After nearly a year of planning and engagement, we are excited to announce the launch of Meyer’s newest portfolio, Equitable Education.

In early 2016, Meyer staff began engaging stakeholders across Oregon, including educators, education advocates, parents, community partners and former and current grantees. Much of what we heard came as no surprise: Oregonians are deeply passionate about education and the future of our state. However, despite the high value placed on education, Oregon’s public education system faces significant challenges that we believe present us with new opportunities for innovation, partnership and community participation.

A vision for Equitable Education in Oregon

Our vision for Equitable Education is that all students have an opportunity to access meaningful public education. We believe Equitable Education offers Oregon students an opportunity to realize their goals of increased academic achievement by removing the disparities at all levels of the education continuum: Students enter school ready to succeed, are reading at benchmark by third grade, are on track for graduation when they enter high school and graduate high school with a plan for postsecondary and career success.

In service to this vision, the Equitable Education portfolio will focus on three key goals.

• Build a unified movement to advance equitable education

• Create systems- and policy-level impact

• Improve student achievement and college and career readiness

Building a unified movement to advance Equitable Education

The underpinnings of any success is the collective mobilization of committed and unified individuals toward a common cause. Quality public education in Oregon is our promise to current and future generations. Improving student achievement, postsecondary completion and career readiness must occur throughout the state, not just in resourced pockets or single communities. Oregon faces deeply entrenched and complex education issues and requires thoughtful, community-based collaborative approaches to ensure all students have access to an excellent education.

Under this goal, Meyer will support a broad-based movement for equitable education that mobilizes the power and potential of students, families, communities and organizations toward unified action, meaningful change and education opportunity for all.

Creating systems- and policy-level impact

Public education institutions, policies and leaders are not meeting the educational needs of all students in Oregon and do not reflect the diversity of needs or the rich array of cultures and traditions that communities bring to support families and children. To create the system change needed at all institutional levels, Meyer will partner with communities and organizations to build the capacity to affect change by supporting initiatives that demonstrate potential for positive policy- and systems-level impact in Oregon’s public education system.

Improving Student Achievement and College and Career Readiness

Meyer seeks to keep student needs at the center of the Equitable Education portfolio’s focus, partnering with communities, organizations and institutions that build, expand and innovate to support student success. This goal also supports cross-sector collaborations between businesses, industry and employers and education and community-based organizations to prepare students for meaningful careers.

Meyer will invest in and support strategies and partnerships that improve Oregon student achievement at key benchmarks by prioritizing initiatives that eliminate disparities and close gaps in education opportunities and outcomes.

Our priorities

In a flourishing Oregon, Equitable Education means that each student — regardless of race, ethnicity, family income, geography, disability or language — has the opportunity to succeed in school.

Investments in the Equitable Education portfolio will reflect a mix of rural and urban grantees that offer, through an equity lens, a vision and approach to analyzing current disparities and directly addressing how to eliminate those disparities so that all students in Oregon have the opportunity to obtain a meaningful public education.

Investments will be targeted toward priority populations, including:

• Underserved communities of color

• English Language Learners (ELL)

• First-generation postsecondary students

• People living in poverty

• People with disabilities

In rural communities, the Equitable Education portfolio seeks to support projects designed to improve outcomes for priority student populations experiencing disparities in education opportunity and achievement.

In addition to targeting communities experiencing educational disparities, the Equitable Education portfolio will work to engage these communities, and the organizations and institutions that serve them, in convening, collaborating, decision-making and other portfolio-related activities.

Join us

The education opportunity gap in Oregon has persisted for too long. As the Equitable Education portfolio maintains Meyer’s 34-year tradition of aligning philanthropic investment with the capacity of local communities to address important issues, we are committed to removing barriers through partnership with communities and organizations committed to building meaningful public education for all students. We invite you to take a deeper look at our funding goals and strategies and consider joining us in this important work.

