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Technical Assistance

Drawing from research and best practice, high-quality technical assistance from WestEd actively supports your leadership teams working to build state and local capacity across a range of areas and pressing issues.

Our education consultation focuses on developing your expertise and leadership, while delivering scalable, systemwide supports to ensure sustainable improvement.

Contact Us About Technical Assistance

More Ways WestEd Can Help

National Support Networks

Serving local and state leadership teams through technical assistance and evidence-based support

WestEd partners with diverse stakeholders – including members of state education agencies, local education agencies, schools, institutions of higher education, and social service agencies – to expand capacity and improve outcomes. The programs, funded through a competitive process, enable WestEd to provide support gratis.

What is Technical Assistance? Technical assistance provides customized local or state consulting services designed to build capacity, facilitate communications, and transfer knowledge and expertise in order to encourage positive, systemwide outcomes across many domains.

Regional Educational Laboratories

The nationwide system of RELs conducts research and provides analytic support through a range of partnerships with education entities and their communities, all with the fundamental mission of addressing education challenges through greater use of evidence-based decision-making.
  • WestEd currently operates The Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) West, which works to actively translate research into practice with policymakers and practitioners in Arizona, California, Nevada, and Utah. REL West provides research, analytic assistance, and resources designed to increase the use of quality data and evidence in education decision-making. Areas of focus include: Educator Development, Supporting the Whole Child, Early Learning, Postsecondary Pathways, English Learner Students, Improvement Science, and Evidence Use in Education.Download a REL West overview handout that provides examples of how REL West works in partnership to address high-leverage needs.WestEd also operates REL Northwest, which partners with educators and policymakers in Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington to develop evidence that can inform consequential decisions about policy, programs, and practice. Key stakeholders include organizations with decision-making authority and the ability to influence education policy and practice, such as state and local education agencies, school boards, institutes of higher education, and student, family, and community organizations.

Regional Comprehensive Centers

The Comprehensive Centers provide content expertise and resources to effectively support state education agencies and their school districts with the implementation of federal programs across key areas.
  • WestEd will lead and operate comprehensive centers for the following regions:

    Region 2: Serving Connecticut, New York, and Rhode Island

    Region 13: Serving Bureau of Indian Education, New Mexico, and Oklahoma

    Region 15: Serving Arizona, California, Nevada, and Utah.

    In addition, WestEd is working as a partner to Region 7, which will serve Alabama, Florida, and Mississippi; Region 14, which will serve Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas; and Regions 18 and 19 in Hawaii and the Pacific islands. Learn more about current Comprehensive Center projects.

National Special Education Centers

Our national special education centers focus specifically on helping states improve their systems for supporting and educating infants, toddlers, children, and youth with disabilities.
  • CIFR logoThe Center for IDEA Fiscal Reporting provides technical assistance to state education agencies to assist them meet their federal obligation to collect and report special education fiscal data.
  • NCSI logoWestEd’s National Center for Systemic Improvement helps states transform their systems to improve outcomes for infants, toddlers, children, and youth with disabilities.

Center to Improve Social and Emotional Learning and School Safety

Center to Improve Social and Emotional Learning and School Safety logo
The vision of WestEd’s Center to Improve Social and Emotional Learning and School Safety is to ensure children are educated in places of equity, safety, and learning, and receive the integrated academic, social, and emotional supports that meet their individual needs. By expanding the knowledge and capacity of the field to integrate evidence-based social and emotional learning (SEL) and school safety practices and programs, the SEL Center supports student success throughout their K-12 experience and beyond. Areas of Focus: Equity, Integration, Alignment and Coherence, Data-Driven Cycles of Improvement, Sustainable Implementation.

The National Research and Development Center to Improve Education for Secondary English Learners

The National Research and Development Center to Improve Education for Secondary English Learners
The National Research and Development Center to Improve Education for Secondary English Learners is dedicated to ensuring access to rigorous grade-level content and promoting success for English Learners in community, college, and career. With our research partners from the University of Oregon, Oregon State University, and UCLA’s CRESST Center, WestEd leads the development of an actionable and powerful portfolio of work that provides important answers to the complex question of how to offer secondary English Learners quality opportunities to learn.