Improving Teacher Quality - 2009: Closing the Achievement Gap in Middle Schools Grant Awards
The goal of the 2009 Achievement Gap Initiative is to implement teacher-based, whole-school
professional development plans aimed at improving the performance of students in California
high-need middle schools. Proposers for the 2009 initiative, projects were asked to target
middle school level (grades 6-8), with the option to work with other grade levels if they
are taught in the same school or schools. The professional development for the proposal
focused on the achievement gap as it exists within each school, with activities designed
to improve the learning of the prevalent low-achieving groups, including cultural competency
and culturally relevant instruction, English Language Development (ELD) strategies for
students with limited English, and other strategies for differentiating teaching according
to the needs of a diverse student population.
In order to preserve the 2008 focus on institutional change at the school level, it is expected
that projects at each school under the current initiative will: 1) provide professional
development to all teachers in at least one whole department (such as Science, Math, or
Language Arts); 2) involve teachers from more than one department (for instance, Math and
Language Arts); and 3) involve the principal of each school as a leader of instructional
change at the whole-school level.
- 09-605 - Middle School Literacy Achievement in Health, Math, and Science – MSLAHMS
- 09-606 - Reading Plus Writing Equals Science Success
- 09-607 - Student Improvement Through Teacher Empowerment (SITTE)
- 09-608 - Getting to the Core of the Content: Organizing Learning to Close the Gap
- 09-609 - CAGiSM- Closing the Achievement Gap in Science and Mathematics
- 09-610 - Inland Area TEAMS
