One of the first steps in developing a research-practice partnership is forming a joint research agenda. In this article, Michael Strambler, Joanna L. Meyer, Clare Waterman Irwin, and George A. Coleman describe the collaborative process that Connecticut's Partnership for Early Education Research (PEER) used to develop an agenda driven by practitioners' interests and concerns. The authors describe three challenges that often arise during the agenda-setting process: responding to partners' priorities, partners' research readiness, and the researchers' content expertise. Policy makers' priorities often shift rapidly in response to changing contextual factors, especially the leadership changes endemic to education. The authors show that to strengthen the partnership and its ability to withstand such personnel changes, researchers must take a flexible approach to agenda-setting and build relationships with multiple agency personnel. Another challenge is the policy makers' readiness to engage in the research process, with respect both to their understanding and buy-in for research, and to their capacity to support the research in key ways (such as data sharing). The authors describe how researchers can build this capacity over time by showing partners the concrete ways research can be useful, both in general and in a specific context. A third challenge is that researchers may lack expertise in the areas their partners view as priorities. The authors show how research partners can link their partners to resources and expertise they may not otherwise be able to access.