Improving Schools

icon_headerData Analysis & Support

The goal that really matters is whether students learn. With that in mind, the Boston Plan for Excellence (BPE) has developed a suite of data tools and services that help school teams monitor individual students’ learning and their progress toward graduation. We help partner schools turn the data they have into information that guides decisions about what to teach and how to use limited time and resources to get better results.

First, we help schools by getting key data in one place, in a form teachers and school leaders can use. Then, we create custom reports and tools that help answer the specific questions a school staff has about its students’ performance. We also help schools make data public, engaging students, families, and others in reaching student learning goals.

 

  Customized Data Support
 

BPE has been a leader in applying national and local research on drop-out prevention and data-driven improvement to the daily work of schools. We help schools use predictive early-warning data on each student to identify students who are off-track for promotion and graduation, plan interventions that help them get back on track, and monitor results.

Over the course of the year, we work with the instructional leadership team and teams of teachers in grade levels or content areas to understand gaps in student performance and to track the results of interventions they implement through a structured inquiry process. We begin at a high level with overall MCAS and attendance data and drill down as teams get deeper in the inquiry process.

We use this data to keep everyone’s focus on where students are and where they need to be. Our frequent analyses help teachers and leaders track student progress, understand remaining challenges, and devise solutions that bring them closer to their goals. This continuous, laser-like focus on student learning is getting results.

Sample data analyses and tools
 

Attendance 

Our team helps teachers and leaders answer questions like:

 


Reading

Our team helps teachers and leaders break down formative assessment data, including:


MCAS Performance

Our team helps teachers and leaders make sense of students' MCAS performance by looking at:

Download an overview of BPE's data and inquiry services.

 

  Making Data Public
 

Recently, we’ve helped school teams engage the whole school community--teachers, students, families, and partners--with data. With help from the BPE data team, schools have create eye-catching public data displays, staff data walls that track each student's progress, individualized reports for students and families, and other effective tools for communicating goals and progress.

The latest issue of our FOCUS newsletter highlights the best of what we've seen so far.

Our partner schools have begun to exchange and improve on each other’s  ideas — showing that smart ways of sharing data can support improvements in any school, including those with big challenges and ambitious goals.

 

How well does your school communicate data?
 

Use our Making Data Public Rubric to assess your school's work and get ideas for bring it to the next level.

 
Sample resources from Boston schools
 

Public Data Walls

Classroom Data Walls

Staff Data Walls

Letters and Reports for Students and Families

 

Download a full set of samples and tips for making data public in your school.

Our Core Partner
The Boston Teacher Residency is a joint initiative of the Boston Public Schools and the Boston Plan for Excellence (BPE) and is housed at BPE.

The Boston Plan for Excellence is working to make sure every child in Boston receives an excellent education. As a local education fund and nonprofit, we seek and support innovative solutions to the toughest problems faced by Boston’s students, their teachers, and the school system as a whole.

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