As schools across the country face the daunting challenge of making up ground lost due to the Covid disruptions, one of the most promising strategies for doing that is an approach launched in Boston 20 years ago – on the top floor of a former auto parts store.
Click here to read the full story on the history of Match’s tutoring program and how this type of intervention can help schools address learning loss from the pandemic.
Match High School’s Class of 2022 valedictorian, Charlotte Cano Polanco, was featured in the Boston Globe. A daughter of immigrant parents from the Dominican Republic, Charlotte shares her life story before she heads off to study at Stanford University this fall.
Click here to read the article.
In its 2022 rankings, US News & World Report named Match High School the 17th best high school in Massachusetts, as well as 120th charter school nationwide.
Rankings were based on six factors: college readiness (proportions of 12th graders who took and passed at least one AP or IB exam); college curriculum breadth (proportions of 12th graders who took and passed AP and IB exams in multiple areas); state assessment proficiency; state assessment performance (includes all students); underserved student performance (only Black, Hispanic and low-income students); and 4-year high school graduation rates. For underserved student performance, Match High School ranked 3rd in the state.
To review Match High School’s full profile, click here.
Kareem, who was valedictorian for Match Charter Public High School’s class of 2021, said trips to the Dominican Republic, where her parents grew up and extended family still lives, piqued her interest in sustainability. Since then, she has participated in learning programs in Idaho, Chile, and at Philips Andover Academy, and she will continue searching for sustainable solutions next year at Brown University, where she plans to study agricultural or environmental engineering.
Click here to read the full profile from The Boston Globe.
All children deserve a good education, but too many of them do not receive one. Unsurprisingly, students who are most likely to attend under-resourced schools with underprepared teachers are poor, Black and brown. It is a situation that has stagnated for decades, but now the U.S. is at a reckoning point where our Black and brown school-aged children outnumber white school-aged children nationally.
However, teacher demographics are not diversifying at remotely the same pace. If we believe that all children deserve a good education, then we must make an honest effort to recruit and train more Black and brown teachers to serve—and represent—these chronically disenfranchised populations.
Click here to read the full Education Post article from Sposato alumnae, Ashley Davis and Taylor DeLoach.
In this opinion piece, Boston Globe columnist, Scot Lehigh highlights innovative charter school practices, including the Match Corps tutoring program, that can be roadmaps for schools across the Commonwealth as leaders decide how to use the influx of federal funds to help accelerate student learning after the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Fortunately, there are dozens of idea factories of innovation and enterprise, in the form of the state’s charter-school sector. Indeed, there’s a lot of overlap between the changes parents want and the services charters provide.”
Click here to read the full article.
With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, seniors in the Class of 2021 have faced many challenges: remote learning, balancing schoolwork and jobs to support their families, and keeping up with the stressful and lengthy college process. One part of the process—the completion of a Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA—is an early indicator of whether a student intends to go to college following high school graduation. When schools closed last spring, the number of students completing the FAFSA nationwide dropped significantly, and the lower rates have persisted, especially for Black and brown students. Massachusetts is no exception, but at Match Charter Public High School in Boston, we’ve learned that by taking certain steps, schools can buck that trend.
Click here to read the full Education Post article by our Director of College & Career Counseling, Ashley LaCavalla.
Faculty from Match’s Charles Sposato Graduate School of Education recently published a blog on Education Post to offer insights to school leaders who are understandably challenged by the prospect of hiring remote teachers into school communities with new modes of teaching and learning.
Click here to read the full post.
The elementary teacher residency and licensure program of The Charles Sposato Graduate School of Education has been named among the top in the country by the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ), a nonpartisan, not-for-profit research and policy organization, for strong commitment to quality clinical practice experiences aimed at preparing aspiring teachers for the realities of the classroom.
Sposato’s elementary residency program stands out as among only seven non-traditional residency programs and 33 traditional undergraduate or graduate elementary programs nationwide that earn an A for strong clinical experience requirements, and serves as a model of excellence for others
Click here for the full press release.
After a competitive national search, the Board of Directors of The Charles Sposato Graduate School of Education, Inc. voted unanimously to hire Dr. Jalene Tamerat as the next Dean of Sposato. Her appointment is to become effective on Wednesday, July 1, 2020.
Click here to read the full press release.
