Our Approach

Like the majority of states in the nation, California has adopted new Common Core State Standards in key content areas which place higher language demands on all students, especially English language learners. Districts are now in the midst of adapting to new curricula and assessments, while simultaneously adjusting to a new local accountability framework and funding model (LCAP and LCFF). This is a critical time for all of California’s education communities, yet the smaller, more remote districts of California face even more challenging circumstances than the rest.

Ed Partners’ Collaborations address this gap and help district leaders take action to improve their work by establishing a new set of highly effective, capacity-building collaboration opportunities for districts and other school systems across California.

Modeled after the teacher-level PLC, Ed Partners facilitates collaborations in order to build educators’ capacity for change. Just as effective classroom level professional learning communities have proven to increase the efficacy of those teachers who work together to reflect on and revise their performance based on their ongoing study of student performance and their own instruction by a significant factor, so too can our district and systems leaders collaborate around shared problems of practice and engage in cycles of inquiry that improve practice and build individual and team capacity. Through our work to date, we’ve seen that working together in such a way creates momentum that will allow participants to learn and innovate together in order to support the students, teachers, and communities they serve. Ed Partners provides the facilitative support for educators to engage in and, ultimately, to replicate these processes over time in their own systems.