Northern Arizona University and several Arizona elementary school districts (Mesa Public Schools, Cottonwood-Oak Creek School District, and Flagstaff Unified School District) are working together to build capacity and readiness to provide research based, job-embedded professional learning for elementary teachers that develops science content knowledge, as well as effective pedagogy that meaningfully integrates science with other elementary content learning.

Using the MSP-Start, the partnership is building a foundation for this transformation by planning strategies for replication and evaluation of key components of the Valle Imperial Project in Science (VIPS) in El Centro California, and Florida Atlantic University's Science IDEAS. Rather than displacing science instruction to create more time for language arts, these programs purposefully and meaningfully integrate literacy instruction with inquiry-embedded science instruction; results from studies of implementation of the two programs indicate considerable achievement gains in science and writing as well as reading and mathematics.

Replication of the Valle Imperial and El Centro projects in diverse schools in Arizona thus has the potential to produce evidence that the strategies learned from these projects can have positive impact on student achievement in reading and math, while at the same time preparing students to be competent in areas of science and technology that are also important in today's global community. During this planning year, the partners are building a common vision, establishing roles and responsibilities, identifying needs, developing and finalizing the research and evaluation plans, and determining the model of implementation. A project evaluator is collecting evidence about the strength and effectiveness of partnership development and completion of planning phase goals, and providing recommendations for improvement as needed to prepare an effective full Targeted Partnership proposal.