Executive Director's Message

To our education partners and friends,

2009 was a full and exciting year, yielding major advances in education initiatives within the shared platform of E3 and the Oregon Business Council. By focusing on programs where we make a unique contribution, we helped move Oregon’s education agenda forward on several fronts. Highlights of the year are captured in E3’s 2009 Annual Report, with a brief recap below.

The Oregon Small Schools Initiative, led by E3 since the program’s inception in 2003, is the largest high school reform demonstration project in Oregon’s history. It is producing results that are very encouraging, especially so for low income students where their rates for meeting or exceeding state benchmarks in math and reading more than doubled since 2004-05. Through the innovation, collaboration and hard work of teachers and leaders at Initiative high schools, we are witnessing how the achievement gap can, in fact, be closed. ECONorthwest recently completed an analysis of small school performance from 2004-2009. Read the March 2010 report here.

Partnership for Student Success concluded in 2009, its seventh year, on a high note  as Salem-Keizer’s program was honored with the Governor’s Volunteer Award in the Outstanding Volunteer Program category. That 11 of the original 14 partnerships are continuing as self-sustaining programs speaks to the value  communities place on having local employers and educators work together to solve issues specific to a school district.

To support Oregon’s Career Readiness Certificate program, we have been working with the Oregon Department of Community Colleges and Workforce Development on its upcoming statewide launch. Dozens of employers are early adopters to augment their hiring, training and promotion practices. Others will be hearing much more in 2010.

Based on the data we use to measure progress, we made significant headway in 2009 toward E3’s mission to improve student learning and achievement. Our success, however, is never a sole accomplishment. We rely on the involvement of business and education partners to help us identify the right issues to address, and then to commit their time, ideas and resources to help us address them. We thank you for your support, and look forward to continued collaboration in the years to come.

Regards,

Duncan Wyse
Executive Director, E3: Employers for Education Excellence
President, Oregon Business Council

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