Morrissey-Compton Educational Center

“It broke my heart when my daughter would tell me she didn’t like school and that she was ‘stupid.’ Two years later, she is changed and engaged in class, confident and eager to learn—she even received an ‘Honor Roll Award!’ She wouldn’t be where she is without the help of Morrissey-Compton. I am so thankful for your work. Please continue to shine your light on other children and make a difference in their lives.”

—Parent/Morrissey-Compton Scholarship Recipient

Mission: To enable children and adults with learning disabilities and school-related difficulties to achieve their goals by providing the highest quality diagnostic and intervention services in a supportive environment.

How Your Gift Helps: Morrissey-Compton is committed to helping every person who needs our services, regardless of ability to pay. Gifts directly fund the full and partial scholarships we offer for these services, including: 

• Evaluations
• Tutoring
• Psychotherapy
• Challenge Summer School
• Social Skills Groups for Kids
• Advocacy/Parent Coaching

Gifts also enable us to offer Free Parent Education Classes and fund cutting-edge research in the field of executive function.

History

Morrissey-Compton Educational Center (MCEC) is a multidisciplinary clinic designed to address the broad needs of individuals with learning differences, attention difficulties, and emotional challenges.

Patricia Morrissey, EdD.and Carolyn Compton, PhD founded MCEC in 1982 in Palo Alto, CA. Their vision was to develop an organization that could provide tutoring, summer school, and diagnostic services for students with learning differences.

Today, MCEC’s staff has grown to almost 30 highly-trained psychologists and educational specialists. John Brentar, PhD, a licensed psychologist with significant experience in the field of learning differences, is executive director. In 2011, MCEC opened a satellite clinic in Half Moon Bay to address the significant unmet needs of students on the coast. MCEC relocated its main office to Redwood City in May, 2014.

Challenge Summer School

Challenge School is a unique program for students with learning challenges in grades K-6. Its goals are to maintain academic skills over the summer; foster self-esteem and academic confidence; and teach alternative strategies for reading, writing, math, and organization. Learning happens using a fun, theme-based curriculum, and every student receives high-quality, individualized attention and prep for the following school year.

Help for Latino Families

MCEC founded the Latino Families Outreach Program in 2014 to help Spanish-speaking individuals with learning differences, particularly in Half Moon Bay and surrounding coastal areas, where many parents are farm workers who speak little or no English. Since then, dozens of students and parents have been grateful to get the help they need to thrive in school and advocate for their children. MCEC is committed to continuing to help those who have started receiving tutoring, parent education, and other services through the program, but finding new means of ongoing support will be key to its continued success.

Research

Executive Function (EF) is an umbrella term for processes in the brain responsible for regulating thoughts, emotions, and behavior, including working memory, cognitive flexibility, prioritizing, organization, planning, and self-monitoring. MCEC’s EF Research Program is designed to address the growing needs of students with EF challenges and general learning differences, with four goals: to investigate EF in students; create cutting-edge information for professionals; provide help for families and education for parents; and build teacher-training programs in schools.

Community

Since 1999, MCEC has provided educational advocacy through contracts with the Santa Clara County Departments of Juvenile Probation and Child and Family Services. MCEC’s consultants work with attorneys, social workers, probation officers, and teachers to ensure that foster children and youths in the juvenile justice system are enrolled in and attending school and receiving an appropriate education plan. This program helps over 400 foster or adjudicated youth each year.

MCEC also provides educational and other consultation services to Synapse School, an independent elementary and middle school, and two of its clinicians serve on an interdisciplinary team providing developmental and behavioral health care for children in the Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics Clinic at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital.