A Brief History of Business Involvement in School Reform
A weak economy initially aroused corporate America’s latest interest in education.
The business community has been working to play a more active and long-term role in education since the early 1980s, when the United States faced a crisis in productivity and international competition" (Mickelson 1999).
The Slumping 1980s
The U.S. Department of Education’s seminal 1983 report A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Education Reform helped to tie the fate of business to the cause of school reform. The report "was born in the deep economic recession of the early 1980s, at a time when U.S. business leaders were seeing their global market share disappear into the hands of foreign competitors," observed John Bonstingl (2001), president of the Center for Schools of Quality and chair of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development’s Quality Education Network. The report pointed to mediocre educational performance as the root cause of the nation’s economic crisis:
Our Nation is at risk. Our once unchallenged preeminence in commerce, industry, science, and technological innovation is being overtaken by competitors throughout the world. This report is concerned with only one of the many causes and dimensions of the problem, but it is the one that undergirds American prosperity, security, and civility. The educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people. If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. (U.S. Department of Education 1983)
This perception was echoed by former Secretary of Education Lauro Cavazos, "who observed in 1989 that the U.S. faced three deficits–the budget, trade, and education deficits–and that the first two would only be remedied after the last one was resolved" (Mickelson 1999).
The business critique of education was intensified and strengthened during the Reagan and senior Bush Administrations, which "embraced both market principles and the precept that privatization is the antidote to flawed, inefficient governmental bureaucracies" (Mickelson 1999).
In 1989, "business leaders indirectly shaped the course and direction of school reform through their pivotal role in the first National Education Summit" (Mickelson 1999).
The Booming 1990s
The focus of the business critique shifted, however, when the economy showed signs of improving. "In the early 1990s, the business press began to report that the U.S. economy had regained its position as the most productive in the world" (Mickelson 1999). Business leaders then began to emphasize the need to prepare students for high-tech jobs. "Critics claim that public schools are failing to prepare students for future information-age jobs that will require advanced knowledge of technology" (Mickelson 1999).
The business community’s response to the demands of the new economy included an effort to transform the schools that produce their domestic supply of workers. Thomas Petri, vice chair of the U.S. Committee on Education and the Workforce, observed at the 1999 hearing:
In recent years there has been increased interest on the part of the business community in the area of education reform. Because the quality of the U.S. educational system has a direct impact on the skills of American workers, and ultimately on the ability of American businesses to compete, both domestically and internationally, this has become an issue of economics, as well as of social concern. (U.S. CEW 1999)
Throughout the 1990s, business leaders had to deal with a "corporate environment that has been likened to turbulent, white-water rapids" (Mickelson 1999). Mickelson identified three critical features of this "fierce environment":
- Intense globalization that demands both national and international competitiveness.
- The growing, changing diversity of the modern work force.
- The technological revolution that sets the stage for an information- and communication-driven economy.
These three factors continue to affect the economic stability of the United States and the rest of the world and to further American business’s interest in education.
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