New York, NY
Chief Executive Officer: Anne Eidelman
Blue Engine is a New York City-based education nonprofit founded in 2010 to dramatically improve academic achievement for students in historically oppressed communities. Blue Engine partners with public high schools and brings together teams of teachers to restructure the traditional classroom and provide a more personalized learning experience that enables students to thrive.
“PropelNext helped us to ask the right questions around what we do and how we do it, empowering our team to strategically and thoughtfully develop our program.”
– Nick Ehrmann, Founder & President, Blue Engine
Blue Engine’s team teaching approach embeds trained teams of educators in a single classroom, shifting the teacher-to-student ratio from 1:30 to 1:6. The organization recruits, trains and supports Blue Engine Teaching Apprentices (BETAs) to work closely with certified lead teachers in 8th, 9th and 10th grade math and English classrooms. Harnessing the power of teams and collaboration, Blue Engine’s approach creates a more personalized and engaging classroom experience by fostering the learning conditions that empower all students to be seen and heard.
Blue Engine tracks test scores at its partner schools as a measure of impact. In September 2012, 109 students at three Blue Engine partner schools were expected to score at college ready levels on New York State Regents Exams in Algebra, Geometry, and English Language Arts. By summer 2013, 175 students actually did a 61 percent increase over the previous year.
Watch Founder & President Nick Ehrmann talk about his organization’s experiences.