Boston Opportunity Agenda

The Boston Opportunity Agenda (BOA) is a public/private partnership comprising the City of Boston, the Boston Public Schools, the city’s leading public charities and many local foundations to ensure that all Boston residents have access to the education necessary for upward economic mobility, civic engagement and lifelong learning for themselves and their families.

Goals and Benchmarks

The Boston Opportunity Agenda has set goals and benchmarks to track the health of our educational systems. Working with Boston Indicators and the Boston Public Schools Office of Data and Accountability, the BOA annually publishes a report card detailing progress against the goals using data from the Boston Public Schools, the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, and the Archdiocese of Boston.

The Boston Opportunity Agenda Approach

The Boston Opportunity Agenda is led by Interim Executive Director Elizabeth Walczak, and governed by the CEOs of each member organization who identify important issues facing our educational pipeline in whole or in part, formulate the Boston Opportunity Agenda priorities and strategies, and provide a call to action for community stakeholders.
 
Our partnership is driven by three principles:

1. Keeping key performance measures in public view is critical to driving change.
   Accurate and timely data is both a call to action and an accountability mechanism. We hold ourselves accountable for the change we wish to see by regularly reporting progress on key metrics. Through our annual report card, forums, evaluations and community dialogues, we aim to educate ourselves and the Greater Boston community about our challenges, progress and collective impact.
2. Our investments must produce immediate gains and long-term system change.
   Boston Opportunity Agenda investments are designed to expedite positive educational outcomes for underserved individuals currently in the education pipeline and to use the continuous learning from those investments to make policy and funding recommendations that will generate large-scale system change.
3. Collective impact is required to achieve our goals.
   Only by mobilizing the nonprofit, philanthropic, business and governmental communities to align resources and increase efficiency and effectiveness will we ensure the overall success of Boston’s educational pipeline.
    

Priority Initiatives

Our investments focus on building networks and delivery systems rather than increasing the capacity of a single organization or program. Across the educational pipeline, we set goals and consider investments in these areas:

• A Strong Educational Foundation
• On Track for High School Graduation
• High School Graduation
• Postsecondary Attainment
• Adult Learners

Since 2014 BOA’s work has focused not only Boston Public Schools, but also Catholic and Charter schools located in Boston.

Our latest piece of work is to define college and career readiness for Boston. We will set a citywide goal with leading and lagging indicators so that we can reach a better understanding of the skills, attributes and knowledge our young people must possess when they exit K-12 and pursue their postsecondary path.

To learn more about the Boston Opportunity Agenda, its partners and priorities, visit bostonopportunityagenda.org.