CHAPTER 1
BUSINESS EDUCATIONPARTNERSHIP IN SOUTH CAROLINA:A CASE STUDY
NOTE: This case study is based on the original 1997 research. Whereappropriate, updated statistics along with information from interviewswith Riley, Peterson, and Youngblood have been included.
In 1983, South Carolina established a Business Education Partnership(BEP) program at the state level to monitor its public school system.Engaging business in state policy-making partnerships always has beencomplex and difficult to sustain. South Carolina's Business EducationPartnership constituted one of the nation's most intense educationbusiness partnerships ever formed. "At the time, economic conditionsstrengthened the prospect of achieving these changes," Riley explainedin a recent interview. "We were at a critical point in our state's historywhere we needed the right mix of top-down and, most importantly,bottom-up strategies. It was the appropriately timed opportunity tochange our history especially where we had done so poorly not only forour students but also for economic development."
Policy change partnerships are capital-intensive and requirecommitments from CEOs of large corporations to succeed (NationalAlliance for Business, 1987). Because policy partnerships require suchsubstantial manpower investments by the business community and canlast as long as six years, the study was focused upon the activities ofbusiness members who sustained interest in state-level public schoolreform for more than 12 years. In addition, this research sought touncover those elements that helped to support and impede businessinvolvement in South Carolina's Business Education Partnership inorder to present a viable and successful model for other states to emulatein engaging business partners effectively.
Since colonial times, laissez-faire attitudes toward economicsand politics had kept Southern property taxes low and public schoolsunderfunded (Void & Devitis, 1991). As a result, the Southeast enduredthe educational stigma as the nation's perennial underachiever instudent academic performance. In an attempt to remove this stigma,educational reform initiatives had gained strong support in theSoutheast since the 1970s (Void & Devitis, 1991) and had reinforcedthe belief in economic achievement (Business Roundtable, 1992)."There was no doubt that the recession from 1980 to 1982 motivatedthe stakeholders," Peterson said. "For the first time in the South, wholejob sectors were being lost or being threatened to disappear. As thestate and others in the region began to emerge from the recession in1983, the gradual recovery and memories of recent events galvanizedthe leadership."
In finding the right ingredient to gain public support for raisingrevenue, Riley's deep rapport with education proved to be an importantcatalyst at the outset. "With his wife, Riley energized the base includingboth sides of the political aisle as well as PTAs and superintendentsespecially were attracted to the prospects for a dramatic campaign.It was especially important for getting grassroots support especiallyamong those who needed to be encouraged that once they were outthere in the public spotlight, they were not going to be alone."
South Carolina's Business Education Partnership was one state'sattempt to influence state and local policy makers to restructureits public school system. Originating in 1983, Riley, as governor,commissioned two blue-ribbon committees to examine three issues:first, the feasibility of enacting a bold set of education reforms and newopportunities and increasing by a penny sales tax to fund these majoreducational reform programs; second, the viability of implementing abusiness-education partnership program to provide accountability forstate educational reform; third, the planning of legislation to supportthe penny tax and the business-education partnership.
The Business Education Partnership, comprising 12 prominentBusiness men at its founding, was charged with developing the overarchingset of education reforms and improvements, concrete phase-in budgetsfor each of the reforms or improvements, and developing a fundingmechanism to pay for the entire package. Ultimately the passage of thepenny sales tax increase was agreed upon as the funding mechanism. Inaddition, the Committee on Finance, consisting of education, business,and legislative officials, was designed to serve as a liaison amongschools, business community, and legislature to ensure that barriers toreform initiatives were overcome and the details of the needed reformswere developed through a business-education consensus. The blueribbon committees were successful in urging the state legislature to passboth the Educational Improvement Act (EIA I) and a penny sales tax.South Carolina's Education Improvement Act served to strengthen thestate's public education system by executing 61 initiatives that fortifiedstudent achievement in grades K through 12. The Business-EducationPartnership served as the accountability mechanism to monitor all 61initiatives of EIA I.
One of the key figures was Bill Youngblood, a 40-year-old attorneywho specialized in economic development and bond financing. "Therewas a sense of doom that the Sun Belt would lose out easily to theCaribbean Basin or to the Pacific Rim in terms of long-term businessdevelopment." When contacted by Riley, Youngblood did not hesitate,as he recalled. "When your government calls, you always take the calland do what your leader asks you to do," he explained. "At the time, Iwas not all that involved in education but I understood how importantit was to bring business executives and leaders, especially those whosenames were readily recognized around the state, into the project. Theoutreach was done individually. Only later did the state chamber ofcommerce become actively engaged in the efforts."
Subsequently, the BEP Committee and the Committee on Financemerged and became known as the Business Education Partnershipfor Excellence in Education (BEP). The BEP was responsible formonitoring and making recommendations to the legislature on publicschool reform from 1983 to 1995. Once the legislative frameworkwas approved, the committees faced the challenges of replicatingand maintaining the program at state level. These challenges wereaccomplished by implementing two educational improvement acts, thepreviously mentioned Educational Improvement Act (EIA I) and EIA II(Target 2000), both of which are discussed in greater detail later in thiscase study.
