Open the Door for Joint Ventures With Business

School Administrator, Feb, 1994 by Joseph A. Raelin, Sandra A. Waddock

While school administrators intensify their search for resources, many corporate leaders simultaneously are recognizing their companies have a responsibility to help public schools succeed.

How corporations should be involved in public education deserves rigorous attention.

Corporate involvement is by no means purely altruistic. Corporate executives believe it is in their companies' best interest to ensure the public schools produce a qualified workforce to remain globally competitive. These companies also require attractive living conditions in their communities, including a top-level school system.

Several Possibilities

Let's consider, then, the specific ways in which corporations can and do help public education.

* Direct contributions. At the simplest and most obvious level, companies can and do provide resources to selected schools. Some donate money to individual schools; others donate equipment or unused resources, such as paper and supplies.

* Joint school-business ventures. Thousands of school- business partnerships have emerged since the 1980s. More than half of the school districts nationwide had active partnership programs in 1989-90, involving some 2.6 million volunteers in schools attended by an estimated 29.7 million students.

Many partnerships are relatively simple adopt-a-school programs. For example, one company established a program with a technical-vocational high school to help provide students with a state-of-the-art education. The school benefitted from guest lectures, site visits to plants, and donated equipment.

* Sharing knowledge of management. One arena for fruitful involvement is the application of such business management techniques as strategic planning, budgeting, time management, and staff development in the school environment.

Some companies provide administrators with access to in-house management development training programs. Others make employee training programs available to teachers to help them improve classroom management and curricular skills. The Ford Fellows Science/Mathematics Project, a master's degree program, is nationally recognized for producing teacher leaders in science and math who have insight into the competitive environment of U.S. industry.

Strategic deployment of human resources. Many schools benefit not just from one-time guest speakers but also from tutors, mentors, and visiting scientists or other experts who share their knowledge with students. Xerox has developed an extensive program that puts scientists and engineers into classrooms to expose students to hands-on science.

"Real-world" experiences for teachers and students. Many partnerships focus on providing full-time jobs in summers or part-time during the school year. Teacher internships have been developed in which teachers work full-time for companies, learning the demands of the modern workplace into which their students will graduate.

Other programs include "shadowing" programs in which teachers or administrators and sometimes students literally follow a manager, scientist, or production worker for a day to observe a typical workday. In a few communities, corporate executives trail a teacher or principal to learn what their jobs are like. These reverse shadowing experiences are often eye-opening for business executives.

* Advocacy far schools and school improvement. Occasionally, schools and businesses work at cross-purposes at the local level when, for example, corporations demand tax breaks as an incentive to locate in a community. Increasingly, however, enlightened executives are better informed about the important links between schools, communities, and the health of local enterprise.

* Collaboration for long-term social change. By working together as a team, rather than at cross purposes, schools, corporations, and other key institutions can work together to improve community conditions, recognizing the central place of education in that improvement.

Recommended Action

What should school administrators do to take full advantage of corporate involvement? Three recommendations stand out:

* No. 1: Open your doors so outsiders can come in and learn about your operations. Many corporate executives are unfamiliar with the pressures, conflicting demands, and serious management problems school administrators face daily. Some experience in your shoes can be enlightening and lead to serious exchange of information, resources, and managerial experiences.

* No. 2: Think creatively and strategically about the ways in which both the school and the corporation can benefit from the exchange. Real partnerships are collaborative by definition. They require ongoing dialogue and exchange among partners. They demand contributions and commitment from both sides. They need to be long-term so trust and understanding can develop.

* No. 3: Think in terms of shared responsibility for education rather than assuming all of it yourself. Corporations can play an important role in education, and educators have a responsibility to educate business leaders about the ways in which corporate policies relate to families, work hours, and school performance.