Partnerships between schools and universities allow these organizations to leverage their assets while expanding and enhancing their knowledge bases. The Professional Development School (PDS) is a well-established type of partnership in which university and school faculty provide school-based preparation experiences for preservice teachers, while at the same time providing ongoing professional development to improve school practice. Such partnerships are designed to close the theory-to-practice gap and to bring more rigor to teachers' initial preparation and ongoing professional development. PDSs promote school and teacher improvement reform by including K-12 educators in the design and implementation of preparation programs, producing teachers with classroom experience, increasing field-based opportunities to work with diverse students, and enhancing opportunities for feedback and evaluation. Partnerships in PDSs are difficult to implement and sustain unless several key components work in concert. They are: (1) Involving school and university faculty in managing, planning, and/or delivering the preparation program; (2) Developing collaborative research projects aimed at improving specific aspects of school and classroom practice; (3) Using university liaisons to provide feedback and professional development activities for both preservice and inservice teachers; (4) Preparing inservice teachers to work as mentors with preservice teachers; (5) Providing intensive field opportunities that are integrated carefully with coursework through the use of strategies such as weekly seminars and research-to-practice projects; and (6) Having the capacity to maintain funding and incentives for such resource-intensive efforts. There are additional challenges in PDSs that include special education partnerships. This Brief considers the issues that are unique to developing special education partnerships in PDSs.