POLICE COMMISSIONERS who set specific crime reduction goals send powerful messages about results and accountability to both line officers and the public. In Boston, four major charitable organizations are taking the same tough approach with a $27 million plan to raise students’ test scores, increase high school graduation rates, and expand post-secondary attendance.
The Boston Opportunity Agenda, the brainchild of the city’s leading philanthropists, presents ambitious goals for 2014: raise the four-year high school graduation rate from the current 61 to 80 percent; quadruple the percentage of eighth graders who take Algebra I at non-exam schools; and ensure that 75 percent of preschoolers enter kindergarten with age-appropriate literacy skills, up from the current 54 percent.
Foundations nationwide are cutting checks only on the condition that recipients can measure results to the satisfaction of donors. It’s an especially positive development in early childhood education, after-school care, and other program areas that often get by with a good mission statement and strong enrollment statistics. Now grant recipients will have to prove that their programs actually work.
The overarching goal of the new initiative is “to make Boston a place defined by upward mobility,’’ according to Paul Grogan, president of the Boston Foundation. Other major partners include Catholic Charities, Combined Jewish Philanthropies, and the United Way. Grogan said it is the first time in the country that such charitable powerhouses have joined together to create an “education pipeline’’ that covers early childhood care to college.
The demands on the city’s students, such as proficiency on the state MCAS test, are high. Proficiency should also be required of the nonprofit programs that provide everything from preschool programs to college prep. The city’s most exacting funders are saying that talking a good game on education in Boston will no longer be enough.
