Research for this report relied on websites, reports, documents, and data from interviews with city stakeholders in four cities— Boston, Dallas, Pittsburgh, and Washington, D.C.

From January through March 2017, researchers conducted 49 interviews of 55 network participants, such as school district employees, nonprofit leaders, city government employees, and other staff from philanthropic and research organizations in the four study cities. Many interviewees managed organizations or agencies that led the coordinated networks. Some were secondary participants in the networks and others led individual summer programs. Interviews were conducted with the most-involved person from each organization who played a leadership role in each city’s coordinated network.

Researchers used a semi structured interview protocol. To that end, they asked individual interviewees about their own organization’s work and their role in the network, the origin and evolution of the network, the network goals, factors that facilitated success, challenges, among other topics.

Interviews lasted between 20 minutes and one hour depending on the interviewee’s depth of knowledge. While most interviews were conducted in person during scheduled site visits, some took place over the phone.

The goal of the research was to identify the ways that organizations in these four cities collaborated, what their goals were, how they went about achieving those goals, and what successes and roadblocks came up along the way. The intent was to provide useful information to other organizations that hope to pursue a similar endeavor in their community.

The research also had limitations. Only four cities were studied. Three were selected based on convenience, because they were part of the larger NSLP initiative. However, national experts described all of them, plus Washington, D.C., as having some of the most sophisticated citywide systems promoting summer learning opportunities.