Every year, the Improving Teacher Quality State Grants Program issues a Request for Proposals (RFP) to award funds provided annually from the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. In recent years, each RFP has focused on a specific objective tied to state priorities in teacher quality. Six grants were awarded in 2008: (1) Bell Gardens Science Project; (2) Science and Academic Library; (3) Algebraic Learning in Elementary Grades: Results, Independence, Achievement (ALEGRIA!); (4) Teacher Efficacy Affects Math and Science Success (TEAMS!); (5) Advancing Collaboration For Equity In Science (ACES); and (6) Making Algebra Accessible Project (MAAP). Since 2005, the grants have required scientifically based evaluation research in each project. The intent is to extend project evaluation beyond evaluating whether grants effectively carried out the promised activities, and to look for evidence that the activities actually changed teacher practice and improved student achievement. The 2008 grants will be the fourth group of projects to include such research. Two research directors will make presentations at the December 2008 Commission meeting, explaining their projects, what they have learned so far, and the challenges of this type of research. Abstracts for each of their projects are attached. Characteristics of successful and unsuccessful proposals are discussed, with recommendation for increasing outreach to potential proposers to inform them of project requirements, possibly outside of the regular RFP cycle, to enable more universities to lay the groundwork for competitive proposals by building partnerships essential to successful projects.