Insights

Scale and Sustain for Lasting Impact

From Approach to Impact: How Partnership Is the Key to Driving Educational Change

This is the fourth in a four-part blog series exploring the Northwest Comprehensive Center’s approach to helping state education partners meet their goals.

When we find ways to improve teaching and learning, we want to scale those efforts to other contexts and make sure our education systems can maintain them over time.

Every phase of the Northwest Comprehensive Center (NWCC) approach to technical assistance emphasizes collaboration and co-ownership, which build a foundation for sustainability. In this fourth and final phase, we leverage the buy-in and capacity built across the project to scale and sustain improvements over time.

How We Scale and Sustain

In the scale and sustain phase, NWCC monitors and improves supports and resources so our partners can sustain implementation. This involves feedback loops with system leaders, agency staff members, practitioners, and community members. Leveraging their input, we strengthen internal structures, tools, and processes. We also document improvements and communicate success with partners across systems, especially those who have a role in supporting scale and sustainability. We focus on building skill and capacity at the organization level—not with individual staff members—to foster resiliency, especially for systems facing staff turnover.

Building Idaho’s Capacity for Revising Learning Standards

The Idaho Department of Education (IDE) wanted to revise its K–12 math standards using a structured process that incorporated input from key stakeholders across the state. At the same time, IDE was looking to the future: They wanted to document and codify effective practices so that future standards revisions would follow a consistent process, regardless of staff turnover or organizational changes.

With sustainability in mind, NWCC supported Idaho to build organizational capacity by creating documented procedures, decision-making processes, and implementation tools from the math standards revisions. The end goal was that IDE could use these resources to replicate this standards revision process in the future. We developed an Academic Standards Revision Process Manual, which captures key practices, roles, timelines, and resources needed for successful standards revision. These structures support knowledge transfer and organizational learning, reducing IDE’s dependence on the expertise of individual staff members.

With these resources, Idaho can successfully implement future standards revisions using its own internal systems, tools, and processes rather than relying on external support. By institutionalizing the work, Idaho is better positioned to maintain quality and consistency across future revision cycles.

Long-Term Results for Students, Educators, and Communities

When technical assistance focuses on co-ownership and sustainability, we strengthen education systems so they can better serve students, educators, and communities in the long term. Documenting and communicating what works for the future is a way to value and extend the impact of the resources we invest in systems today. Through this work, we can make lasting, measurable improvements in opportunity and outcomes for all students.