Business writes a new lesson plan - helping reform the structure of public education

Nation's Business, Jan, 1990 by Tait Trussell, Joan C. Szabo

Business Writes A New Lesson Plan

In the Lehigh Valley area of eastern Pennsylvania, the business community has joined with educators to develop a broad program of basic reforms in the education system. Lehigh Valley's program parallels educational endeavors elsewhere in the nation, where communities are responding to the growing demands for able workers and for the U.S. to remain competitive internationally. The Lehigh Valley Business Education Partnership consists of 20 area public-school superintendents, 25 chief executive officers of the area's larger corporations, and the presidents of 10 local colleges and universities.

Plans call for even broader representation of those concerned with education reform. Task forces on specific issues will include representatives of teachers, students, parent-teacher associations, and local governments within the region.

The prime mover in the organization of the partnership is Edward Donley, chairman of the executive committee of Air Products and Chemicals Inc., Allentown, Pa., and a pioneer in the campaign for business action to deal with problems of the nation's school system.

The partnership's aim, says Donley, is to bring community representatives together to reach an agreement on a broad program of educational improvement for the entire area.

In addition, several leading business organizations have formed the Business Coalition for Education Reform to work for improvements in the quality of public education throughout the country.

While business support of education has traditionally been strong, particularly at the local level, these recent developments reflect a shift in the focus of those efforts; the concentration has often been on assistance to individual schools and students, and now it is being directed at reform of the basic structure of public education.

William H. Kolberg, who is cochairman of the coalition and president of the National Alliance of Business--itself a coalition member--plans to "encourage business leaders to become more involved at state and local levels, not in `feel-good' endeavors, but those directed at systemic change." He explains that "quick fixes and marginal changes have not worked. Adopting a school or a class, as some companies have done, does little to improve the overall school system."

The Business Coalition for Education Reform is made up of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Committee for Economic Development, the National Alliance of Business, the Business Roundtable, the National Association of Manufacturers, the Conference Board, the American Business Conference, and the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

Business initiatives in support of education reflect concerns ranging from the availability of entry-level workers with basic skills to the need for the U.S. to function in a world market that is becoming increasingly competitive.

A key factor in this business involvement is the high cost of educating workers. "U.S. companies realize that the money they spend educating workers can be trimmed if workers are educated correctly the first time," says William F. Glavin, the recently inaugurated president of Babson College, in Wellesley, Mass., and former vice chairman of Xerox Corp.

Business estimates that if industry's problem of continuously having to upgrade the skills of workers is not corrected, the $30 billion spent annually by companies on worker training and retraining will increase dramatically.

Many experts say that without serious efforts at reform, the current educational crisis will become more acute in the future. If current trends continue, according to some estimates, by the year 2000, 70 million Americans will be functionally illiterate. That means they will have attained less than an eighthgrade level of education. These individuals will be unable to meet the rigorous demands of an increasingly more complex work environment.

While many business people have seen positive results from the adopt-a-school programs and other efforts aimed at helping specific institutions, contributions of others also demonstrate the effectiveness of reforms aimed at structural problems of entire school systems. For example, R.J. "Bob" Fabrizio, owner of Courtesy Motor Co., the Ford dealership in Buena Vista, Va., has proof that his efforts at school reform have helped to reduce the high-school dropout rate in his area, and to boost the academic performance of high-school graduates.

When Fabrizio chaired the school board in Buena Vista 20 years ago, he decided to explore the feasibility of establishing a year-round school program.

Working with the superintendent of schools, James Bradford Jr., Fabrizio helped launch a chain of events that led to a drastically revised curriculum in an extended school year for the 400 students of Parry McCluer High School in Buena Vista.

The year-round school program is divided into three 60-day quarters, plus a summer quarter that is tuition-free. Transportation for the summer program is available to students at no charge. Although the summer quarter is voluntary, more than 50 percent of the high-school students consistently have enrolled for educational enrichment, acceleration, or remedial work.