Umbrella Partnerships: How the MSP Investment Can Build Enduring Capacity for the Ongoing Improvement of Math and Science Education
The findings presented here reflect five years research and evaluation associated with the Appalachian Math Science Partnership (AMSP). The AMSP has served as one of the first and few "comprehensive" projects funded under the National Science Foundation's Math Science Partnership initiative. Early on, the NSF phased out the "comprehensive" grants, opting to fund exclusively "targeted " efforts. As a result, the AMSP stands as one of the largest MSPs to receive funding, in terms of its aims, reach, scope and budget.
Over the course of the initiative, the AMSP has worked with 9 institutions of higher education and 51 of the most impoverished counties in Appalachia across three different states. The rural regions of Appalachia are among the poorest communities in the United States, facing a host of educational challenges that are common to rural areas, many exacerbated by elements specific to the Appalachian context, i.e. small size, geographic isolation, etc.1 Such communities lack many of the requisite capacities needed to engage in the work of improving their educational programs - capacities such disciplinary content knowledge, experience in curriculum implementation, professional development expertise, financial resources, programmatic vision, and connections to other institutions that could support math and science improvement efforts.
The challenge for the AMSP is twofold: 1) to successfully support math and science improvement in schools and districts where there has been minimal existing capacity for doing such work, and 2) to organize "a partnership" that could build the requisite capacities needed to serve local as well as regional needs.
These challenges are not trivial. In its early years many educators close to the AMSP work questioned whether such a sizeable and potentially unwieldy project, targeting one of the most impoverished regions of the country, could have a significant impact. Now, more than five years later, it is clear that the project has not only made its mark during the funding period, but stands to leave an enduring legacy throughout the Appalachian region. As the project's external evaluators, we are convinced that two highly related strategies have contributed to the success of the AMSP. One is the way in which the ASMP conceptualized the idea of partnership. The other is the deliberate focus on local and regional capacity building.
1 See www.inverness-research.org and the work connected to ARSI (Appalachian Rural Systemic Initiative).
