Many charter schools lag in enrolling students lacking English fluency

Disparities in student enrollment between charter and district schools have long been a lightning rod. Six years ago a new state law allowed for the doubling of charter-school seats in the lowest-performing districts, though it required charters to develop strategies to recruit, enroll, and retain English-language learners, students with disabilities, and other academically disadvantaged students at levels that mirror hometown school systems.

Match Charter Public School is highlighted as one of two charter schools whose average number of English-language learners exceeds the Boston Public School system's average.

Click here to read the full article.

Finding Common Ground in the Commonwealth's Charter Debate: Sharing Best Practices

So far, the primary point of contention in the Massachusetts debate about lifting the charter cap is about money: how public charter schools are funded, and whether or not they hurt traditional public schools. Eclipsed in all the back-and-forth over the funding formula, however, is almost any conversation about one of the charter movement’s primary objectives: to demonstrate new, effective ways of educating students and operating schools.

Click here to read Claire Kaplan's oped about the need to invest more in sharing best practices and educational resources across the charter-district divide.

A charter success story, dreaming of a sequel

This was the first of four stories published by The Boston Globe on how families could be affected by charter school expansion.

Janelle Smith was a member of the first graduating class of Match High School, which she said "prepared [her] for college and for a lifetime of rewarding work." She wants the same for her daughter, Alorah, but due to the state's current restrictions on new charter schools, Alorah has been on long waiting lists for years.

Click here to read the full article.

As final year of college planning unfolds at Match: ‘What’s it gonna take?’

In the first story of an occasional series on the senior class at Match High School, The Hechinger Report looks at the deadlines and challenges our students face when applying to colleges.

Click here to read the full article.

Are charter schools truly innovative? The answer can depend on your definition

For decades, charter schools have been billed as “laboratories of innovation,” conjuring up images of teachers and administrators brainstorming and testing cutting-edge instruction that — if proven successful — could deliver salvation to urban education. But the track record of Massachusetts charter schools on innovation is mixed. While some charters are innovative, others simply strive to build high-quality schools using existing methods and do not necessarily invent new practices.

Match Charter Public School is highlighted for its innovative tutoring model that led to the creation of its own graduate school of education - "an unheard of move for a public school."

Click here to read the full article.

Barr Foundation Announces $16.6 Million in New Grants

On September 26th, the Boston-based Barr Foundation announced its third quarter grants for 2016, bringing the year's total giving to $45 million.  In the Foundation's Education portfolio, Match Beyond was awarded a grant of $2.2 million to help the program grow over the next five years as well as to evaluate its methods and results.

Click here for the full blog post on the announcement.

Ahoy! Charter Schools Be Sharing Their Treasure

Alex Hernandez is a Partner at Charter School Growth Fund, and he recently wrote a guest blog post for Eduwonk, a blog written by Andrew J. Rotherham, Co-founder and Partner at Bellwether Education Partners.  In his post, Alex applauds the efforts of Match Education and Edward Brooke Charter Schools to share their knowledge base and best practices via free, online resources.

Read the full blog here.

Boston Charter Aims to Innovate, Extend Reach

In early May, a group of journalists attending the Education Writers Association conference hosted at BU, visited Match High School. Erin Richards of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel wrote about her experience in a blog for EWA, in which she highlights Match Education as "a laboratory and demonstration site to tinker with the chemical compounds for closing the achievement gap ."

Read the full article here.

PRESS RELEASE: Match Education Awarded National AmeriCorps Grant

The Match Foundation, Inc., part of Match Education, has been awarded a continuation of its National AmeriCorps tutoring program by the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), the federal agency that administers AmeriCorps programs.

Read the full release here.

Colleges must stop holding student transcripts hostage

Match Beyond was mentioned in a Boston Globe Magazine article that highlights the difficulty students face in requesting their college transcripts in order to transfer schools due to financial hardship. This situation leaves students unable to apply already paid-for credits towards a future degree at another institution. Many Match Beyond students have experienced this issue first-hand and have since completed their degree through College For America at little to no additional cost.

Click here for the full article.

