New Leadership

4.06.11 By Jesse Solomon

The Board of Trustees voted last week to approve my nomination as the new Executive Director of the Boston Plan for Excellence (BPE). I was humbled to be asked to serve in this role, even more humbled to be approved, and grateful to Ellen Guiney, Chad Gifford and the rest of the Board for this opportunity.

I want to thank Ellen and BPE. When Boston Teacher Residency (BTR) was founded back in 2003, Ellen and BPE took us in pretty much sight unseen. We had a beginning of a plan, but we didn’t exist yet, and we didn’t really fit with what BPE had done in the past. BPE has served as a wonderful incubator for BTR, allowing it to grow over these past eight years. BPE has provided both intellectual and logistical support, helping shape the content of the program while taking care of so many of the logistical and operational areas that can derail a new program. Ellen has served as a mentor and guide to me. She has been our intellectual partner — helping us see new things, connecting our work to other efforts, challenging us when we needed to be challenged, supporting us when we needed to be supported. Ellen has taught me about what it means to grow and guide new work in the complicated world of education reform. As I said above, I was humbled that Ellen would ask me to take this on — and I am grateful for the opportunity.

I wanted to take the opportunity here to make a few points about the future of BTR and BPE, with more details to follow.

In making this transition, we have crafted a strategic plan that draws on the strengths of both BPE and BTR, and which addresses some of the great challenges we face in urban education. BTR and BPE will continue to focus on human capital — the lever we believe has the greatest potential to support educational opportunity — but we will do so in the context of the whole schools we work with, partnering with strong leaders and supporting the development of coherent school models which draw on what we know works.

1. We will of course continue to run and improve the residency program, though I will be hiring someone to oversee the day-to-day operations. We have just completed an internal strategic planning process to look at how we run the program, and we are excited to be embarking on some extremely promising improvement strategies.

2. We will consolidate our work with schools, focusing our efforts on fewer schools. These efforts include the human capital work of BTR, but also include the powerful data work that BPE has been developing, inquiry facilitation, teacher leadership preparation and support, and other professional development opportunities for teachers.

3. And we will start a school. We have long wanted to create a BTR training academy — an excellent school that delivers a top-notch education for all its students while also serving as a rich training ground for new teachers. We will take advantage of the state’s new Innovation Schools pathway to work to build such a school. We are excited also about the chance to partner with the Boston Promise Initiative in this work, with hope that our school will be part of a more comprehensive effort to provide quality services to children and families.

There will be more details forthcoming — stay tuned. Please do not hesitate to get in touch with me at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) if you have any questions.

In closing, I want to take a moment to thank the amazing mentor teachers, Site Directors, Instructors, Induction Coaches and central staff that we have the tremendous good fortune to work with. It is mind-blowing to me when I think about all the talented educators we get to work with — and I know that the people involved with BTR are just a small subset in a city filled with amazing educators. That knowledge alone makes me tremendously hopeful for the future.

All the best,
Jesse