July 18, 2008 "Promoting parent, business and community involvement in our schools"

Our Work

The Portland Education Partnership and the Portland public schools form a unique partnership to support an important mission - enriching student learning and building support for the Portland public schools by promoting opportunities for parent, business and community involvement.

We believe that students are more successful when they are supported in their learning by their parents and their community. Innumerable studies cite the importance of family and community involvement to ensure student achievement:

The challenges that students in America's public schools face cannot be solved by educators alone; nor can these problems be solved by parents or families alone. Students in schools across this nation are confronted by critical social, emotional and environmental problems. More collaboration between the school and home will need to be focused on dealing with these problems. (Drake, D.D., 2000. "Collaboration for the success of students in public schools" ERS Spectrum, 34-35)

We enact our mission by providing students with relevant, community-based learning experiences - we work with teachers to bring our students into the community, and bring the community into our classrooms.