— Matt

Grantee StoriesNovember 8, 2016

Sleek, remodeled Earl Boyles Elementary — full of natural light, bright yellow walls, state-of-the-art courtyard play structures and technology-rich classrooms — stands at the corner of Southeast 112th  Avenue and Bush Street, in one of the poorest and most diverse sections of Portland.

Five years ago, median household income was $29,457 in the Earl Boyles enrollment zone, just 60 percent of the county median income of $49,049. More than a quarter of families primarily spoke a non-English language at home, and 24 percent of adults had not completed high school.

So, how did one of Oregon’s most-challenged elementary schools become a beacon of transformation?

The school’s statewide test ranking has skyrocketed from 8.3 percent in 2009 to 48.2 percent today. Attendance rates hover just below 100 percent. Students pour outside at the end of the school day, giggling excitedly to see Principal Ericka Guynes, Oregon’s 2013 Elementary Principal of the Year.

Wrap-around services and early learning opportunities for Earl Boyles students and their families stand as national models. So does its English-language learners programming and a slate of pre-K programming that helps families of young children connect with literacy and financial education classes, parenting tools and social services.

School district leaders, staff, volunteers, county programs and nonprofits connected with parents early and are sticking with them for the long haul. That recipe of partnership, especially programming designed around a community vision, is the secret of Earl Boyles’ success, and it offers hope for schools across the country.

As one Earl Boyles parent put it: “I never thought my children would have access to an education like this.”

Many people saw potential in Earl Boyles Elementary, including Swati Adarkar, president and co-founder of Portland’s Children’s Institute, a nonprofit that advocates for young children in Oregon. Adarkar has built a national reputation as a champion for early child care and education between birth and age 8. To Adarkar, the focus has real urgency because research shows that when kids — especially children from low-income families — don’t read at grade level by the third grade, their chances of graduating from high school plummet.

In 2008, only 65 percent of Oregon’s third-graders were reading at grade level, with much lower rates in poorer areas. And high school graduation rates place Oregon third from the bottom in national rankings.

Adarkar has spent the past few decades crisscrossing the country in search of successful early-engagement models that might work in Oregon.

It was on one trip to Chicago that she found true inspiration. There she met the leaders of Educare, which used funds from the Ounce of Prevention Fund to create a state-of-the-art school on Chicago’s South Side for low-income infants, toddlers, preschoolers and their families. Educare’s programs focus on literacy, language, early math and social-emotional skills, and staffers join with parents to help them become champions for their children’s education and achieve their education goals.

Adarkar called up then-David Douglas School District superintendent Don Grotting, a future Oregon superintendent of the year and student of early-intervention research. The superintendent immediately tapped Principal Guynes, who was making a name for herself as a then-new principal by translating forms into Spanish (a dominant language at Earl Boyles) and arranging caregiver get-togethers that transformed the school’s booster “club” of just one person into a thriving group.

They reached out to Portland State University’s Center for the Improvement of Child and Family Services to help design a program with the help of Earl Boyles’ families. They partnered with Mt. Hood Community College Head Start on how best to utilize their services. And they coordinated the onsite services of the Multnomah Early Childhood Program and the pre-existing Schools Uniting Neighborhoods (SUN) program at Earl Boyles by planning for more services and parent engagement.

Together, the team raised money, studied and planned for two years before hatching Early Works, a 10-year initiative at Earl Boyles with a focus on children ages 3-5. In 2012, the team took a big step forward by hiring a former migrant education recruiter, Andreina Velasco, as their first Early Works Parent & Community Engagement Coordinator based at Earl Boyles. A bilingual native of Venezuela, Reed College alum and young mother, Velasco had learned the hard way as a Portland Public Schools teacher that children often aren’t socially and emotionally prepared for school. For Velasco, Portland’s K-12 system wasn’t set up to help every child succeed. Early Works was a personal, direct approach to address the gap.

