OVERVIEW

Over the past decade, CEI-PEA has advanced school and system-level reforms, including:

• Selected by 207 public schools to serve as their Partnership Support Organization in New York City’s new school system that allows principals to select their preferred support organization from within or outside of the school system.
• Awarded three Teacher Incentive Fund grants totaling almost $30 million to develop the Partnership for Innovation in Compensation for Charter Schools program with public charter schools in New York City and Buffalo.
• Launched the Network of Independent Charter Schools to support teachers, administrators and charter school trustees develop best practices and collaborate with one another and to help independent “mom and pop” charter schools succeed.
• Restructured more than 45 large schools into sets of smaller learning communities to increase accountability and accelerate student achievement.
• Created and developed more than 40 public charter schools by helping schools with applications, renewals, Board development, facilities development, and resource development.
• Developed a network of more than 220 public schools to identify and adapt best practices through inter-visitations, study groups, peer workshops, and conferences.
• Launched Project BOOST, a comprehensive after-school program that has led to increased admissions of mid-level performing middle school students into quality high schools.
• Partnered with four New York City middle schools to implement the ECASS: 21st Century Community Learning Centers. These Centers, which are funded through three-year 21st Century Community Learning Center grants from New York State, were established in 2008 and use an innovative plan to accelerate students’ academic progress and youth development.
• Created an assistant principal leadership development program to train and develop assistant principals to better support curriculum and instruction in their schools.
• Led a national public school choice program funded through a three-year grant from the United States Department of Education and implemented in major cities in the northeast and midwest.
• Helped launch school reforms in Argentina, Chile, Israel and Great Britain that adapt best practices from CEI-PEA’s work wtih U.S. urban school systems.
• Established online resources and communications tools for public schools, including www.indiecharterschools.org, which delivers blogs, message boards, information hotline, a resource library and videos of promising practices for independent charter schools as well as any educator interested in leading-edge practices in public education.

CEI-PEA is led by nationally-recognized educators who have all worked in public school systems as teachers, principals, superintendents and central administrators. CEI-PEA provides both direct technical assistance and network-based assistance to help improve the skills of teachers and school leaders, increase parent involvement, and channel cultural and academic intervention programs into public schools.