Our Mission and Work
We work collaboratively with the Detroit education community to design and implement studies that answer questions of critical importance to improving the systems that contribute to the academic, behavioral, and socioemotional outcomes of public school students in Detroit. Our work contributes new knowledge to academic scholarship while also being accessible to and usable by practitioners and policymakers.
Our work is guided by the following principles:
- We engage in equitable work processes internally and externally.
- We have an improvement orientation, working with humility and striving to learn.
- We are committed to the co-creation of research with the Detroit communities we serve.
- We apply rigorous research methods and processes to our work to inform advocacy that is rooted in empiricism.
We began this work as the Detroit Education Research Partnership in 2016 and have grown into a center in the College of Education supported by Wayne State University and external sponsors. We seek to create opportunities for scholars and students across the university and broader academic community to join our collaborative partnerships and gain access to data and study contexts that are necessary to answer questions of critical importance to the Detroit educational and youth development systems.
Learn more about our ongoing projects below. For past research, check out the Research page.
current research focus
College Student Basic Needs
Many college students in the Detroit region face insecure access to basic needs that makes it harder to stay enrolled and complete a degree such as financial instability and unexpected expenses; transportation challenges; and competing family and work responsibilities. Even small disruptions (e.g., a missed bill, broken car) can derail progress.Colleges and community partners are testing targeted, just‑in‑time supports to address these barriers. We are currently evaluating the effect of two of these initiatives: the Detroit Area Talent Fund and the Catch-A-Ride Program.
Lead Researcher Stacey Brockman
Partners Detroit Promise, Detroit Regional Chamber, University of Michigan
Funders Detroit Regional Chamber, Kresge Foundation
current research focus
School Diversity and Social Capital: Can Researchers Measure Youth Social Networks Using Administrative Data?
Peer networks, particularly those that yield cross-class and cross-racial social connections, are a critical factor driving youth educational outcomes and economic mobility, yet network data are notoriously expensive and difficult to collect. We seek to develop and test a strategy to measure students’ social networks using administrative data, which is typically available in most school districts and state agencies. Specifically, we will determine how a measure of network strength and diversity, computed from administrative data, performs compared to the “gold-standard” approach in social networks research, which consists of lengthy surveys that ask participants to self-report their ties from a roster of all potential connections. We examine what predicts strong and weak cross-class and cross-race ties across four high schools in the metropolitan Detroit area with different racial and socioeconomic demographics. Our primary aims are to: (1) Examine how accurately proxies for adolescent social network ties (strong and weak), constructed from state administrative data, predict self-reported ties. We will also explore how these predictions vary across schools with different demographics, and for different types of social ties, including cross-class friendships (economic connectedness) and cross-race friendships. (2) Develop student-level measures of economic connectedness, using weighted factors from state administrative data, for schools with different racial and socioeconomic characteristics. Our goal is to develop a new, more scalable measure of students’ social capital, which can be used by other researchers to explore the causes and consequences of various forms of social capital.
Lead Researcher Huriya Jabbar
Funders Urban Institute
current research focus
Identifying Effective Strategies to Reduce Chronic Absenteeism in Michigan
Educators and policymakers are paying increasing attention to chronic absenteeism, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic. Although there is some evidence on the types of school-based practices that may reduce chronic absenteeism, there is very little evidence about what schools and districts are actually doing to improve attendance. Without further research on the practices that schools are currently implementing, school leaders and policymakers may continue allocating resources to ineffective practices, and students—especially historically disadvantaged students—will continue to struggle with attendance. Evidence about what attendance strategies work, for whom, and under what conditions, can inform districts and schools as they develop new attendance systems and strategies; state education agencies as they provide guidance and technical support; and policymakers as they pass new laws related to attendance. This study—in partnership with the Detroit Public Schools Community District (DPSCD) and the Michigan Department of Education (MDE)—will explore the practices that Detroit and Michigan schools and districts are implementing to improve student attendance and reduce chronic absenteeism. We will answer two research questions: (1) What practices are schools in Michigan using to reduce chronic absenteeism? (2) Which attendance practices are associated with increases in student attendance and decreases in chronic absenteeism? We will use a combination of school leader surveys, case studies, and longitudinal administrative data.
Lead Researcher Jeremy Singer
Partners DPSCD, Michigan Department of Education
Funders Joyce Foundation, Skillman Foundation
current research focus
Economic and Educational Opportunity in the Context of Neighborhood Change
Children growing up in segregated and under-resourced neighborhoods and schools have continuously faced structural inequities resulting in worse educational and economic outcomes. In highly segregated and under-resourced neighborhoods, one way that educational inequality persists is through inequitable access to resources and information through social networks. Federally sponsored housing programs have sought to address these inequities by disrupting concentrated poverty and racial segregation in neighborhoods, but one challenge of such programs has been their primary focus on housing, neglecting other neighborhood conditions and social resources. HUD’s Choice Neighborhoods Initiative (CNI) was established to address these prior limitations by strengthening community social cohesion through cross-sector collaborations. Prior research has demonstrated that social networks – one’s relationships and connections with others – could be a key driver of upward mobility for Black low-income youth. However, few studies have empirically explored how neighborhood interventions might expand or deepen the social connections of youth in ways that reduce inequality in educational opportunities. This study aims to describe and clarify the mechanisms through which a major federal housing initiative can reduce educational inequality for Black low-income youth by transforming their social networks. A second aim of this study is to examine whether key components of the CNI are implemented in ways that connect housing and school sectors to disrupt segregation, foster neighborhood and school integration, and empower residents, particularly low-income Black residents, to shape policy enactment.
Lead Researcher Sarah Winchell Lenhoff
Partners City of Detroit, DPSCD, The Community Builders
Funders American Institutes for Research, Kresge Foundation, William T. Grant Foundation
