Shifting into High Gear: Accelerating the Common Core through Teacher Networks
Request for Proposal Guidelines
Applications due April 22, 2013
Background Information
While nearly every state in the country has adopted the Common Core Standards in mathematics and literacy, most teachers are uncertain about how to put them into practice. At the same time, we know that informal and formal teacher networks are perhaps the most trusted and often-cited source of information for teachers in accessing instructional resources. The Common Core calls for teachers and local administrators to understand some fundamental changes which lead to instructional shifts in both literacy and mathematics. While there have been some good models of implementation of the common core in discrete areas, there is a need to support the spreading and scaling of good tools that can be used by teachers across the country.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation would like to challenge organizations with robust teacher networks to accelerate the impact of their efforts to support Common Core implementation. Through this RFP, the Foundation seeks to reach hundreds of thousands of teachers – as measured by a corresponding increase in the number of teachers who collectively who state that they “have the resources necessary to implement CCSS.” We hope to help accelerate the Common Core implementation efforts of organizations that work with large numbers of teachers by:
· Building on early Common Core math and literacy direct implementation strategies (i.e., Foundation-supported Literacy Design Collaborative/Math Design Collaborative work) to leverage lessons learned and broaden the impact to the organization’s entire network.
· Supporting an innovative approach to understanding the Common Core that could be scaled across an organization’s network (e.g. through participation and use of materials that are part of the Basal Alignment Project).
· Creating more scalable solutions that travel across networks quickly and broadly. All participating organizations will commit to strategies that can be used across multiple networks rather than boutique solutions that can only be used in one place.
This RFP is issued by the College Ready Work team as part of the College Ready strategy. Our work focus on teachers and our attention is on creating systems that support good teachers, that help average teachers get better, and new teachers learn the profession so they can be good. We continue to focus where the Common Core focuses us. And we seek to be responsive to teachers by scaling the kinds of supports they seek to help them improve their effectiveness. The CRW team’s LDC and MDC investments paint a powerful picture of what it means to align the work that teachers and students do with college-ready competencies, as well setting a strong vision for what it means to support teachers every time they step into the classroom. From the LDC and MDC investments, we know that well designed common core implementation strategies will support teachers in the following manner:
· Help set the context for teachers to do their best work
· Meet articulated needs that have come from teachers already in our LDC and MDC network
· Broaden our reach to greater numbers of teachers, while maintaining a focus on classroom level change, not just awareness
· Understand new and innovative methods networks use to reach and support teachers
Goals
To that end, we seek, through this RFP to work with new and existing Foundation partners, primarily those that would consider themselves to be networks of teachers, to dramatically accelerate the work that they have underway to support their members in successfully implementing the Common Core. Our goals are:
· To support organizations in scaling the awareness of the instructional shifts of the Common Core State Standards across their networks to large numbers of teachers through non-traditional means. To learn from this work we will use common metrics identified in Appendix A (see Outcome 1) to look at the spread and scale impact.
· To increase teacher awareness of the shifts required by the Common Core State Standards by working through a variety of teacher networks using creative and innovative methods and modes. We will measure success of this goal using a survey administered to teachers in each participating network to understand their awareness of the shifts (Outcome 2 in Appendix A)
· To learn how the changes required by the Common Core impact teacher instructional practices and how those changes are demonstrated and can be documented through evidence. We will ask participants to identify specific measures they will use to evaluate the change in teacher practice across their networks for all participating teachers (Please specify in Outcome 3 in Appendix A).
As respondents consider what activities they might undertake to meet these goals in partnership with the foundation, we invite you to think about strategies that would help spread teacher knowledge of implications the Common Core has for their classrooms. In doing so, you may want to consider the following questions:
o What organizations are most like you?
o What networks do you belong to?
o Who complements your work?
o Are there opportunities for partnership?
o If you launch a strategy around the Common Core, who would follow?
o What can we do in common for the benefit of many?
o How do you think about rapidly scaling successful pilot projects in your network to very large numbers of teachers?
While your organization may support teachers in K-12 systems, we will be funding work with a focus on the middle grades and high schools.
Key Dates
· March 13 – Release of RFP
· March 20, 10am PST –RFP Webinar and Q/A
· April 22– RFP Proposals Due to the Foundation
· May 6 – Phone interviews, as needed with applicants
· May 15 – Proposed Notification to Districts about Awards
Applicant Eligibility
We are looking for organizations that have as part of their core mission and activity to engage with large numbers of teachers around educational topics, issues, practices, research and/or reform.
Implementation Grant Application
9-10 pages (or less) proposal plus appendices
Requirements
Applicants MUST agree to the following:
· Robust Implementation of the Common Core by 2015
o Have a rigorous plan and evidence that the majority of teachers in your network have access to supports to drive the instructional shifts required by the Common Core by the second year of this grant. Your proposal should clearly describe the theory of scale and reach that adds credibility to this goal.
o Use a set of common measures for tracking and improving implementation/impact on teacher practice and student achievement as described in Outcomes 1 and 2 in Appendix A, and which will be standard across all selected applicants. At a minimum, applicants must provide the Foundation with evidence that teachers in the network understand the shifts in the Common Core as a result of this grant opportunity.
