elementary and middle school, and it was just a lot for one person.” Due to the university’s support of the Center and the research infrastructure to attain grant funding, the RPP was uniquely positioned to offer financial resources. Thus, the way that the Center and Pathfinders were able to reach a mutually agreed-on compromise was that the research side provided financial support equivalent to an additional full-time position, mobilizing its resources to resolve the tension and build additional capacity within the Pathfinders program.

This complex web of research universities, school districts, and nonprofit organizations is situated within an unequal playing field of resources, namely that research universities tend to have access to more resources, infrastructure, and support and thus are uniquely positioned to shape the broader ecosystem of educational initiatives and programs. Shannon, a research-side leader with an extensive history with the school district, explained: “Everybody wants to work with us. Number one, we have money. And so people are not like, ‘Oh, I don’t want your money.’ They’re like, ‘No, we really do want it.’” Similarly, Raymond acknowledged that the Center is “always going to be a valuable asset because they’re connected to the university and they have resources.” Due to these resources, university-led efforts are unlikely to encounter sustained resistance. In the case of the CYP, while community and nonprofit organizations found ways to materially benefit through partnership with the CYP, creation of the CYP added yet another program to the plethora of existing educational services, interventions, and programs (e.g., career learning program, AVID, and Pathfinders).

Discussion

By taking a micropolitical approach to understanding educational organizations, our analysis reflects the real-world messiness and complexities of RPPs and the educational intervention programs they create and implement. We showed how the institutional leaders involved with the CYP on both the research and practice sides navigated and negotiated conflict, differing perspectives, their own interests, and internal and external politics to advance a wide range of goals. This conflict over divergent goals, values, and priorities played out prominently in the micropolitics of race, research, and role, which in our context remained largely unresolved despite the many other successes resulting from the new partnership between the Center and the local school district. Our findings raise both important questions and broader implications for university–school district RPPs.

The Ongoing Salience of Racial Equity

Our study first shows that for equity-focused RPPs, the highly contested issue of race is inescapable and that the ways racial justice and equity are conceptualized in RPP relationships, outcomes, and systems are all subject to contention (Farrell et al., 2023; Levinson et al., 2022; Vetter et al., 2022). As exemplified by Nicole, the social justice activist at the Center who vehemently disagreed with the school district’s vision of equity, each partner institution tended to conceptualize equity in divergent ways. Furthermore, we also have shown how RPP-led educational programs can morph and hybridize as the partner institutions navigate the terrain of racial politics. In response to the external politicized conditions of backlash against racial equity, justice, and DEI, the RPP leaders in our case study elected to shift their focus to class-based markers (e.g., first-generation college student and low wealth) in order to avoid controversy. An explicit vision of racial equity gave way to colorblind, class-based goals.

An important question that our study raises that has practical implications for other educational RPPs is whether this is merely a semantic issue or if this shift to adapt to politicized conditions changes the meaning or mission of racial-equity-driven work. Both between the research and practice sides and among research-side leadership, a sharp disagreement emerged concerning how the CYP should be portrayed and the implications of acquiescing to dominant colorblind ideologies. Thus, an embedded tension within university–school district RPPs is that partnering with public school districts (and racial-equity initiatives at universities as well) likely will entail navigating hegemonic colorblind and race-evasive discourses and ideologies (Annamma et al., 2017; Lewis, 2001; Welton et al., 2015). We cannot provide an acontextual, universal recommendation, but RPP researchers and practitioners must carefully consider whether acquiescing to race-evasive framings, such as reframing race as class or equity as opportunity, is a necessary cost of doing partnership work that eventually can lead to advancing racial equity or whether an explicit focus on racial equity, which likely will draw internal and external resistance, is worth pushing for and/or preserving even in a national context in which equity-related funding has been curtailed (Villavicencio et al., 2023). This can only be negotiated through continuous and transparent dialogue with one another.

Interrogating the Purposes and Goals of Research

In addition, our study complicates the common RPP goal of facilitating the production and use of research (Coburn & Penuel, 2016), specifically underscoring how researchers and practitioners can conceptualize the purposes, goals, outcomes, and intended uses of research in conflicting ways and how the research process itself can be used to advance and negotiate particularistic interests. In this case, whereas practice-side leaders sought research to inform district-level decision making for all students, research-side leaders prioritized academic publications related to the CYP’s minoritized student population that might inform other racial-equity-oriented work. The differing conceptualization of research reflected a contrasting view of the CYP as a program: The former viewed the CYP as a pilot program to inform districtwide policy applicable to the majority-White student population, whereas the latter viewed the CYP as a racial-equity program specifically targeting students marginalized and disenfranchised by existing systems. In addition to setting the research agenda and using research evidence (Finnigan, 2023; Hopkins et al., 2019; Meyer et al., 2023), the intended goals and purposes of RPP-generated research are a contested domain of negotiation. These differing research priorities may be linked to existing incentive structures at the institutional level. From the perspective of university-based researchers and centers, one possible way to bridge this divide is to redefine successful participation and involvement in RPPs beyond traditional academic measures.

