News Releases

March 8, 2006

Antioch Selects Native American Youth and Family Center as New Grant Recipient

Seattle — Antioch University Seattle has selected Portland, Oregon’s Native American Youth and Family Center (NAYA) to receive an Early College High School award. NAYA will co-develop the new school with the Portland Public School District, Portland Community College-Cascade Campus, the city’s Native community and Antioch to create an Early College High School.

Early college schools blend high school diploma and associates of arts degree requirements so that students may earn up to a diploma and A.A. degree concurrently. While Native students are the focus of this initiative in Multnomah County, other underserved Portland Public Schools students also may access this school.

NAYA is the tenth grantee of Antioch’s national Early College High School for Native Youth Initiative, which seeks to better serve Native American students — students with the highest dropout rates and lowest college completion rates of any ethnic group in the country. Only about half of Native American students graduate from high school; of those, less than three percent will earn a bachelor's degree.

NAYA joins nine other schools in the early college initiative. The other grantees are:

  • La Conner Early College High School in Skagit Valley, WA
  • Medicine Wheel Academy in Spokane, WA
  • Ferndale Early College High School in Ferndale, WA
  • Tulalip Heritage Early College High School in Marysville, WA
  • Wellpinit Early College High School on the Spokane Indian Reservation, WA
  • Suquamish Tribe’s Early College High School on the Port Madison Indian Reservation, WA
  • Shelton Early College High School in Shelton, WA
  • Klamath River Early College of the Redwoods in Klamath, CA
  • Siletz Valley Early College Academy in Siletz, OR

"Each school will feature a local, culturally relevant curriculum, integrate high school diploma and associate of arts degree requirements, promote family and community engagement, and provide academic advising. In addition, the schools will offer these services to students in their local communities, which should increase their chance of success," explains Linda Campbell, Ph.D., executive director and core faculty member at Antioch University Seattle.

The schools are part of a multi-year, $120 million initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Ford Foundation to create or redesign over 170 Early College High Schools for underserved and low-income young people and communities.

Antioch chooses its sites based on a written grant application and site visit. Each site demonstrated strengths that suggest future success at implementing early colleges, including:

  • small school size and personalized student support
  • academic programs that integrate local Native American culture
  • extensive family and community outreach
  • partnerships with tribal or community colleges

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation identified Antioch University Seattle in March 2002 to participate in the Early College High School Initiative. Antioch has successfully worked with tribal communities in the state, especially in its graduate and undergraduate education programs. In addition to offering reservation-based degree programs, Antioch University has a 150-year history of working to increase educational access for historically underserved populations.

Primary responsibility for designing and operating the 170 Early College High Schools across the nation rests with 12 partner organizations, coordinated by Jobs for the Future (JFF). In addition to Antioch University Seattle and JFF, they are: City University of New York, Foundation for California Community Colleges, Georgia Department of Education and the University System of Georgia, KnowledgeWorks Foundation, Middle College National Consortium, National Council of La Raza, Portland Community College’s Gateway to College, Utah Partnership Foundation, Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, and SECME, Inc. For more information about these partners and the Early College High School Initiative, visit www.earlycolleges.org.

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