Toby N. Romer has served in numerous roles in the Boston Public Schools (BPS) over the past 15 years, including teacher, headmaster, assistant headmaster, coach, and teacher leader. He is currently part of the leadership team at the Orchard Gardens K-8 School, one of Boston's turnaround schools, where he serves as Director of Professional Development and Data Inquiry. Prior to his current role, he supported teachers' and school leaders' efforts to improve the achievement of struggling students in four BPS schools as a facilitator for the Accelerating Improvement through Inquiry (AI2) initiative, a grant from the Carnegie Corporation run by the BPS and the Boston Plan for Excellence.
From 2004 to 2009, he served as headmaster of Brighton High School, a large, diverse Boston high school. At Brighton High, he led the re-organization of the school's small learning communities, created extended learning time, focused resources on struggling learners, fostered community partnerships, and actively developed teacher leadership structures. Under his tenure, the school was recognized by the MassInsight Institute as a Vanguard School, selected as a BPS Strategic Practice and Effective Practice School, and named as one of the top 1500 high schools in the nation by US News and World Report. He has taught Spanish, Social studies, English as a second language, and Mathematics in various schools and programs in Boston. He holds an A.B. in Social Studies and Education and an M.Ed. in School Administration from Harvard University.
Mr. Romer gave SERP two interviews about aspects of internal coherence from his perspective. The first interview was prior to the administration on the ICAP survey at Orchard Gardens. The second interview is near the close of the school year.