Originally posted on the University of Texas College of Education’s Website
LONESTARP3, formerly the Texas Education Research Practice Policy Partnership Network (RP3), is honored to receive a generous gift from the Moody Foundation to continue to support and grow its disruptive and collaborative research with regional partnerships providing cross-sector expertise.
LONESTARP3 is a statewide network that brings researchers, practitioners and policy advocates together to produce shared and actionable research that improves education for early learners, students and their families through a holistic and community-driven approach. The College of Education at The University of Texas at Austin serves as the administrative hub for LONESTARP3, alongside 10 founding members.
“The Moody Foundation is greatly encouraged by LONESTARP3‘s innovative work in education and commends the University of Texas for leading the initiative,” said Elle Moody, Trustee and Senior Vice President at the Moody Foundation. “This model will support rapid research cycles that directly inform classroom and community education practices, ensuring students across Texas receive the most effective instruction and services available.”
With this donation, the Moody Foundation continues to advance its strong legacy of improving the future of education in Texas for generations to come. The grant is part of the Foundation’s larger Education M-Pact Fund representing its historic commitment of $1 billion for Texas education over the next two decades. The $1.8 million donation to LONESTARP3 is one of the fund’s inaugural gifts to help boost academic success and postsecondary degrees for students in need.
Estimates cited by LONESTARP3 show that only half of young adults in Texas hold a postsecondary degree — and only 35% of young Black adults and 24% of young Latino adults hold these degrees. By 2036, at least 70% of jobs in Texas will require some form of postsecondary credential. These statistics are indicative of the essential nature of quickly translating research into viable strategies and solutions.
“It’s not that we don’t have great researchers doing great work,” says Dr. Clifton Tanabe, Dean of the College of Education and Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Foundations at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP). “It is how to translate that impact both from a timely standpoint and from a targeted standpoint. We have to create those inquiries together with real practitioners. You have to be able to return those results to them in a timely fashion, and they have to be relevant to the problems that they’re interested in.”
LONESTARP3 is proficient at designing, generating and translating research into accessible and actionable solutions. This data-informed research yields critical insights to help transform the education experience for historically underserved populations and socioeconomically disadvantaged students from the classroom to the community at large. The network also addresses the historic disconnect between research and actual implementation in the classroom and beyond.
“How do we leverage this incredible, powerful public resource and have it returned to the community invested in this in terms of real, tangible implications that make a difference in improving the learning outcomes for students across Texas?” asks Dr. Tanabe.
