California Mathematics and Science Partnership

Added to Programs No Longer Administered by the California Department of Education (CDE) on March, 6 2023.

This information is for historical purposes only and it is possible that information contained here may not be current.

Background

The Mathematics and Science Partnership – Part B of Title II, Improving Teacher Quality Grant Programs, were an important component of the No Child Left Behind legislation, funding partnerships between high-need local educational agencies and institutions of higher education (IHEs) to provide research-based professional development for teachers of mathematics and science. The California Mathematics and Science Partnership (CaMSP) grants were funded from fiscal year 2003-04 to 2018-19. CaMSP was not reauthorized under the Every Student Succeeds Act.

The primary purpose of the CaMSP Program was to increase the body of research on professional development models that:

• Impacted teachers’ content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and instructional strategies
• Improved student achievement in the content areas of mathematics and science as measured by state and local assessments and enrollment in advanced courses
• Resulted in change to the institutions involved in the project, including change to the IHEs and professional development providers
• Trained mathematics and science teachers and develop programs to encourage young women and other underrepresented individuals to pursue:
  • Secondary mathematics, science, and engineering courses of study; and

Teacher participants of these grants were expected to utilize their enhanced content knowledge and newly acquired instructional teaching skills into their classroom practice. As a result, teacher participants would be better able to stimulate student interest and achievement in mathematics or science potentially motivating students to pursue postsecondary degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors and ultimately leading to careers in STEM.
Positive Impact of CaMSP

As the transitions at both state and federal levels continued to evolve and impact schools, teachers and students, findings from the data collected by Public Works for the state evaluation of CaMSP Cohort 10 STEM projects provided an important lens about the coming opportunities to support teachers, and help students to learn in new ways. Opportunities included:

• Combining locally customized professional development models based on research and recognized strategies to support teacher learning and classroom implementation with a longer-term horizon to improve and reflect on what is working.
• Providing opportunities for teachers to understand engineering and integrated STEM learning using discipline-specific approaches, university expertise and community partners. This provides teachers with key instructional building blocks of the Next Generation Science Standards and the Common Core State Standards, including design and implementation of new activities, and real and practical understandings of engineering to develop student thinking.
• Allowing opportunities for collaboration and teacher leadership to develop and adjust professional development approaches over time to meet teacher needs. Examples include grade level teams, lesson study groups and individual coaching support.
• Embedding formative and summative evaluation support and technical assistance provides another lens to measure, improve and fine tune implementation. Consistent measurement of teacher content knowledge for science and math provides an opportunity to examine progress and customize and refine each professional development model and implementation.
• Strong partnerships and a structure for implementation offer better chances for long-term success and retention of teachers.