Velasco partnered with the SUN program and Portland State University to find names, phone numbers and addresses of families who might one day send students to Earl Boyles. She talked to children at the school about young siblings still at home. She went door to door, visiting their families so they knew her. Her work was especially important when the Early Works team embraced a bigger, tougher ambition: reaching families of newborns and toddlers. New brain and social science research showed that the earlier educators reached children and parents, the sooner children would be ready to learn — even before they were born. Soon, Early Works enrollment began to double, then triple, as engagement with families became deeper and more committed.

An onsite staffer, known as a Family Resource Navigator, began connecting families to various services, including Portland’s housing agency, Home Forward. Padres Unidos, which translates into Parents United, the school’s parent leadership group, is fully facilitated, managed and promoted by parent leaders. The group reviews Early Works evaluation data, and numerous caregivers have overcome English-language challenges to advocate for early learning by giving speeches and providing testimony across the state.

A $7 million voter-approved construction bond gave Early Works and Principal Guynes what they truly needed: More space for preschool and kindergarten classrooms and services at Earl Boyles. It also gave parents something they never expected: a beautiful place to connect in their own backyard.

The bond paid for half the expansion, while Multnomah County foundations, including Meyer Memorial Trust, and individuals provided the rest. Today, the Richard C. Alexander Early Learning Wing at Earl Boyles serves 90 3- and 4-year-olds in the Earl Boyles catchment area.

Connected to the Early Learning Wing is the Earl Boyles Neighborhood Center, which includes a lending library, family food pantry, meeting rooms for partner agencies and families, an infant-toddler room, and an adult learning classroom that provides parent education.

The school campus buzzes day and night.

Earlier this year, Meyer Memorial Trust surveyed Oregonians to share their experiences with and concerns about public education in this state. The response was overwhelming. Over 900 people shared enthusiastic, innovative visions for education and sobering stories about its challenges. Their feedback will help to shape Meyer’s new Equitable Education portfolio.

From educators to nonprofit leaders, from parents to lawmakers, their insights reflect a deeply committed, thoughtful community.

We found a similarly invested community during five listening sessions this summer, in Hermiston, Medford, Redmond, Salem and Portland. Our hosts were gracious and kind, sparking incisive, compelling dialogues about the state of education in Oregon.

Our primary takeaway from the discussions: Oregonians want their voices to be heard on education. They reminded us that too many communities, particularly those that are underserved and experience the greatest disparities, have been absent from statewide conversations on education. People we surveyed asked Meyer to play a unique role in partnering with community organizations to activate, amplify and elevate these voices into unified action toward meaningful and equitable education.

Respondents pressed Meyer to center our efforts on those communities that experience the greatest disparities in both access and opportunity. Reducing equity-related barriers in school and district policies, practices and culture emerged as most in need of improvement.

A vision for a statewide, youth-centered education system also emerged. We heard real passion for students to be able to successfully navigate through school, with full access to tools and supports they need. And there was consensus on the notion that students deserved to leave the education system with positive self-identities intact, ready to flourish and contribute to Oregon’s future.

Getting there will take work.

Participants highlighted a lack of wraparound services to support vulnerable students and families. Although schools are often seen as natural community centers, the absence of supporting services — from housing to mental health and from culturally specific enrichment to education transition — was widely seen as a missed opportunity to minimize barriers and increase overall well-being.

People told us they hope Meyer’s investments in equitable education result in youths building stronger connections to educators and finding relevance in their education experience. And they made clear their expectations of improved outcomes, such as smaller achievement gaps and increased graduation rates.

For many Oregonians, college preparation and access are crucial. For others, readiness to enter the workforce, via apprenticeship or certification programs, is essential to securing a family-wage job. We heard that both paths are necessary for Oregon to flourish, and both require innovative approaches focused on equity and inclusion.

We listened to understand. And what we learned made us thankful to serve a state so deeply committed to its future.

Meyer is grateful for the time and thoughtful insights we heard from survey and listening session participants. I’ve shared just a small portion of what we discovered: Every challenge and opportunity offered up has become another step toward our new, shared vision for equitable education in Oregon. As we work toward launching our Equitable Education portfolio in early 2017, we plan to keep listening and fine-tuning our collective vision.