Match Charter Public School’s Chief Academic Officer, Emily Stainer, is writing a weekly blog about the lessons learned during remote learning. This week’s post is able using students and family feedback to inform our school’s remote learning plan. She writes:
While students and their families have always been at the heart of our work, being remote has reminded us that they can and should give input and advice on our plans all the time, and at the very least underscored that it can and needs to happen more frequently than we’ve typically done so.
Click here to read the full post that was published on Education Post.
Swayed podcast: Candid interviews with a range of experts to explore perspectives on power and influence.
“What is the biggest indicator of teacher success? It is probably not what you are assuming. Listen to a conversation with Scott McCue, Dean of Sposato Graduate School, discuss his experience developing and training teachers. Whether you are in the academic or corporate world, he provides insightful and valuable ideas for creating a culture of feedback.”
Click here to listen to the podcast.
Recently the Bates College student newspaper published a piece, interviewing alums currently working in education, and therefore doing remote learning with students. They interviewed our very own Andrew Jarboe, AP US History teacher at Match High School, who stressed Match’s focus on maintaining connections with students.
“The first week after the school building closed its doors, the faculty rushed to establish contact virtually with students and families, making sure they were ready for the new learning environment and handing out Chromebooks if they needed them. Academics were secondary to connecting with kids, and rightly so.”
Click here to read the full article.
The founder of Match, Mike Goldstein, and the Dean of Sposato Graduate School Education, Scott McCue, wrote a piece for Education Next about Sposato’s unique income share agreements for its master’s candidates, which shift the risk away from students and create more transparency in the tuition process.
“In 2011, we were opening a brand-new graduate school of education. Ours was the typical start-up problem. We had no track record. Why should customers—recent grads from selective colleges who wanted to become schoolteachers—choose us? What was our competitive advantage? We were willing to live or die on job placement. We believed we could generate teachers that principals would really want to hire, and that our graduates would get multiple job offers in springtime. So why not finance things differently?”
Click here for the full article.
Andrew Jarboe, the AP US History teacher at Match High School, authored a guest blog for Education Post in which he describes how and why he started a British Parliamentary Debate League for Boston public charter high schools. He notes, “The skills kids learn from debate—public speaking, critical thinking, forming logical arguments, creativity, confidence—are important, if not necessary, for every facet of their lives.”
Click here to read the full post.
The Match Foundation, Inc., part of Match Education, has been awarded a competitive AmeriCorps grant for the fifth consecutive year by the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), the federal agency for volunteering and service. During the 2019-2020 school year, Match Education will oversee 45 AmeriCorps members who will serve full-time in Match Charter Public School in Boston and in Baltimore Collegiate School for Boys in Baltimore. In the last four years that Match Education has partnered with CNCS, AmeriCorps members have tutored over 2,700 economically disadvantaged students in Boston, New Orleans, the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle and Baltimore.
Click here to read the full press release.
Today Claire Kaplan, the Executive Director of Match Export, published a guest post on The Charter Blog from the National Alliance for Charter Public Schools. In the post, Claire discusses the early success of Match Fishtank, our open-source curriculum website which has been widely accessed by nearly 500k educators across the country from both charter and district schools. She also notes that “by investing in sharing our curriculum we are working to fulfill one of the original goals of the charter school movement—to create schools that serve as laboratories of innovation to help identify and spread best practices across the larger education system.”
Click here to read the blog post.
On February 14th, Boston’s WCVB 5 News team visited Match Community Day to see the amazing work of the ForsythKids program that “works with schools and community partners to make certain it is easy for children and their families to get high quality dental care.” The story was featured in WCVB’s 5 for Good Series on February 28th during the evening news segment.
Click here to watch the video on Channel 5’s site, and click here to read the scripted version on Match’s site.
In mid January, a group of Match High School juniors traveled to Maine to visit and learn from the internationally ranked Bates debate team, the Brooks Quimby Debate Council. The day started off with workshops and partner practice, and then students got to test their new skills in two rounds of British Parliamentary Style debate. All of the students who participated hope that this trip will mark the start of a robust debate program at Match High School.
Click here to read the article.
About 1 in 8 public school teachers leave their jobs in Massachusetts every year. Among charter schools, that number is even higher. WBUR recently did a story on the innovation ways Massachusetts charter schools are trying to retain their teachers in response to teacher feedback. Match Charter Public School was featured.
Click here to read the full article.
