Research & Insights / William E. Carter School: A 2026 School on the Move Semifinalist

William E. Carter School: A 2026 School on the Move Semifinalist

The ten semifinalists for the 2026 School on the Move Prize are excellent examples of the conditions of sustainable school improvement EdVestors’ research has identified. Please join us at the Prize Ceremony on November 10th!

The William E. Carter School in Back Bay provides specialized education for up to sixty students with significant cognitive disabilities and complex medical needs, from early childhood through young adulthood. The Carter has undergone a fundamental transformation by shifting from a medical care model to a rigorous academic framework specifically designed for students with significant disabilities.

The Carter School’s students with the most severe disabilities have been systemically excluded from access to conventional literacy instruction due to the prevailing belief that complex physical and cognitive disabilities preclude achievement in academic reading and writing. The Carter prioritized connecting students to augmentative communication systems (AACs) and adopting research-backed, emergent literacy routines school-wide. This shift has empowered non-speaking learners to gain linguistic agency and participate in complex instruction. To do this, the Carter has connected more students to insurance-approved AAC devices and executed a multi-year plan to transition from disconnected, discrete tasks to an intensive, 120-minute daily emergent literacy framework.

In 2023, data revealed that Carter’s Multilingual Learners were progressing more slowly than their peers from English-dominant households. Recognizing that traditional materials were not designed to navigate the complex, simultaneous intersections of profound cognitive or physical disabilities, nonspeaking augmentative communication, and multilingual acquisition, the Carter partnered with Dr. Gloria Soto to study these intersections. This resulted in the development and use of the Carter School Learning Map, an instructional planning tool that ensures every lesson plan is universally accessible, culturally responsive, and explicitly scaffolded for language differences and sensory needs. Implementation of the Learning Maps closed performance gaps between MLs and English-dominant peers on the Adapted Bridge Assessment. The work has also accelerated the acquisition of core vocabulary and skill generalization.

Beyond its own classrooms, the Carter has worked with the BPS Telescope Network to build a strong, growing professional learning community, sharing its specialized strategies and techniques with educators across the district. The PLC grew from 25 to over 300 educators in a two-year period. Building on this momentum, the Carter secured a 12-hour course specifically designed to equip educators with the tools needed to teach students with the most complex needs. Course participants have reported a 4.8 out of 5 satisfaction rating for the training's direct relevance to their day-to-day jobs.