While cross-sector collaborations in support of local education reform show promise, they also often face challenges, a report from Teachers College, Columbia University finds.

Commissioned by the Wallace Foundation, the report, Building Impact: A Closer Look at Local Cross-Sector Collaborations for Education (209 pages, PDF), examined eight collaborations, including three in depth — Say Yes Buffalo, Milwaukee Succeeds, and All Hands Raised (Multnomah County, Oregon) — and found that they helped bring together local partners despite often-contentious local education politics. At the same time, many collaborations faced challenges, from the difficulty posed by school districts that view collaboration as a distraction, to the expense of setting up effective data management systems, to engaging marginalized groups in the decision-making process. 

The case studies found that collaborations required "a credible and compelling rationale" as well as committed local advocates willing to initiate and shepherd the process; that most collaborations adopted a comprehensive "cradle-to-career" vision of education; and that the services and activities actually implemented often were narrower in scope due to resource constraints. According to the report, most collaborations created a "backbone organization" to coordinate and manage the initiative and assigned core leadership to local education elites — which can help build high-level consensus around goals and strategies but often is less effective in building grassroots support. A key concern for some collaborations was how to partner with local school systems without undercutting their autonomy or getting caught up in political battles and/or school leadership turnover. The report also found that some collaborations took a "colorblind" approach, directing resources to students who need them without focusing on specific groups, while others worked to target racial, ethnic, and class inequities.

"Overall, our findings suggest the collective impact idea retains appeal, but it appears to function more effectively as a broad framework than as an explicit formula or prescriptive model for how to achieve and make an impact through collaboration," the report's authors write. Given that collaborations constantly evolve, require time to produce the hoped-for outcomes, and often create unrealistic expectations, however, there are "reasons to worry that progress to date will prove fragile and localized and funder patience run out."

"If they are to earn long-term credibility and leverage genuine change," the report's authors conclude, "existing efforts will need to make progress on several formidable fronts: moving beyond supporting the school system to strengthening the school system; broadening outreach and inclusion of stakeholders beyond the elites; reducing the reliance on philanthropic support; and adjusting to the national political environment."