Achievements

The Boston Plan for Excellence (BPE) has been a leader in finding solutions to the toughest challenges faced by Boston’s students, their teachers and school leaders, and the district as a whole. Since 1984, BPE has raised over $75 million in private grants to support the learning of Boston’s children. Many strategies that BPE has tested out have been adopted district wide and have influenced schools across the country. Our approach continues to evolve as we learn what makes the biggest difference for teachers and students.

Our Achievements

1984: Bank of America (then, the First National Bank of Boston) establishes a local education foundation to foster improvement in the city’s public schools.

For its first decade, BPE offers ACCESS scholarships to Boston Public Schools graduates and mini-grants to individual teachers for innovative classroom projects.

1996: BPE partners with 27 schools to test and refine the Essentials of Whole-School Improvement with a focus on improving classroom instruction through “coaching.”

1997: With Annenberg Foundation and match funds, the Boston School Committee extends whole-school improvement to all schools. BPE shares oversight of half of the city’s schools.

2002: BPE refines its instructional coaching model. The new Collaborative Coaching and Learning model is adopted district wide.

2001 and 2002: Boston’s impressive record attracts funding from the Carnegie Corporation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to focus on high school improvement.

2003: The district and BPE launch a teacher preparation program, Boston Teacher Residency, that becomes a national leader in teacher preparation.

2006: Boston Public Schools is awarded the distinguished Broad Prize for Urban Education. Superintendent Tom Payzant attributes Boston’s success, in part, to its close partnership with BPE.

2005-2009: BPE develops formative assessments and data tools for tracking the progress of each student. These resources are quickly adopted by schools in Boston and beyond.

2007-2009: BPE pilots SAM-Boston, a data-informed inquiry model that helps school teams accelerate the learning of struggling students.

2009: Boston’s inquiry approach, renamed Accelerating Improvement through Inquiry, is refined and expanded to more schools.

2009: BPE convenes a new citywide partnership of traditional public, charter, independent, parochial, and pilot schools—the Boston Schoolchildren's Consortium.

2010: BPE continues to support the data-driven inquiry approach in a group of schools and partners with two turnaround schools in an intensive inquiry model.

2011: The Boston Public Schools, with assistance from BPE, introduces a graduation progress tool that helps individual students to track their progress toward high school graduation and college admissions requirements.