· Scalable Solutions: Has high potential to reach thousands of teachers and tens of thousands of students at a reasonable cost.
o Participate in knowledge-sharing activities with other RFP grant recipients; including a commitment to a summer 2014 convening that will include both network staff and participating teachers.
o Cooperate in the research/measurement of your work
o Formally document and share learnings with your peers (e.g., via existing collaboration networks, presentations at professional conferences)
o Secure additional funding to support this work during and beyond the grant period from other sources as needed
o A sustainability plan that describes how systems will/can continue post BMGF funding (to be explicitly addressed in Section VI: Budget Narrative)
Award
$100,000 – $250,000 over 2 years to support implementation of the Common Core across a robust teacher network. We anticipate that applicants who request higher budget amounts will create plans that reach larger numbers of teachers. Funding will be awarded proportionately to potential reach and scale.
Selection Criteria
Applicants will be evaluated and awards issued on the strength of their proposals and supporting materials.
BILL AND MELINDA GATES FOUNDATION
Shifting into High Gear:
Accelerating the Common Core through Teacher Networks
Grant Application
Table of Contents
I. Executive Summary: Be Brief
II. Use Case: Tell us a Story
III. Current to Future State
a. Problem and Theory of Action
b. The Work Plan: Get Real and Actionable
IV. Measurement, Learning, and Evaluation
V. Risks: Where Are You Pushing on the Edges?
VI. Budget Narrative: Show Me the Money
VII. Appendices
Cover Page with Your Project Name
Please provide a name for this project that reflects the vision and energy of the project.
Section I: Executive Summary
One page
Be sure to include the name of your organization, how much money you are requesting over two years, and a summary of your goals and project outcomes. Provide high level details of your vision and the primary drivers in your thinking about the work. Highlight anything particularly innovative about your approach. Include a description of how you segment your teachers and how you will address the teachers in the different segments.
Section II: Use Case
One page
Create a use case that introduces us to your most important resource: your network, its members, and the contexts within which they operate. Describe your teachers in any way that you think would be helpful for us to get a complete picture of the professional, social and capacity you have. Please write a use case from the teacher perspective. At the top of the use case write the name of your project and the name of the user you are describing. What types of teachers in your network? How would you characterize them and how are they organized or how would you segment them? As you write the case study, make sure to situate the individual within the context of both their school/district as well as your network.
A good use case…
§ Can be read and understood by someone without detailed systems expertise
§ Clearly articulates the specific user involved and the benefits to them, e.g. how they will use data to drive decision making
§ Describes the current and future state in a narrative way from the user perspective that is readily understood
A shorthand reference for the caseActor / A description of the individual who will be the users interacting with the system in a new way. Be specific about characteristics like # of years teaching, grades, the type of school do they teach in, etc.
Current state / A narrative description of how the user interacts with the system today and what their needs are. This does not get into the nuances of the systems – it treats them as a “black box.” It does explain the current steps and interactions that the user has to accomplish the given task today, highlights the problem that currently exists. Describe the current state in the context of teacher evaluation, Common Core implementation or any of the goals of the challenge.
Future state / A narrative description of how the user will accomplish the same task in the future with the improved system/technology improvements. (These will often reference new collaborations, technologies etc. but may also reference new processes and systems in place within the district).
Change enabled and #s influenced / A brief description of the improvement realized and expected benefits and how many teachers this use case represents in your system (i.e. x percent).
Teacher use cases help us understand the range of possibilities you envision through the eyes of a teacher. Describe the teacher in detail and in a way that resonates with the experiences of others in your members’ geographies. We want people to read your use case and think: “Hey! That sounds like me” or “I know that teacher!” Make sure to situate your teacher in the context of their school and their peers.
Give your use case a name and describe how they go through the system now and how you envision they would go through your ideal strategy. You can format the use case any way you want. Below are two sample use cases to get your thinking going.
The Teacher: Carlos Lopez
Actor / Carlos Lopez is a high-performing veteran English teacher working in Hillsborough Florida. He has taught for 10 years, loves his work, and is trying to make the shift to designing instruction based on the Common Core Standards. He’s an active member of the Florida Council of Teachers of English.
Current state / Carlos lives in a district that is part of the Literacy Design Collaborative (LDC) (http://literacydesigncollaborative.org), and last year was one of the high school teachers who participated in a year-long cycle of training. He learned to design strong tasks and build lesson plans using a module format, He taught using LDC and found it to be very engaging to his students. Although Carlos has been collaborating with other teachers in his school and district using LDC, he thinks it would be of great interest to the teachers he met with last year at the annual NCTE conference—both others from Florida and from around the country.
He knows that there are likely other NCTE members using LDC, but he doesn’t know who they are. NCTE’s support of the Common Core has been great—but he wants more opportunities to connect with teachers interested in leveraging a common instructional design, and common guidance around scoring student work. He would also like to connect with other English teachers who are doing this work around the country. The rubric components of the LDC system were really compelling to him—after all, isn’t that what Common Core is after—sending consistent messages to students about what college ready expectations are across state lines?
Future state / FCTE has identified 50 other teachers in Florida that are currently using LDC and want to share their success and grow the work within their own state and with other NCTE members. They set an ambitious target for the fall: each Florida teacher volunteers to work with 5 other teachers interested in using the LDC system in their state. Carlos is one of the 50 teachers and those teachers form a network to support each other in reaching their goal of spreading LDC to 5 other teachers by using the collaborative platforms to share work and best practices as LDC coaches. To judge the success of the effort, each of those teachers will bring in the student work they obtained after teaching a full module to a mid-year face to face conference for discussion. They’ve invited more experienced LDC teachers from within the network to facilitate a scoring session and talk about scaling. Their goal is that, during the spring semester, at least 200 of these teachers each reach out to 5 NCTE members nationally to help them implement a module in their school. They use the same network connection shared by the initial 50 teachers to build and support their network. By the end of the year, this network will have grown from 50 to 10,000.