Oregon’s Education System Has a Leadership Vacuum. We Built a Coalition to Fill It.

By Christine Pitts

There’s something happening in Oregon’s public education system right now that doesn’t get talked about enough.

It’s not the budget deficits, though those are real. It’s not the declining test scores, though those are alarming. It’s not the lack of instructional time, though that is shrinking.

It’s the absence of anyone willing to say, clearly and without flinching: our kids deserve a higher-quality public education, we need to change how we make decisions about their education and our spending, and, while this work is difficult, it is straightforward.

That’s the clear gap that Champions for Oregon Kids is stepping into.

Want to see the full vision? Take a look at our founding deck here. 

Why I built this

Since the Portland teacher strike in 2023, I’ve been listening to individuals reaching out to me.

I’ve been hearing from families who feel like they’re invited to engage only after decisions have already been made. From our youngest, most diverse teachers who love teaching but feel unsupported and alienated by a policy landscape that feels more political than pedagogical. From business leaders who care deeply about workforce and economic development but feel talked at rather than genuinely included in the infrastructure that underlies the prosperity of our state.

Again and again, I heard the same thing: Why isn’t anyone talking about this? We want honest conversations. Where is the clear, grounded data to help us see what is true? What are we really focusing on during the school day? Are we doing what the evidence says actually works for kids — not more performative engagement that lowers the bar and removes students’ empowered learning?

So, we built something new.

Champions for Oregon Kids, or Open Champions, is a cross-sector coalition — bipartisan, community-grounded, and unapologetically focused on our children’s outcomes and families’ economic mobility. We are organizing for quality education in Oregon by bringing together three groups who are too often excluded from Oregon’s education policy tables: families, educators, and business leaders.

What we’re building

The Open Champions initiative is not here to do incremental change or tinkering around the edges — the advocacy infrastructure it is building intends to create a new table of power and fresh spaces for those interested to learn together, engage in candid, bipartisan dialogue, and advocate for durable policy influence.

In this foundational year, we’re doing three things:

First, we are commissioning the Oregon Education by the Numbers Data Book — a statewide resource that surfaces the results that our system is or is not achieving across our state, including gaps in equitable opportunities to learn, academic outcomes, and system performance data in a form that families, educators, legislators, and business leaders can actually use. We want everyone in the room reading from the same page — no more politicized sources of truth.

Second, we’re convening three steering committees — one for families, one for educators (especially those who are least senior and most diverse), and one for business and community leaders who see the connection between our economy and our public schools — to dig into that data together, name what quality education actually means from their perspective, and shape a community-informed policy agenda for Oregon’s 2027 legislative session.

Third, we held our first Advisory Council meeting this month. People who don’t usually sit in the same room — and who found they were all seeing the same challenges — showed up and started building the kind of cross-sector trust that policy change actually requires.

• “A dozen-plus states are passing us by and they can’t all be explained away.” — John Tapogna, Oregon Business Council
• “Oregon has chosen adult comfort over students’ right to an education.” — Angela Uherbelau, Oregon Kids Read
• “Businesses evaluating Oregon for relocation look at school quality first. I’m exhausted by ‘which side are you on’ — we need to be on the side of our kids.” — Kimberly Branam, Port of Portland

Our Advisory Council

Open Champions, at the highest level, is guided by a cross-sector Advisory Council whose members ensure coherence across our steering committees, synthesize learning from data walks and listening sessions, and affirm our final community-informed policy agenda.

We are honored to be joined by:

Shastina Young (Xenium HR), Jazmine Reese (Realtor), Mary Nesmith (Portland Public Schools), Bahia Overton (Black Parent Initiative), Andrea Gilbert (The Standard), Aryn Frazier (Center for Black Excellence), Anna Williams (Open School), LeKisha Moore (Open School), Robert Johnson (Open School), Angela Uherbelau (Oregon Kids Read), Kamesha Robinson (Providence Health), Corky Collier (Columbia Corridor Association), Kimberly Branam (Port of Portland), and John Tapogna (Oregon Business Council).

This work is made possible with intellectual partnership and policy support from the National Parents Union, and with guidance from Educators for Excellence and the Bipartisan Policy Center.

What Oregon needs right now

When you control for demographics, Oregon ranks at or near the bottom of the country on NAEP academic outcomes. But the numbers behind that ranking tell a more specific story:

• Between 2018 and 2025, Oregon added roughly 11,000 adults to the school system while 65,000 students left. Per-pupil spending rose 40%. Teacher pay rose 6%.
• Oregon’s 81% graduation rate sounds like progress. Only 25% of those graduates ultimately earn a postsecondary credential.
• The state tells families that 45% of 4th graders are reading proficiently. The national assessment says 32%. For math, the state says 38% — the national assessment says 1 in 5.

This is not a funding problem. It is a leadership, coherence, and accountability problem.

For decades, the Oregon Department of Education has struggled to lead with the clarity and urgency this moment demands. And advocacy organizations — including ones I’ve worked alongside — have too often mistaken political safety for transformative change.

What families, educators, and business leaders are asking for is not complicated: clear data, an honest table, and a real opportunity to shape the system their children and employees depend on — immediately.

Open Champions is that table, and we are acting with clarity and urgency.

Here’s how you can be part of it

We are actively building our steering committees — and we want you to join our learning series over the next nine months.

If you are a family member or caregiver who is ready to move beyond being consulted and into genuinely shaping Oregon education policy — we want you at the table.

If you are a teacher, new educator, or educator of color who believes your expertise and lived experience should drive policy, not just inform it — we want you at the table.

If you are a business leader who understands that Oregon’s economic future depends on an education system that works for every kid — we want you at the table.

Sign up to join a steering committee

This is a nine-month commitment. We’ll meet regularly in person and online, visit school sites, work through data together, learn from Oregon policymakers and national experts, and co-create a policy agenda we can actually take to the Capitol.

Participation support can be available — transportation, childcare, food, and interpretation — because we mean it when we say everyone belongs here.

A note on the name

While formally the coalition is called Champions for Oregon Kids, we are calling our community Open Champions because the word “open” has always meant something specific in Portland’s education history.

It’s the word that names our organization — our legacy of creating safe places for underestimated children to learn, going back to the 1970s. We’ve carried this ethos for nearly 55 years. We’ve always been open to students who’ve been pushed out, open to ideas that challenge the status quo, open to the uncomfortable truth that our system is failing too many kids, and open to designing schools reinvented – for the future of learning.

Champions because this moment calls for people willing to hope and fight for something. Not a single party. Not a single political brand. We are fighting for a generation of kids who deserve a system that sees them and serves them well as brilliant, empowered youth.

We’re just getting started. I hope you’ll join us.

Sign up to join our steering committee.

Read our founding deck – the vision, data, and coalition structure behind Open Champions.

Explore our reading list – the research grounding our work. 

Subscribe to the Oregon Journalism Project – urgent, independent education reporting in Oregon.