The objective of this paper is to sketch some emerging patterns of relationships growing out of the mutual desire of state departments of education, school districts, and research and development agencies to bring improvement and innovation to the schools. Two unpublished reports were used in preparing this paper. The first describes Research for Better Schools's relationships with nine different state agencies during 1971-73 and documents what states had done in the way of bringing research and development innovations to the schools. The second report summarizes the results of a questionnaire mailed to 116 state education administrators from 36 states during the latter part of 1973. In order to provide a base on which these emerging patterns can be examined, four types of findings have been selected: (1) some general characteristics of state departments of education, (2) some specific directions that states seem to be taking, (3) some ways in which states directly support innovation in schools, and (4) some state agency experiences with research and development agencies. Three patterns of interagency relationships are presented in order to describe linkage models that have been built to provide possible features of future relationships. (Author/IRT)