Benjamin W. Cottingham

Benjamin Cottingham Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE)
Benjamin W. Cottingham
Associate Director, Strategic Partnerships,
Policy Analysis for California Education, Stanford University

Benjamin Cottingham is the associate director of strategic partnerships at PACE. His work focuses on the development of organizational conditions that support the continual improvement of student outcomes across California’s education system. He examines how California’s county offices of education support continuous improvement. He is involved with several research partnerships, including the CORE-PACE partnership, studying the impact of networked improvement communities on at-risk student populations. Cottingham received his master’s in education policy from Stanford University.

updated 2021

Publications by Benjamin W. Cottingham
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…
CORE’s Approach
Busy educators are often faced with a dilemma—staying up to date with evidence-based practices and initiatives that support their professional growth while combating a constant barrage of superficial ideas from other contexts. Continuous improvement…