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How Business Helps Shape Change in Education
Business leaders, by teaming up with education leaders, are furthering the goals of business while helping to provide reform, research, and resources for schools.
Through national organizations such as the Business Roundtable groups, the National Alliance of Business, the Education Excellence Partnership, the Business Coalition for Education Reform, the Committee for Economic Development, and chambers of commerce throughout the country, business leaders have been reaching out to education officials, policymakers, and the media to help shape the movement to reform educational goals and standards at local, regional, and national levels.
A report sponsored by the BellSouth Foundation stated:
Business involvement in education grew out of enlightened self-interest and, over the last two decades, has taken different forms. It has evolved from providing materials and volunteers to individual schools to concern about state education policy. Many businesses [have] invested in the creation of public policy organizations that could act on behalf of the business community and other private citizens to promote specific education reforms. (Kronley 2000)
Two Models for Corporate Involvement
The Columbia Group
One of the more active organizations involved in school reform is the Columbia Group, established in 1995 in Columbia, South Carolina. The Columbia Group is a network of regional nonprofit public-policy organizations in nine Southeastern states. The network receives funding from SERVE, a regional educational organization; private foundations such as BellSouth Foundation; and corporations throughout the Southeast.
According to the BellSouth report, "Columbia Group organizations... have taken a general business interest in improved education and out of it crafted coherent and vital education reform programs" (Kronley 2000).
To foster economic development, the Columbia Group advocates training to produce highly skilled employees. It hopes to improve schools and educational programs as a means of attracting new industry to the region, and cultivating sophisticated consumers of high-tech products:
New industries wishing to locate in the South, where costs were significantly less, needed to assure highly skilled employees that the schools awaiting their children were as good as the ones they were being asked to leave. Future employees would be graduates of these schools. Customers were being asked to purchase increasingly sophisticated and expensive products. (Kronley 2000)
The Committee for Economic Development
Established in 1942, the Committee for Economic Development (CED), a national research and advocacy organization composed of some 200 business leaders and university presidents, provides another model of business advocacy of school reform. The CED promotes education reform at the national level to improve the quality of America’s work force. "CED has long supported efforts to enhance the well being of young children as an essential element of a broad strategy for strengthening the nation’s human resources" (CED 2001).
Building on its "previous path breaking work in education reform," the CED has embarked on a research project that will focus on early childhood education, K-12 education, and postsecondary education.
In February 2002, CED released the first results of its research. In its first policy statement, Preschool for All: Investing in a Productive and Just Society, CED asserted that all children whose parents want them to participate should have access to high-quality classes offered by a variety of providers before they enter kindergarten. In a report on K-12 education, Measuring What Matters, CED praised testing and accountability as keys to improving learning.
Through both policy analysis and strategic partnerships with organizations such as the National Governors Association, CED intends to further mobilize the business community to foster systemic improvements in early childhood investments and to help identify and disseminate best practices. "CED’s K-12 efforts will engage business leaders in sustaining support for performance measurement in education and in identifying and overcoming barriers to delivering public education in new ways" (CED 2001).
Business Goals
Deron Boyles (1999) noted that in their call for educational improvements, corporations also shape and subsequently invoke "national goals, particularly those that celebrate the need for international comparisons and increased competitiveness, to qualify what teaching entails and what success connotes" (Boyles 1999). In the 1990s, according to Boyles, the business community promoted especially the following three national education goals for the 21st century:
- American students will leave grades 4, 8, and 12 having demonstrated competency in challenging subject matter including English, mathematics, science, history, and geography; every school in America will ensure that all students learn to use their minds well so they may be prepared for responsible citizenship, further learning, and productive employment in our modern economy.
- American students will be first in the world in mathematics and science achievement.
- Every adult in America will be literate and will possess the knowledge and skills necessary to compete in a global economy and exercise the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. (National Educational Goals Panel 1995, in Boyles)
Specific education goals and reforms vary from organization to organization. Following are some of the goals that corporate advocates for school reform are working toward:
- Revise skill and knowledge standards.
- Incorporate vital job skills into the curriculum.
- Improve the professional development of teachers through industry-related work experience and training.
- Provide students with opportunities for "real life" applications of their knowledge and skills through school-to-work programs and career-related partnerships.
- Ensure that all students are able to read, write, and make use of technological resources.
- Lower dropout rates.
- Measure student performance through state-mandated tests.
- Increase teacher and school accountability for student performance.
- Reform school funding.
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