Through customized professional development we build your understanding of how to use standards to create, update, and implement aligned curricula, resources, instruction, and assessments that meet the needs of all students, including English Learners and students with disabilities. We tailor our approach to meet your specific needs, schedule, and capacity–whether at the school or district level.
How We Help
Our services range from multiday training to multiyear partnerships that include in-person, virtual, and hybrid professional development models.
Participants learn how to apply standards-driven and research-based practices to collaboratively design, communicate, and implement innovative instruction that supports all learners. Our team focuses on strengthening your use of a balanced system of assessments to enhance student engagement and measure progress to inform classroom teaching and learning while ensuring readiness for district and state-level summative assessments.
In addition, we can integrate various related topics into our support, depending on your specific local context and needs, including:
- Conducting a thorough curriculum review;
- Creating and revising curriculum, instruction, and assessment policies to support district- and school-level efforts;
- Building your capacity for frequent and high-quality interactions among teachers that enhance professional practices and foster a collaborative culture using WestEd’s VITAL Collaboration professional learning community protocols;
- Developing or refining teacher evaluation systems that create buy-in and improve teacher effectiveness and
- Informing comprehensive improvement plans.
Service Delivery
- In-person (onsite) or virtual
Who Will Benefit
- District administrators
- District curriculum coordinators
- School administrators
- Instructional coaches
- Students
- Teachers
This work taught us to routinely use standards to drive our work, and reinforced the importance of collaboration and professional learning in improving both teacher practice and student outcomes.
— Heidi Early-Hersey
Director of Teaching and Learning
Maine School Administrative District (MSAD) 35
Eliot and South Berwick, ME
Featured Experts
Robert Rosenfeld
Connecting Research With Practice
Instructional coherence is the strategic alignment of curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment across grade levels and subjects to ensure a seamless educational experience for all students. It promotes a clear, shared vision of instruction that facilitates logical learning progressions, where each stage of learning purposefully builds upon the previous one.
Our team helps you build this instructional coherence following research by David Sherer and Morgan S. Polikoff (2017), which indicates that coherence within standards, assessments, and instructional materials is associated with stronger student performance. Additionally, the work of Coburn and Penuel (2016) underscores the importance of coherence for systemwide educational improvement, emphasizing the need to align policy and practice to support consistent, high-quality instruction.
Sherer, D., and Polikoff, M. S. (2017). District Adoption of Instructional Materials: Findings from the American Instructional Resources (Survey). Educational Policy, 31(5), 700–737. https://doi.org/10.1177/0895904817719523
Coburn, C. E., and Penuel, W. R. (2016). Research–Practice Partnerships in Education: Outcomes, Dynamics, and Open Questions. Educational Researcher, 45(1), 48–54. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X16631750
More Related to this Service
Resources
Browse our high-quality publications and resources designed to inform and engage professionals in a variety of fields including K–12 education, early childhood, and health and justice.
