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California Subject Matter Project

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Founded in 1988, the California Subject Matter Project network offers educators a variety of professional learning opportunities designed to improve learning. CSMP sites throughout California partner with local schools to create customized programs that meet the needs of teachers and students.

Our Mission: We seek to improve student learning and literacy by providing comprehensive, content-focused professional learning for teachers, by building teacher leadership, and by creating and maintaining collaborative networks of K-12 teachers and university faculty.

Our Work: We offer professional learning in communities of practice that leverage the latest disciplinary and educational research to improve teacher content knowledge and pedagogy, and with it, student learning and literacy. We promote shared accountability and continuous improvement; educators focus on a problem of shared practice to develop, test, and refine new ways to improve instruction.
We believe that English Learners need access to robust content – in every subject area.   We help content area teachers understand the linguistic demands of their discipline and how to help their English Learners address those demands.

We are instrumental in the development of state educational policy; we served as the primary writers for Curriculum Frameworks in world languages, history-social science, the arts, and science.

Our Unique Model: Our network offers teachers a singular opportunity to partner with scholars in education and academic disciplines.  As a result, our professional learning programs are informed by the latest disciplinary and educational research.  We focus our work on improving educational equity for students and teachers in the greatest need. And we strategically recruit, apprentice, and support teacher leaders through our ongoing partnerships with local schools and districts. 

In 2018-19, approximately 25,000 educators from more than 1,200 school districts attended CSMP programming.

The Nine Projects

The California Arts Project (TCAP)

California Reading & Literature Project (CR&LP)

California Global Education Project (CGEP)

California Science Project (CSP)

California History-Social Science Project (CH-SSP)

California World Languages Project (CWLP)

California Mathematics Project (CMP)

California Writing Project (CWP)

California Physical Education-Health Project (CPE-HP)