Book excerpt: This guidebook provides practical information for developing educational partnerships, which is based on the experiences of 30 different partnerships in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement's (OERI) Educational Partnership Program. Conclusions about the process of developing a partnership are offered. First, partnerships should be developed if there is a shared concern about a real problem that can be best addressed by organizations from different sectors working together. Second, beginning a successful partnership requires communication among participants about the nature of the concerns, the feasibility of a partnership to address those concerns, organization, roles and responsibilities, and the content and focus of activities. Third, successful partnerships require leadership to build commitment and gather resources, use evaluation and strategic and adaptive planning, and acknowledge and confront problems. Finally, there is no single way to ensure successful partnership development. However, successful partnerships exhibit open information sharing at every point. Specific sections address the following questions: What are the steps to developing a successful educational partnership? How does a successful partnership begin? How do successful partnerships begin implementation? What is the role of evaluation and planning?; what happens when things go wrong? and Will the effort be worthwhile? The appendix contains the Educational Partnerships program directory. (LMI)