Research at East Overview

Our EPO partnership with East is an exciting opportunity to take what we know about education to a school that needs it. It is crucial that we document this partnership with rigorous research, but that we do not position East as a research “lab”. To construct a welcoming space for researchers that honors the East community, we have developed the following principles that all proposals will need to address before receiving the RCSD’s letter of approval required by RSRB:

• Research must benefit the mission of the school
• Relevance to practice must be an explicit criteria
• The research must be useful to the East community
  • Proposal must be explicit about how this community will benefit (not just researcher benefit)
  • Proposals must show how the research will advance the needs of the school without overburdening East and without being intrusive
• Dissemination of results needs to include the East community (teachers, administrators, students, family members)

We have established an East Research Committee (ERC), which will serve as the department review for IRB. The committee shall consist of Warner faculty, East teachers, students, administrators, and family/community members. The committee will ensure that the above criteria are met and will monitor the number of studies that are conducted so as not to overburden the East community or disrupt the EPO partnership’s mission.

1.

All proposals must first be submitted to the East Research Committee.

• Non-UR PIs must provide their institution’s IRB approval with their proposal to ERC.

Upon approval from ERC, PI will complete the standard process used for review of research in RCSD. This requires both Warner/University RSRB approval and approval from the Rochester City School District, as described in the steps below.

2.

The candidate submits their application to the University of Rochester RSRB through the Click IRB system. The application must include:

• A statement describing intent to request approval from RCSD after approval from the University of Rochester RSRB.
• A statement acknowledging that RCSD has policies surrounding consent forms and the researcher must comply with those policies and UR RSRB policies about consent.
• A statement indicating that recruitment will not begin until after the approval from RCSD is submitted as a “modification” (Step 5 below) and approved by the University of Rochester RSRB.
• Submission of the approval letter from the ERC under “Other Attachments” in the “Local Site Documents” section of ClickIRB.

3.

After receiving University of Rochester RSRB approval, the candidate must contact the RCSD to request a review of the application. This process requires the candidate to complete an additional application provided by RCSD. Candidates should note that the RCSD board review process occurs once a month, so when requesting this review, we recommend investigators ask when the next meeting is to better understand the potential duration of the process (*Note: RCSD applications submitted after March 1st assume data collection for the next academic year – i.e., Fall data collection). After the application is approved by the RCSD board, it is then sent to the RCSD attorneys for approval, which can take 6-8 weeks. Once the application is approved by their attorneys, it is then sent to the superintendent for final approval. The investigator will then receive a formal agreement.

4.

Once the Warner investigator receives approval from RCSD, the formal agreement must be approved by a University of Rochester representative. *Note: Individual investigators may not sign the agreement with RCSD. This must be signed by a representative from the Office of Research & Project Administration (ORPA). The investigator should send the agreement to Lauren Warner, Research Administrator (lwarner@warner.rochester.edu) to be submitted to ORPA. The agreement must be submitted to ORPA in Word form (not PDF).

5.

When the investigator has received the signed RCSD agreement (approved by ORPA), they must go back into the Click IRB system. Through a “modification,” this document must be added to their study under “Other Attachments” on the Local Site Documents smart form. As a reminder, if any changes to the protocol, including any consent documents, were made during the RCSD review process, the Click IRB application should be revised during this modification to include these changes. See the Click IRB Study Staff Manual (page 13) and the demonstration video for Creating and Submitting a Modification for further information. The modification must be approved by RSRB before any recruitment takes place. Submission of this document verifies that both review processes have been completed.