I hope you’ll find the final survey and listening session report for the Equitable Education portfolio to be informative and thought-provoking.

— Matt

It's a pleasure to share the good news that Matt Morton has joined Meyer as Director of our new Equitable Education portfolio.

As we began the search for someone to direct our new Equitable Education Portfolio, we knew we were looking for someone with a proven history of leadership, someone who holds a deep understanding of equity and disparities across the education continuum, someone who could effectively sit at education policy tables and someone who has earned the respect of Oregon's nonprofit and public sectors. Matt Morton (Squaxin Island Tribe) hit the mark across the board!

Many of you know Matt through his leadership in the community, including his roles with several Meyer grantee organizations. Most recently, he served as Executive Director of the Native American Youth and Family Center (NAYA), which enriches the lives of youth and families through education, community involvement and culturally specific programming. Among NAYA’s many services are early childhood programming (including Head Start), K-12 academic and social supports, an early college academy and college and career services. Previously, Matt served as the Deputy Director for the National Indian Child Welfare Association (NICWA), an organization addressing issues of child abuse and neglect through training, research, public policy and grassroots community development. Meyer has long histories of supporting both of these organizations, and we have been impressed with Matt's vision and zest for change over our years of working with him.

Matt's career has centered on education. Elected to the Portland Public Schools Board in 2011, he recently completed a four-year term. He serves on the board of directors for All Hands Raised, a Meyer grantee that is a nonprofit-public-private partnership dedicated to ensuring equity and excellence in education for all children in six school districts in Multnomah County. Matt is also co-chair of both the Education Justice Committee of the Coalition of Communities of Color (another Meyer grantee) and the Eliminating Disparities in Child & Youth Success Collaborative of the Coalition and All Hands Raised.

In addition, Matt currently serves on Portland State University’s Graduate School of Education Advisory Council, Portland Community College’s President’s Advisory Council, the Oregon Department of Education‘s American Indian/Alaska Native Oregon Education State Plan Advisory Panel, the Center for Community-Initiated Research to Advance Racial Equity Advisory Council, and the Wells Fargo Community Advisory Board, among others. He also serves on the executive committee for the Coalition of Communities of Color.

In his spare time, Matt enjoys time with his seven-year-old son, Marcus, his wife, Courtaney, and their puppy, Penny June.

We couldn’t be happier to have Matt lead our fourth portfolio!

Please join me and Doug in giving Matt a warm welcome to Meyer!

— Candy

Since arriving in January, I’ve been focused on developing Meyer’s investment strategy to improve educational equity in Oregon. Now I’m hoping you will weigh in at Oregon’s Kitchen Table. The survey is available in both English and Spanish.

To Meyer, equitable education is defined as improving outcomes so that students of color, first-generation students and students living in poverty all achieve educational success. It also means identifying and reducing the disparities in how our most underserved students experience education. In early 2017, we will begin inviting organizations to submit proposals on educational equity; your input now will ensure that Meyer’s strategy represents the views, and articulates the needs, of stakeholders across Oregon.

It’s important to Meyer to have feedback about Oregonians’ values on equitable education. Meyer wants to hear from people at educational institutions, coordinating councils, school districts, early learning hubs, municipalities, institutions of higher education, government, foundation partners and other Oregonians who care about education. Your insights will help Meyer as we work to develop strategies that improve Oregon student achievement and close gaps in educational opportunities and outcomes.

Your feedback will be compiled by Oregon’s Kitchen Table, and all responses are anonymous. Following an inclusive engagement process with stakeholders, a summary report will be shared later this summer.

The last day to submit your feedback was Wednesday, May 25th.

Thank you in advance for participating in this process, and please don’t hesitate to contact us at questions [at] mmt.org (questions[at]mmt[dot]org) should you have any questions.

— Matt