With support from a Brown education scholar, Central Falls charts path to return schools to local control

"The people who grew up here, who send their kids to school here, who teach here - they know this community, and that knowledge is invaluable," Friedman said. "What makes this model powerful is that we're grounding every decision in the lived experiences of Central Falls residents and pairing that with research. That combination gives us the strongest foundation to build a school system that truly works for our students."

Research-to-practice partnership

Turning the city's vision for local control into an actionable plan requires a clear roadmap. Drawing on decades of research on school governance and state interventions, Wong has helped the city's education strategy team build that roadmap piece by piece.

One early step was establishing the community advisory board's framework - identifying who needed to be at the table, creating criteria for selecting members, recommending how often the board should meet and drafting agendas that guide the group toward creating a redesign plan. With Wong's support, that effort drew on findings from national research and case studies from other cities.

Once the advisory board launched in 2024, Wong and a small research team helped the city design orientations to prepare members for the complex decisions ahead. The sessions introduced members to the history and impact of state takeovers and included "Governance 101" and "Funding 101" workshops explaining the basics of school oversight and finance.

By early 2025, that groundwork allowed the board to begin designing a new governance model. To support the process, Wong examined multiple governance structures, analyzed local stakeholder concerns and interviewed educators and community leaders. His team collected lessons from cities transitioning from state intervention to local control in Rhode Island, Massachusetts and New Jersey.

The findings helped the board weigh different options, he said.

"We analyzed districts with similar demographics and a history of state takeover, looking closely at how they transitioned back to local control and what governance structures they adopted," Wong said. "In each case, we dug deeper - often interviewing local stakeholders to understand their on-the-ground experience. We then distilled those lessons into a policy brief for the board, which allowed their discussions to be grounded in clear findings and real-world examples."

Friedman said having a research partner with deep policy expertise has been critical to designing a new model.

"I'm much more of a practitioner than a researcher," Friedman said. "It was incredible to have a partner who could help us generate the right questions - and surface the questions we were hearing from the community."

By partnering with Wong, the city tapped valuable expertise and resources, Friedman said. "Ken is an expert researcher. He has tools and strategies he's honed over decades, and the advisory board deserves the best ideas and the strongest analysis we can offer."

Wong said the collaboration helped inform his scholarship, too.

"As researchers, we're good at designing studies and analyzing data, but that's only part of the story," Wong said. "I've learned a lot from practitioners like Sarah, because she deals with the realities of implementation - making mid-course adjustments, negotiating and compromising. Researchers can lay out guiding principles, but it's the on-the-ground work that tests and refines them. That exchange is mutually beneficial."

A new chapter for Central Falls schools

Grounded in Wong's research and informed by other national experts, the advisory board ultimately recommended a hybrid school board: nine members, with four elected and five appointed through a community nominating committee.

Friedman said the model reflects exactly what residents want for the future of their schools.