Since 2015, WestEd has provided research capabilities, technical assistance, and evaluation support for the California Partnership for Math and Science Education (the Partnership), a statewide initiative designed to increase access to high-quality math and science teaching and learning.

Through this ongoing work, WestEd has worked with the California County Superintendents Educational Services Association (CCSESA), the California Department of Education (CDE), and the California State Board of Education (SBE), to run communities of practices for regional teams of educators since 2016. Additionally, regional teams have received two rounds of grant funding to plan and pilot standards implementation initiatives.

These innovative micro-grants were designed to test the idea that local innovation could be stimulated with relatively modest investments. They offered teams an opportunity to collaborate deeply on regional and county needs related to standards implementation, fashion projects in response to local challenges, and continue to learn from and incorporate their learning to improve and sustain their efforts beyond the grant funding period.

This report shares information about select initiatives’ current progress and strategies in order to create an opportunity for ongoing conversations about useful practices to support standards implementation. Specifically, the report focuses on a selection of noteworthy practices and tools crafted by project teams as they planned for and began to implement their second-year plans supported by the Partnership’s improvement grants.