EducationNews.org

Michael F. Shaughnessy
Senior Columnist EducationNews.org
Eastern New Mexico University

1) How important do you see business and education partnerships?

The business community has always played some role in public education: influencing legislative action, serving on school boards, advising on vocational programs, providing direct guidance and support to students in areas such as college and career preparedness, and supporting schools in any of 100 other ways. While this support has always been valuable and appreciated, it's about to become much more important: If you look at the trends that are about to impact public education, it's easy to see that it will be impossible to serve students as we wish without a dramatic increase in support from the business community and others.

In terms of government expenditures per student, we're about to face a perfect storm. We're looking at reduced government revenues, thanks to the short-term impact of the subprime crisis and the long-term impact of the graying of the population (a whole generation that will no longer be paying into the system).

We can anticipate increased costs: Medicare just surpassed K-12 education as the single largest item in state budgets, growing from 8% of state budgets in 1985 to 22% in 2006, and the growth of healthcare costs within the K-12 system have been called the single greatest crisis facing public education.

That's all on top of the dramatic increases in outflows on social security we'll soon be seeing at the federal level. And, in an environment of reduced revenues and increased costs, understand that we're expecting record enrollment rates through at least 2014.

The dramatic increases in the level of federal, state, and local government support for public education we experienced over the last several decades are about to stop – and it's going to be up to stakeholders like the business community to step in and, as partners, work to identify essential outcomes and help students and schools to achieve them.

2) Can you give us a good example of how one works?

There's no one model for a business/education partnership. Businesses and business groups have different priorities, and bring different types of resources to the table. Schools and various types of student groups have different needs. So you're going to have a lot of variety.

Think, for example, of the Simon Youth Foundation. SYF is the charitable arm of Simon Property Group, one of the largest operators of shopping malls in the country. They noticed teens hanging out in their malls during school hours; these were kids who had either dropped out already or were on the edge of doing so. Working with school districts, they created an alternative high school program that leveraged their greatest asset – available space at their malls – to re-engage these students in a nontraditional environment.

It's not the kind of thing most people think of when you talk about business/education partnerships: they'll most likely think about cash donations, career day visits, or job shadowing programs. There's a lot more diversity out there than you might think.

3) Tell us about this upcoming conference in Fairfax, Virginia?

We're hosting the Effective Education Partnerships Conference on July 10-11 to provide a venue for practitioners from all sides – district professionals, business leaders, coalition directors, foundation leaders and others – to get together and talk about what works and what doesn't in building effective community/school partnerships.

We're offering several interesting features, including two pre-conference seminars led by other organizations in the field (the Partnership Directors Network and the National School Foundations Association); keynote presentations from Rick Hess (AEI), John Stone (ECF), and David Mathews (Kettering); 30 breakout sessions from leaders of successful partnerships; and a round of discussions on industry-specific case studies. It promises to be an excellent event.

4) Do you have a web site about this upcoming conference?

We do; it's www.eepc2008.com.

5) Why do YOU think community school partnerships are important?

Three reasons come to mind.

The first goes to the heart of what public education is. It's a means to an end: the community creates a system of public education to achieve a community objective, which is to prepare our kids with the knowledge and skills they live independently and successfully as adults. So if that's our goal – to prepare them for "the real world," so to speak – it makes sense to expose them early and often to that world by inviting community partners to play a role in students' development.

Next, there's a resource argument. There are a lot of awfully talented people out there who believe in supporting public education and will gladly donate their time and talents if asked. These are people who can help engage, motivate, and educate students; they're people who can lend their expertise to school or district operations, improving efficiency and reducing costs; and they're people who can serve as ambassadors, helping to build ties between schools and their communities. But it won't happen unless they're invited in as partners.

Finally, public education cannot succeed without the support and direction of the public. If the education system walls itself off – prevents the community from getting involved – it's impossible to develop the relationships that the system needs in order to exist and to successfully reach the objectives it has been charged with meeting. It is through community/school partnerships that those relationships are forged to allow collaborative goal-setting and to fuel the kind of support that will create a kind of vitality around public education.

6) Should there be accountability in terms of the schools when there is exemplary community support?

If you want to engage the business community, you have to incorporate accountability into your efforts. Businesspeople operate on the principle of return: you invest this, and you get that back out of it. Without accountability, you can't see whether your efforts made an impact, and you can't tinker with the model to discover opportunities for an even greater impact.

No businessperson wants to see his investment disappear into the ether, and as a result you'll find very few interested in partnering with you. In other words, without an accountability model at the heart of your partnership, you won't have much of a partnership.

7) Tell us about your free on line clearinghouse?

When I first got into this field, I searched for any information I could find: surveys, case studies, white papers, anything at all that would help me learn who was working in this area and what they were doing. And I didn't find much.

So I started cataloging the resources that I did find, and realized that this catalog might be helpful to others in the field. I published it all online, and the Business/Education Partnership Forum (www.biz4ed.org) was born.

The site offers that catalog of resources, a directory of organizations working at the national, state, and local levels, and a current listing of news items relating to business' role and involvement in education. We also publish a monthly newsletter that highlights recent articles, newly-published resources, and upcoming events.

I should note that this is a pro bono effort; the website and newsletter are free to anyone interested in the field.

8) What question have I neglected to ask?

You might ask what stakeholders, particularly businesses, get out of all this. Charity is part of it, of course, but there's clearly much more at hand than that.

The majority of partnership efforts that I've seen are based on real concerns about the preparedness of the future workforce. As Thomas Friedman and others have noted, the playing field for business has been leveled: if we can't compete internationally on talent, it's easy to see how we'll lose our competitive edge and pay a dear price for that. The businesses that invest in community/school partnerships want access to a capable workforce in the future so they can thrive, keeping their companies and employees in the US. If innovation and jobs go elsewhere, we could easily see our country slide into an economic decline, and it would be a slide that would be difficult to correct once in motion.

And it's important to remember that these businesspeople are community and family members as well. In addition to their concerns about the future of their businesses, they are deeply interested in making sure their children and others graduate into a world filled with opportunities, and that those children have the knowledge and skills needed to succeed in the world. It's the gift we were all given: passing it along is the least we can do!

Published March 12, 2008