CRESS Center Receives Additional $1 Million to Enhance K-12 Teaching
Update: August 2010
Second Round of Funding to UC Davis
As part of its Teacher-Based Reform Grants Program the California Postsecondary Education Commission (CPEC) has awarded the Pacific Coast Teacher Innovation Network (known as PacTIN T-BAR) an augmentation grant of $1,031,000. This is in addition to the $1,010,00 master grant we received in 2009 and will allow us to offer professional development opportunities to an additional 24 teacher teams as part of a second cohort.
The PacTIN is one of four T-BAR grants awarded by CPEC through its Improving Teacher Quality Program. The T-BAR grants are a new approach from the standard ITQ projects, which are not targeted to small teacher teams. T-BAR funds teams of teachers to help create professional development adapted to their schools, planting the seeds for eventual whole-school reform. Each funded team will receive up to $30,000 in support.
A team of educational partners including the UC Davis School of Education CRESS Center, Humboldt Science and Mathematics Center, the School of Education at Humboldt State University, and the West Sacramento Early College Prep Charter School provide project leadership.
Applications for Cohort 2 will be available November 2010. The two-year funding cycle begins May 2011 and ends June 2013. To learn more about the program visit the Teacher Grants website.
Original News Release
The UC Davis School of Education has been awarded a $1 million grant to help small teams of K-12 teachers develop projects that enhance teaching and learning in the classrooms.
The grant from the California Postsecondary Education Commission provides funding for a three-year project headed by Joanne Bookmyer, director of teacher research at the Cooperative Research and Extension Services for Schools (CRESS) Center. The funds will enable the center, working with partners from Humboldt State University and West Sacramento Early College Prep, to manage what it has dubbed the Pacific Coast Teacher Innovation Network.
Through the program, faculty from the schools of education and other departments at both universities will work with teams of teachers at public, private and charter schools to improve their teaching skills and mastery of the subjects they teach.
Humboldt State University has a history of providing high-quality professional development to teachers across northern California. West Sacramento Early College Prep is a charter school developed by the UC Davis School of Education, West Sacramento’s Washington Unified School District and Sacramento City College.
With the grant, UC Davis and Humboldt State will run a competitive local grant program for schools in the coastal region from Ventura County to Del Norte County and inland to Yolo County. Teams of three to five teachers will be eligible for 24 grants of up to $30,000 each.
“Ultimately, we hope that teachers in this project will be better able to engage their students,” Bookmyer said. “We want them to be better teachers.”
The project will encourage innovation, and will be “teacher driven,” she said.
“The teachers will decide what it is they would like to do that they think will have an impact in their classrooms,” Bookmyer explained. “We’re going to say to them, ‘You have this pot of money, you figure out what your school needs to engage your students and go out and get that training. Then, come back and put that training into practice in your classroom and schools.’”
Researchers will assess the efficacy of the project, with the measure of success determined ultimately by the level of student engagement and achievement at participating school sites, Bookmyer said.
