Transforming the Role of RPPs in Remaking Educational Systems

The realities of a global pandemic coupled with economic, climate, and racial crises have exacerbated existing racial injustices in schools and society. Although many have argued for a principled refusal to return to an inequitable “normal” (Roy, 2020), dominant models of educational improvement prioritize technical-rational approaches that often result in administrative racism in school systems, with little attention to the complexities of race, power, and privilege in addressing long-standing racial injustices. The need to address settler colonialism, anti-Black, and other intersectional racisms are far from new, but we argue that the confluence of these pandemics demands new roles for research-practice partnerships (RPPs) in education that aspire to transform systems beyond their current construction. In this article, we draw on the intersections between racial equity and RPP scholarship to propose key pivots for RPPs in working to foster educational justice in school systems. We use our racial equity-focused RPP to illustrate efforts to (a) center justice in multidimensional change; (b) develop equity-centered data systems; and (c) enlist racially minoritized youth, family, and community expertise. As partners in an ongoing racial equity-focused RPP, we challenge ourselves and our colleagues to take up the work of remaking schooling to become answerable to the learning and knowledge of youth, families, and communities impacted by racial and educational injustices.