History of CEI
CEI carries forward the history of two respected public education organizations that merged in 2000: The Center for Educational Innovation, established in 1989 as a component of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, and the Public Education Association, founded in 1985 to work for systemic and sustainable reform of the city’s public school system.
Below is a timeline with key milestones from the past two decades of CEI’s history in public school reform, including CEI’s role as a Partnership Support Organization (PSO), Educational Partnership Organization (EPO), and its status as a qualified New York State independent receiver:
1994 – CEI became a founding partner in the Annenburg Challenge grant to create small public schools and networks among New York City schools.
1997 – CEI established the School Leadership Academy under the direction of Dr. Lorraine Monroe to develop and train in-service principals.
1998 – CEI established the first charter school resource center in New York State
2000 – CEI merged with the Public Education Association to form the “Center for Educational Innovation – Public Education Association” (CEI-PEA).
2003 – CEI-PEA launched Project BOOST to provide academic, social, and cultural enrichment to under-resourced fourth through eighth-grade students with the ultimate goal of helping them gain admission to quality high schools.
2004 – CEI-PEA launched an initiative to develop public school choice programs in five major cities across the United States through a multi-year grant from the United States Department of Education.
2007 – CEI-PEA was selected as a Partnership Support Organization (PSO) for New York City public schools and was awarded a $10.5 million federal Teacher Incentive Fund grant to launch PICCS: Partnership for Innovation and Collaboration for Charter Schools, to provide human capital management support, data use, professional development, intra and inter-school collaboration for teachers and leaders, and social and emotional learning support systems.
2008 – CEI-PEA launched 21st Century Community Learning Center programs with three New York City public schools.
2010 – The number of schools selecting CEI-PEA as their Partnership Support Organization rose to 118. CEI expanded to 13 new charter schools in New York City and Buffalo with $17.5 million in federal Teacher Incentive Fund grants. In addition, a national network of Independent Charter Schools was launched with a $2 million federal grant.
2012 – CEI-PEA expanded the PICCS project to 12 new charter schools in New York and New Jersey with $18 million in federal Teacher Incentive Fund grants.
2013 – CEI-PEA received funding to expand arts programming into more than 160 New York City public schools and launched the Franklin Covey Leader in Me program to improve learning environments in public schools. CEI-PEA received its first of two New York Charter Dissmination Grants sharing best practices between Hellenic Classical Charter School and public district schools in Queens and Brooklyn, focusing on implementing an early literacy program.
2014 – 207 schools selected CEI-PEA as their Partnership Support Organization, making our PSO equivalent to the sixth largest public-school system in the United States.
2015 – The organization shortened its name back to “Center for Educational Innovation” (“CEI”).
2017 – CEI launched new initiatives in personalized learning and social-emotional learning to support the many schools in its networks to transform the 21st-century learner.
2018 – CEI qualified as an independent receiver for consistently low-performing schools needing turnaround services, taking the organization back to its core mission of creating quality educational opportunities for all students. In addition, CEI presented its 13th Annual Summer Leadership Institute, bringing together hundreds of public-school administrators for a day of state-of-the-art professional learning and sharing best practices.
2019 – CEI became an educational partner for Brooklyn’s Summit Academy Charter School for the five-year term of its renewal. CEI became an educational partner for the Collegiate Academy for Mathematics and Personal Awareness Charter School (CAMPA) in Brooklyn, New York.
2020 – CEI became an educational partner for Urban Choice Charter School in Rochester, New York. The school received a one year charter renewal and subsequent two year charter renewal term due to the partnership of CEI. CEI pivoted and created virtual and hybrid opportunities to support school leaders and school communities including virtual professional learning, virtual student tutoring, coding, robotics, and social action art and music, all of which improved student engagement.
2021 – CEI provided over 40 NYC Public Schools with Project BOOST enrichment services and Walls for Change, a social action art and mural project, as students prepared to return to school during the 2021 Summer Rising Program. CEI was awarded two multi-year contracts from the New York City Department of Education to lead two full service community schools.
2022 – CEI served over 150 NYC Public Schools with school transformation service, professional learning, mentoring and coaching for school leaders and teacher teams, and BOOST enrichment services including tutoring and coaching for students, Early Stages live theater program, robotics, coding, and eSports, as well as social action art with Benchmarks and Walls for Change, in partnership with our internationally known visiting artist, Domingo Zapata.