Opportunity Boston
Opportunity Boston (formerly the Boston Opportunity Agenda) 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.
Opportunity Boston has set goals and benchmarks to track the health of our educational systems. Working with Boston Indicators, the Boston Public Schools Office of Data and Accountability, and other partners, Opportunity Boston tracks 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 Opportunity Boston Approach
Opportunity Boston is led by Executive Director Ayesha Cammaerts, and governed by the CEOs of each member organization who identify important issues facing our educational pipeline in whole or in part, formulate the Opportunity Boston priorities and strategies, and provide a call to action for community stakeholders.
Our partnership is driven by three principles:
- 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. - Our investments must produce immediate gains and long-term system change.
Opportunity Boston 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. - 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. Opportunity Boston's core initiatives include:
- Birth to Eight Collaborative
- Boston Opportunity Youth Collaborative
- College, Career and Life Readiness
- Mattapan Neighborhood of Opportunity
- Success Boston
Since 2014, Opportunity Boston'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.