EdSource Today (1/10) reports that though it has “largely steered clear of making education grants in California over the past half-decade,” the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is considering a series of grants to help with Common Core-related professional development in the state. The article notes that the foundation has given the Fresno and Long Beach USDs $5 million grants “for innovative ways to pursue training in the new math and English language arts standards.” The piece says that the foundation is “impressed with Fresno’s and Long Beach’s proposals” and “will decide by late spring whether to expand that initiative to networks of districts that may affect 25 percent to 30 percent of California’s 6 million students.”