An additional concern within the politics of research that RPP researchers and practitioners must critically reflect on is confirmation bias. Studies have shown, for example, that teachers often evaluate research based on the credibility and trustworthiness of the person or entity conveying the evidence (e.g., Schmidt et al., 2022). In our case, the RPP leaders on both sides consistently framed the purpose of the research as “proving” the effectiveness of the CYP. Both sides of the RPP operated under the assumptions that the program’s effectiveness was a given and that the purpose of the research was to merely offer evidence. Due to the university’s institutional legitimacy, the CYP’s success and effectiveness were essentially assumed to be guaranteed. We suggest that this can be a problematic starting point that stifles critical and open-minded inquiry. RPP researchers and practitioners must be willing to acknowledge shortcomings and weaknesses or else research itself becomes merely a legitimating tool.

RPPs in a Broader Local Ecosystem

Furthermore, our study has shown the continued importance of critically examining negotiations of power and conflict not only within interpersonal relationships but also between universities and their local communities (Bang & Vossoughi, 2016; Denner et al., 2019; Vakil et al., 2016; Wegemer & Renick, 2021). In these types of university–school district partnerships, long-standing power imbalances can be masked or veiled by discourses of collaboration and mutuality. This study found that the university-affiliated center was able to wield its power to advance its own priorities and interests in ways that were unavailable to the school district and other local organizations. Due to its research experience and resources and perhaps the school district’s other competing priorities, the research side assumed the role of constructing the CYP research agenda. Although the school district retained control and the power of granting research access and approval, the research process in the CYP was constituted primarily by a sequential and divided process in which the research side dominated the research initiation and generation. A more equitable approach might be to find ways for practitioners to lead, codesign, and co-participate in the research process, akin to a participatory or collaborative-action research approach (Mertler, 2017).

Many RPP studies have focused primarily on the research and practice institutions without much consideration of the ways that RPPs and their initiatives impact and shape their local communities. Our study importantly draws attention to the ways that the efforts of RPPs may disrupt, supersede, and even stunt local initiatives of school districts and community-based organizations. Although starting a new program may have certain benefits of legitimacy and recognition and thus be appealing to some, we suggest that it is critical to recognize the ways that new programs or initiatives led by RPPs may duplicate and/or negatively harm already existing organizations and programs.

Navigating the Micropolitics of RPPs Explicitly and Collaboratively

Overall, our analysis reveals how RPPs can be active in conducting collaborative research, jointly designing and implementing new initiatives, and meeting and working together across institutions and yet fall short of explicitly addressing and discussing divergences in the conceptions of the purposes and goals of RPP work and of research itself. To rephrase this paradox, researchers and practitioners can work together in a collegial and professional way on the basis of assumed consensus and shared understandings while still neglecting to see or acknowledge differing perspectives, priorities, and goals. Our case study of the CYP and the Center underscores how building trusting, professional, respectful, and collaborative relationships does not automatically equate to navigating these micropolitics and domains of negotiation effectively.

Our work therefore suggests that an awareness of the avowed principles of RPPs, such as building trust, cultivating relationships, supporting the partner practice organization, and building capacity (Henrick et al., 2023), alone is insufficient in cultivating truly healthy and equitable partnerships. A key takeaway and practical implication from our work is that cross-institutional interaction (e.g., meeting together) is insufficient to engage these micropolitics; instead, intentional, sustained, and transparent dialogue—conversations that cut deep into our conceptions of educational equity, epistemologies of research, notions of equitable university–community relationships, and acknowledgments of our own interests—must be a core component of developing healthy and mature research–practice partnerships. Although these conversations may manifest differently in varying contexts, creating structures, space, and opportunities that facilitate meaningful interaction and discussion concerning these critical domains is an integral part of cultivating long-term success.

Conclusion

In examining the highly contested domains of race, research, and role, we have illustrated how programs and interventions that RPPs codesign and implement are not always agreeable endeavors in which mutuality, cooperation, and collaboration can be assumed but rather partnerships that entail navigating micropolitics, differences in perspective, and institutional dynamics (Booker et al., 2019; Denner et al., 2019). We strongly urge both researchers and practitioners involved in RPPs to engage in critical reflexivity over some of these fundamental tensions (e.g., how to approach racial inequity, the research process, and relationships with other partners and organizations) and to collaboratively work toward a mutually agreed on and explicit commitment—whatever it may be. Our vision is that university–school district RPPs maintain their commitments to advancing racial equity, adopting transformational and co-generative approaches to the research process that disrupt traditional bifurcations, and supporting rather than superseding local organizations in the community. Unless these politics of race, research, and role (among others) are adequately addressed, realizing the potential of more equitable and community-engaged forms of research and partnership remains out of reach.