About

Our Vision 

Every student in California deserves to learn and thrive with teachers who affirm and connect their strengths, values, languages, and cultures to amplify their learning. CSMP supports teachers to make this a reality.  

Our Mission 

With an unwavering commitment to equity, the California Subject Matter Project (CSMP) seeks to improve student learning through discipline-specific, research-based, sustained professional learning and leadership programs for TK-16 educators. Our collaborative TK-16 networks strive to develop teacher subject matter knowledge, pedagogy, and agency.

To realize this vision and mission, CSMP centers equity in each of the following priorities:

1. Enhance students’ literacies to excel in school and life 
2. Facilitate English Learners’ success in every discipline
3. Support teacher learning and well-being through on-going communities of practice
4. Address local needs by providing professional learning to classroom, school, and district leaders that promotes culturally sustaining, equity-driven, and justice-focused pedagogies
5. Advance the development and implementation of State Standards and Frameworks to create opportunities for student agency
6. Create and maintain collaborative networks across TK-16 that engage in self-reflection and inquiry, including interrogation of biases and systemic inequalities
7. Develop and disseminate research about teaching and learning to improve educational outcomes for all students

CSMP in Practice

Professional learning in communities of practice  The CSMP model supports K–12 educators by cultivating strong classroom and leadership skills, providing discipline-based professional learning networks and maintaining long-term collaborations with university faculty. We recruit, apprentice and support teacher-leaders through partnerships with local schools and districts. Each year, 25,000 educators from more than 1,200 school districts take part in CSMP programs.

State educational policy  We served as the primary writers of California Curriculum Frameworks for history-social science (2016), the arts (2020), science (2016) and world languages (2020).

Informed by the latest research  CSMP participants engage with esteemed scholars who are active in education and academic fields, sharing the most up-to-date information, practice and research.

Focused on educational equity  CSMP gives priority to improving educational equity for students and teachers in the greatest need. Students of English need access to challenging content — in all subject areas. CSMP programs guide teachers in pinpointing the linguistic demands of a particular subject and the most effective way to communicate about that discipline.

All data displayed on charts, reports and websites is the most recent available. New numbers will be posted as the information is collected and processed.