Results

Our Bottom Line: Student Success. Nothing Less.

In the classrooms of teachers we support, we expect that all students make at least one year of academic progress each year.

We’ve intensified our resources to attain this goal in our partner schools. We are committed to reporting publicly on the growth of the students in the classrooms and schools we support. We will continue to track and report our results on our progress developing great teachers and great schools that achieve exceptional outcomes for the children they serve.

Our learning is ongoing. We're committed to being transparent about our results and to sharing effective practices and learnings with educators, researchers and other partners who share our mission of improved outcomes for urban students.

A Strong, Diverse Pipeline of Teachers

Since 2003, we have prepared over 400 new teachers for the Boston Public Schools through our nationally recognized Boston Teacher Residency program, exceeding our initial goals for teacher preparation and retention:

• Increased teacher retention rates: 87% of our graduates are still teaching and 90% are still in the field of education; 80% of those hired by the Boston Public Schools have remained in the district.

• Diversified teacher pipeline: 49% of BTR grads are teachers of color.

• More teachers in high-needs areas: 37% of graduates teach special education or English as a Second Language; 55% of secondary graduates teach math or science.

• Teachers suited to Boston’s schools: The overwhelming majority (97%) of Boston principals who have hired a BTR graduate would recommend hiring a BTR graduate to their colleagues, and 97% of BTR graduates say that the program has prepared them well for the realities of urban teaching.

We’ve initiated several cutting-edge studies to measure the effectiveness of our graduates in increasing student learning. Our first “value-added” study by Harvard’s Center for Education Policy Research shows that while BTR graduates teaching grades 4-8 math start off slightly less effective at raising student test scores, by their fourth and fifth years they outperform Boston teachers with similar levels of experience. Read more.

President Obama recently highlighted Boston Teacher Residency as a model for recruitment and preparation of high-quality teachers; the federal Teacher Quality Partnership grant program was developed to replicate the residency model nationally. BTR was featured as a model in the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education’s Blue Ribbon Panel report on quality clinical preparation and was named one of six finalists in the Innovations in American Government Award sponsored by the Ash Center at Harvard University.

Coherent, Data-Driven Schools

Our data-driven approach to school improvement has helped teachers and school leaders to accelerate student learning. In a number of partner schools, the results have been dramatic. For example:

• Three partner middle schools saw a leap of more than 20 points in their median Student Growth Percentile (SGP) scores for seventh grade math between 2009 and 2010, and a fourth school’s median score grew by 16 points.

• The same schools had average gains of 10 median SGP points in English language arts.

• Over two-thirds of teachers were confident that the data-driven work they did with BPE helped their students learn more.

Broad Impact

Our work has had an impact on the Boston Public Schools as a whole, other schools in the state, and the national school reform movement.

In Boston, BPE has been a source of innovation for over 25 years and continues to leverage change in Boston’s schools by implementing effective models for developing great teachers and great schools.

At the state level, BPE acts as a thought partner, frequently advising state education leaders and offering models of effective practice that have been emulated by other districts.

Nationally, BPE is a leader in the urban school reform movement, participating in national education networks, including the Public Education Network and Urban Teacher Residency United, and influencing education initiatives around the country.