March 6, 2012, Boston. Today, the Massachusett's Board of Higher Educaiton approved Match Education to form the Charlie Sposato Graduate School of Education.

The graduate school is the first such institution created in Massachusetts in several decades. It will carry the name of Charlie Sposato, in memory of the master teacher who taught 33 years in the Framingham Public Schools before becoming Match's founding principal in 2000.

The graduate school will grant a new degree called a Master in Effective Teaching (MET). The training is exhausting and uncompromising. To get the MET, teachers must do more than excel in coursework. They must also succeed during their first year as actual full-time teachers. During this rookie year, degree candidates will be evaluated based on several metrics -- including student achievement gains and neutral outside observers. Holding graduate students accountable for success in the actual classroom is unprecedented in Massachusetts.

The teaching faculty at the graduate school is comprised mainly of master teachers who have become principals in some of the nation's best charter and district turnaround schools.

The goal of the graduate school is to prepare jaw-droppingly good rookie teachers for urban charter and district turnaround schools -- folks who are so effective that they defy common perceptions of what level of success is possible for brand new teachers.

The graduate school will collaborate with other institutions which prepare teachers. They include several Boston area graduate schools of education as well as Boston Teacher Residency, as well as cutting edge groups nationally like the University of Michigan, Relay Graduate School of Education, and Teach For America.