Education Cabinet
The Education Cabinet is focused on revolutionizing Boston's learning landscape.
We connect stakeholders, leaders, and institutions from across Boston. Our goal is to make sure the City’s young people and residents have access to high-quality education. Chief Rahn Dorsey leads our team.
Learning is a community enterprise. We want to align the goals of Boston's schools with:
- youth-serving organizations
- colleges and universities, and
- our City’s cultural institutions.
Let’s work together to create a City of active learners. We want our young people to succeed inside and outside of the classroom.
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We want the City, education officials and partners, and the community to work together to improve local education and learning. Our goals include:
- increasing equity in schools and education systems
- getting whole communities involved in learning experiences inside and outside of school, and
- finding business partners in Boston who will make investments in our communities.
If we can achieve these goals, Boston can help all learners find success. We’ll close opportunity and achievement gaps. We’ll also fulfill the City’s vision for education and learning.
View our infographic to better understand our vision for education and learning.
Download the graphic
| Priority area | Programs |
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Priority 1: Modernizing Boston Public Schools. We want to improve quality by increasing equity and innovation. |
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Priority 2: Creating partnerships among all Boston schools. We want to promote quality, accountability, and sustainability. |
The Boston Compact, a Boston Public Schools, charter schools, and Catholic schools partnership. |
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Priority 3: Creating a seamless flow through Boston’s education pipeline. We want to help students from birth until they find a career. |
Early education:
Birth - 8 Collective Impact Post-secondary learning:Opportunity Youth Collaborative Mayor’s Scholarship Redesign |
| Priority area | Programs |
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Priority 4: Building a citywide learning system. We want to support learning all year long, and at all times of day, across Boston. |
| Priority area | Programs |
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Priority 5: Meeting the basic needs of families. By doing this, we hope to help their children find success in school. |
Student Homelessness Pilot Designing for Food Security |
We’ve helped build networks to lead and sustain many initiatives in local education. We’ve formed partnerships with:
- the Universal Pre-K Advisory Committee (Phase I) and Steering Committee (Phase II)
- the Birth-to-Eight Collective Impact Group
- the Boston Basics
- the Boston Compact
- High School Redesign, and
- Success Boston.
Through public and private partners, we’ve received about $44 million in pledged funding. We’ll use these funds to help improve education from Pre-K to college. Some highlights include:
- A $25 million, 10-year philanthropic pledge from General Electric. We partnered with Boston Public Schools and Economic Development in this effort.
- $3.5 million a year in federal funds for Pre-K expansion, with $7 million received to date. This was a joint effort with the state and the cities of Holyoke, Lawrence, Lowell, and Springfield.
- $6 million to support success coaching for Boston Public Schools graduates in local colleges and universities. We worked with Success Boston on this initiative.
We’ve created many products through our work:
- Developed the City’s Universal Pre-K policy framework.
- Developed and launched the Boston Basics 0-3 Campaign. We worked with the Harvard Achievement Gap Initiative and Black Philanthropy Fund on this campaign.
- Developed the BuildBPS 10-Year Educational and Facilities Master Plan report and database. This was a joint effort with Boston Public Schools, City Operations, and the Boston Planning & Development Agency.
Some of the outcomes we’ve seen from our work include:
- The City expanded Pre-K seats in Boston to 750. This includes 570 seats in Boston Public Schools and 180 community-based seats.
- The City expanded summer learning sites from 79 in 2015 to 120 in 2017. We also increased student participation from 6,500 in 2015 to 11,000 in 2017.
- We’ve seen significant gains in math and English Language Acquisition for students. These students took part in consecutive years of summer learning and attended programs at high rates.
We plan to start a new chapter of construction and renovations in the Boston Public Schools over the next decade and beyond.
Two-thirds (66%) of Boston’s schools were constructed before World War II. We need a plan that modernizes our buildings in a way that works best with 21st-century learning.
BuildBPS is comprised of two main components:
- a written report (including a stand-alone executive summary), and
- the BuildBPS Dashboard, a web-based digital data visualization tool. Both can be found at BuildBPS.org.