Teaching the teachers

The Sposato Graduate School of Education was recently featured in the cover story of The Economist magazine, called "Teaching the teachers."  The article highlights alternative schools of education, like Sposato, as a necessary ed reform for improving student outcomes because they provide real-world experience to teacher trainees through hours of practice teaching and high-grade feedback.

Click here for the full article.

A charter network bucking the status quo in a brand new way

Education Post by Tracy Dell'Angela

After her recent visit to Match High School while attending the Education Writers Association conference in Boston, Tracy Dell'Angela wrote about Match as an organization committed to "tackling some of the most intractable and universal problems in education today."

Read her full blog post here.

As Teacher Academies Flourish Under ESSA, Massachusetts Could Guide the Way

The 74 Million by Scott McCue and Orin Gutlerner

Co-Directors of The Charles Sposato Graduate School of Education (CSGSE), Scott McCue and Orin Gutlerner wrote an OpEd published by The 74 Million on the need for non-traditional teacher preparation programs and how already-existing programs in Massachusetts, like CSGSE, are leading the way.

Read the full article here.

A principal who puts people first –and sometimes on YouTube

The Hechinger Report by Ray Schleck

In an OpEd for The Hechinger Report, Match Next principal Ray Schleck describes the Match Next model as an innovative and effective means for differentiating curriculum to meet more students' needs.  In one grade at Match Next, there are three master teachers overseeing 30 tutors (all recent-college-grad AmeriCorps members), who work with 100 students. This allows master teachers to focus on three things: train and coach tutors, develop curriculum, and work with students (individually and by leading class discussion).

Read the full article here.

The End of Education Reform

Relinquishment by Neerav Kingsland

Neerav Kingsland, a Senior Education Fellow at the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, recently posted on his blog about Match Beyond as an innovator trying to answer two important questions in higher ed reform: 1) how do we increase degree attainment rates for low income students? and 2) how do we make colleges more effective?

You can read the full post here.

New, Reading-Heavy SAT Has Students Worried

The New York Times by Anemona Hartocollis

In January, NYT writer Anemona Hartocollis visited Match High School to talk with students and staff members about the new SAT. Chief among the test's changes are longer and harder reading passages and more words in math problems. The shift is leading some educators and college admissions officers to fear that the revised test will penalize students who have not been exposed to a lot of reading, or who speak a different language at home — like immigrants and the poor.

Read the full article here.

Proving Ground

University of Chicago Magazine by Maya Dukmasova

On a sunny Tuesday morning in early June, with the end of the school year already palpable, three girls were hard at work in a Chicago Vocational Center Academy classroom. The Chicago Public Schools high school is a sprawling Art Deco building on the southernmost edge of Avalon Park, on the South Side of Chicago. About 98 percent of its students are African American, and nearly 94 percent come from low-income families.

Read the full article here. 

Urban Charter Schools Often Succeed. Suburban Ones Often Don’t.

New York Times by Susan Dynarksi

Charter schools are controversial. But are they good for education?

Rigorous research suggests that the answer is yes for an important, underserved group: low-income, nonwhite students in urban areas. These children tend to do better if enrolled in charter schools instead of traditional public schools.

Read the full article here. 

Match Education’s Sposato Graduate School of Education is One Leading Member of a New National Center to Advance Teacher Preparation

News release

The Sposato Graduate School of Education (SGSE) at Match Education is part of a new national center – called TeacherSquared—that will be dedicated to transforming the way new teachers are prepared to teach U.S. public school students. The center is one of three new centers that received funding through a new initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Click here to read the full press release.

Click here to read the Education Week article that details the other four grantees to receive funding through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's new $34 million investment to improve teacher-preparation programs' overall effectiveness.

New Profit commits $1 million in support of Match Education

New Profit, a nonprofit venture philanthropy fund working to break down the barriers standing between people and opportunity in America, is investing $1 million over the next four years to support Match Education. The investment in Match will be a part of New Profit’s Reimagine School Systems (RSS) Fund (RSS) Fund, a cross-sector collaboration aimed at significantly and rapidly increasing the number of high performing schools serving low income students by transforming the way school systems work and lifting up successful school models that can scale across the country.

Click here to read the full release.