Benjamin W. Cottingham
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Benjamin W. Cottingham
District Improvement Specialist,
California Education Partners
Benjamin W. Cottingham is a district improvement specialist at Education Partners. His work involves collaborating with district teams to design and implement systems that strengthen preK–3rd grade mathematics and to build coherence between the 8th and 9th grades. He previously was associate director of strategic partnerships at PACE; worked on state policy with the Oklahoma Department of Education; served in nonprofit leadership while providing high-dosage tutoring in Boston; and taught with Teach for America. His work has focused on improving educational systems to better support high-quality teaching and learning. Cottingham received his MA in education policy from Stanford University.
updated 2025
Publications by Benjamin W. Cottingham
Grass Valley School District’s Progress Towards P–3 Coherence in Literacy
Grass Valley School District (GVSD) partnered with California Education Partners through an initiative to improve literacy instruction. Over three years, GVSD implemented new literacy assessments and phonics practices, emphasizing teacher leadership…
How California Districts Create Access and Coherent Systems
California’s ambitious investment in Universal Transitional Kindergarten (UTK) reflects a commitment to providing access to UTK for all 4-year-olds in public schools by the 2025–26 academic year. However, the implementation of transitional…
Early Insights from a CCEE School-Improvement Pilot
Student achievement in California has not rebounded after the precipitous declines of the COVID-19 pandemic, with English language arts (ELA) and math scores remaining well below prepandemic levels. Student attendance has declined dramatically, and…
Improvement Team Leads’ Perspectives on Fitting Improvement Work to Their Sites
This chapter in an edited book focuses on the work of two improvement network hubs in California as they tried to support participating districts and schools to improve the proportion of students “on-track” for post-secondary success. California has…