Location: Boston

Founded in 1985, ACCESS works to ensure that every young person has the financial information and resources necessary to find an affordable path to – and through – a postsecondary education.  To accomplish this mission, ACCESS provides free financial aid advice, advocacy and scholarship support to all the students of Boston and Springfield, Massachusetts to help them overcome the financial barriers to a college education.  Operating in 40 high schools and 12 leading community organizations in Boston and 10 high schools in Springfield, ACCESS provides students and parents with personalized, one on one financial aid assistance as they plan for and apply to college.  ACCESS’s expert financial aid advisors have helped students secure millions of dollars in financial aid - more than $105 million in financial aid in the last three years alone.  Since its inception, ACCESS has guided more than 45,000 students through the financial aid process and awarded more than $5 million in critical, need-based gap scholarships to more than 5,000 students while maintaining a 75% college graduation rate – more than twice the college graduation rate of the entire Boston Public Schools.

Location: Boston, MA

Teach Plus is an innovative new non-profit organization dedicated to retaining effective teachers in urban schools. To this end, Teach Plus seeks to amplify a new voice of outstanding, early career teachers who want to transform the teaching profession to reward, develop and retain excellent teachers.  Our goal is to both help these teachers become informed advocates for change and to incubate their innovative ideas for retaining teachers like them.  We also work with state, district and school leaders to implement policy reforms aimed at retaining effective teachers in urban classrooms.  Our core programs include the Teaching Policy Fellows Program (a two-year intensive Fellowship for early career teachers) and the T+ Network (a community of results-oriented teachers who want to actively engage in improving teacher effectiveness and retention).  More information about Teach Plus can be found on our website: http://www.teach-plus.org

Location: Boston, MA

The Edward W. Brooke Charter School is a K-8 charter school, whose mission is to prepare students to attend and succeed in college.  We are committed to closing the achievement gap in our country among low-income and minority students and believe that we can close that gap by cultivating powerful and effective teaching and learning environments.  We are committed to building schools where every element of the program is designed to ensure that great teaching can flourish.

Founded in 2002 and located in the Roslindale neighborhood of Boston, the Brooke School serves approximately 450 students in grades K-8.  Our students are predominantly minority (96% black and Latino) and low-income (72% qualify for free or reduced-price lunch).  For the past 4 years, Brooke students have consistently ranked among the top achieving students in the city and the state on the state-administered MCAS tests in reading and math and our graduates have gone on to attend highly-selective, college-preparatory private and public high schools, often with full academic scholarships.  On the 2009 MCAS, Brooke School 7th graders were the top performing school in the city on the 7th grade MCAS in both math and ELA, and in 7th grade math were the top performing school in the state of Massachusetts.