Our Accomplishments

BPE combines the experience of two organizations that have led the way in urban school improvement: the Boston Plan for Excellence and Boston Teacher Residency (BTR).

For over 25 years, BPE has devised solutions to the toughest challenges faced by Boston’s students, teachers, and school leaders, raising over $75 million in private grants to support the learning of Boston’s children. In 2003, BPE helped found one of the first residency-based teacher education programs, Boston Teacher Residency. Together, BPE and BTR have developed smart, sophisticated strategies to help teachers and schools become more effective. Many of our strategies have been adopted district wide and have influenced schools across the country.

BPE: 1984 - Today

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 matching 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 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.

2004: BTR, with two other partners, forms Urban Teacher Residency United to exchange best practices, support the development of new residency models around the country, and promote the concept of residency-based teacher preparation at state and federal levels.

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 early warning data tools for tracking the progress of each student. These resources are quickly adopted by schools in Boston and beyond.

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

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

2010: BTR wins a $5 million federal i3 (Investing in Innovation) grant – one of 49 awardees from nearly 1,700 applicants nationally.

2010: BTR’s definition of a residency is adopted by the U.S. Department of Education for its Teacher Quality Partnership (TQP) program and is named a model for quality clinical preparation by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education.

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.

2011: BPE and BTR converge, with a more focused commitment to create the conditions of teacher and student learning in a core group of partner schools.