Child Trends serves as a key partner on the Northwest Comprehensive Center (NWCC). The NWCC provides high-quality, intensive capacity-building services that help state and local education agencies and their partners select, implement, and sustain evidence-based programs, practices, and interventions that aim to improve educator and student outcomes. Under the direction of Education Northwest, Child Trends plays a vital role on the NWCC by serving as one of the lead technical assistance providers to states.
Building State Capacity to Advance Education Goals
The NWCC is one of 20 technical assistance centers funded by the U.S. Department of Education to provide support to the department’s 10 geographic regions. Working in tandem with the Regional Educational Laboratories (RELs), Comprehensive Centers help states and districts respond to various challenges in education. Focus areas include:
- Promoting academic achievement and excellence
- Offering students a comprehensive and rigorous education
- Eliminating the educator shortage
- Providing every student a pathway to multilingualism
- Providing schools with adequate and equitable funding
The NWCC, specifically, works with Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington. Child Trends supports the NWCC across each of the five states. We provide more information about three core projects below.
Operationalizing Alaska’s Teacher Retention and Recruitment Efforts
Many states are grappling with a shrinking educator and school support staff workforce, and Alaska is no exception. The state has been working to improve teacher retention and recruitment (TRR) since 2020, via efforts such as gathering input from educators, students, families, and partners statewide and releasing the TRR Playbook in 2023. The Alaska Department of Early Care and Education (DEED) sought help from the NWCC to build on these efforts and drive implementation of the TRR Playbook strategies. Child Trends has supported the project by developing several topical briefs covering processes related to international teacher recruitment and the history of teacher pay. We also partnered in convening a Support Team of Alaskan education partners to codevelop helpful tools. As a result, Child Trends contributed to a suite of resources to accompany the TRR Playbook and provide districts with a set of processes for engaging communities in assessing their areas’ contexts and determining the TRR Playbook strategies that best fit with their needs and existing capacities. To further the reach and utility of these resources, Child Trends developed a dissemination toolkit of newsletter blurbs, social media posts, and presentation slides for DEED and its partners.
Assessing Oregon’s State Standards to Reduce Burden and Improve Student Outcomes
Division 22 and Division 24 are two sets of Oregon administrative rules that set expectations for school districts and education service districts (ESDs), respectively. A 2025 bill from the Oregon State Legislature (SB 141) called for a review of these standards, and the Oregon Department of Education (ODE) engaged with the NWCC to complete this review. As part of this work, Child Trends contributed to an analysis of the 59 Division 22 standards and an analysis to compare Oregon’s administrative rules and accountability systems to those of 13 other states. Child Trends worked alongside Education Northwest to conduct interviews and focus groups with legislators, families, district and ESD staff, educators, ODE staff, and other education partners to understand their recommendations for revisions. These and other data collected by Education Northwest and ODE were synthesized into a report with recommendations for updating Division 22 and Division 24. Building on these findings, Child Trends is developing implementation tools to support a deeper review of priorities to inform future implementation.
Supporting Parent Engagement with Learning Standards in Washington
In 2026, the state of Washington updated its state learning standards, and the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) sought support to develop family-focused resources about the updated math and literacy standards. The office worked with the NWCC to co-create a comprehensive set of resources, in both English and Spanish, to help parents and caregivers understand revised state learning standards and put them into practice at home. Child Trends contributed to these family resources and conducted a scan of how other states communicate learning standards by grade to families, and issued a set of recommended at-home activities to inform the resources.
Child Trends Staff
- Project Lead: Van-Kim Lin
- Project Manager: Obioma Okogbue
- Other key staff: Rebecca Jones, Silvana Esposito Hackett, Kristine Chan, Deana Around Him, Bonnie Solomon, Kaylor Garcia
Partners
- Northwest CC lead: Education Northwest
- Other partners: FHI 360 and Concord Evaluation Group
The contents of this webpage were developed under a grant from the U.S. Department of Education (Department). The Department does not mandate or prescribe practices, models, or other activities described or discussed in this document. The contents of this webpage may contain examples of, adaptations of, and links to resources created and maintained by another public or private organization. The Department does not control or guarantee the accuracy, relevance, timeliness, or completeness of this outside information. The content of this webpage does not necessarily represent the policy of the Department. This publication is not intended to represent the views or policy of, or be an endorsement of any views expressed, or materials provided by, any federal agency.