Business owners, executives, managers, and employees wereengaged in Business Education Partnership activities spanning the first13 years of the initiatives up until the time this research was conducted.Engaging high-profile CEOs in a state-level policy partnership, lobbyingimportant legislators for new money to improve schools made the BEPeffective during those 13 years by keeping business persons and thebusiness community interested in educational reform.
The effect of the Business Partnership can be measured severalways (Johnston, 1997). First, it created a strong advocacy of policy andlegislation for new money to fund educational improvements in SouthCarolina, including EIA I and EIA II (Target 2000). In turn, teachersalaries in the state were raised to the Southeast average over the first 13years of reform. Teacher satisfaction was the highest among the 50 statesin 1989 despite the fact that the reforms they were implementing weresome of the most innovative in the country. The BEP was instrumentalin changing South Carolina from a three-track education system toa two-track academic and tech-prep track with equally rigorous coresubjects mandated for both tracks (South Carolina Business Journal,1995).
After 1989, the business community became actively involved inlocal tech prep consortiums and curricular congresses. Since 1983,students enrolling in advanced placement courses have increaseddramatically. South Carolina students had the greatest increase in SATscores between 1983 and 1990.
In terms of accountability, the challenge was figuring out whichdata would help demonstrate that reform was meaningful and readilyobservable. "Most of the process was hung up on test scores," Petersonrecalled. "However, within the state's department of education, adivision of public accountability was created with an independent head,a separate group of researchers, and an advisory group representinglegislators and business leaders. It was a smart process becauseeverybody knew that if the whole effort went really off the track, theirnames would be on the line."
During his administration, Governor Riley understood the need toset concrete targets particularly for gaining the satisfaction of businessleaders who had stood solidly behind the EIA efforts. "They would notsign off unless we gave them six metrics of meaningful education gains(i.e., SAT score gains, better basic skill test scores, student attendanceimprovements, greater percentage of vocational students being preparedfor real jobs and college readiness) and how targets would be set over thenext seven years," Peterson said. "Issues of school attendance, vocationaleducation, and college prep became terribly important. But, more so,we were willing to be accountable for it and we understood that relyingon any one measure could be tremendously risky for maintaining thesolid support we had for broad reforms."
Many complex issues in education exist that can be solved only bythe collaboration of multiple constituencies in the educational process.One key player is the business community, which must be a full andsustained partner in public policy educational reform to be successful.Because the business community or any corporate sector is the largestconsumer of U.S. public school graduates, it is important to teachemployer-relevant skills to produce an educated workforce. Yet thebusiness community does not believe that the nation's public schoolsare adequately preparing youth for employment (Cuban, 1996). Whilecorporations support local public schools through corporate taxes,corporate consensus is that industry is receiving a "lousy return on itsinvestment" (Molnar, 1996).
In 2001, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce support for the "No ChildLeft Behind" program gave the business community the legitimacyof being a major player in educational reform. Recently, Thomas J.Donahue the CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce commented:"We're going to redouble our efforts to make the economic and themoral case for reforming our public schools and overhauling jobtraining programs. Every child, young person, and worker in Americadeserves an opportunity to succeed—and millions in our country don'thave that chance today." (January 10, 2013 State of American Business,Washington, D.C.).
Moreover, corporations are forced to spend additional dollars toretrain employees in basic skills. According to 1995 census data, 19percent of persons over 18 have achieved less than a high school diploma.Students who graduate lack the "problem solving skills" to function inan increasingly complex society (Worsham, 1996). Corporate Americahas a vested interest in ensuring that the nation's public schools producean educated workforce. Interestingly, education authors of about twentyyears ago predicted that of all new jobs created between 1984 and 2000,more than half would require education beyond high school. (Worsham,1996) Those predictions hold today with even greater impact. Recently,the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforceestimated that nearly 60 percent of all jobs in the U.S. economy requirehigher education. Additionally, by 2018, 63% of jobs will require apost-secondary education beyond high school. (Georgetown UniversityCenter on Education and the Workforce, June 2010, Carnevale, Smithand Strohl).
In 1992, corporate giving accounted for one percent of corporateprofits, and 80 percent of American corporations have no philanthropiceffort. At the time, ninety percent of these American companies weresmall businesses, and 94 percent of all American companies were"mom and pop" organizations with fewer than 50 employees. Theseorganizations represent a huge untapped market left unsolicited bypublic schools seeking money and resources (Mann, 1992). Of allcorporate philanthropy, a paltry 5 percent was earmarked for publicschools in 1992. Giving to education rose to an estimated $41.67billion, an increase of 5.2 percent in current dollars (3.5 percent ininflation-adjusted dollars). This is the first year of an increase in givingafter two years of declines. Educational organizations received anestimated 14 percent of the total (Lilly School of Philanthropy-IndianaUniversity-Purdue University June 20, 2010).
Business people were part of most urban school systems duringthe first half of the 20th century (Timpane, 1984). The senior managersof many companies were members of local school boards. Starting inthe 1950s, suburbs proliferated, luring business executives away frominvolvement in urban surroundings. The urban upheaval of the 1960salienated corporations, whose social responsibility to inner citiesdeclined. Corporate volunteers perceived their expertise as unwelcomeby the newly empowered critical mass (Timpane, 1991).
Starting in the 1970s, American business faced a crisis that ledmany business leaders to restructure their organization and operations.According to Chubb and Moe (1990), the economic crisis of the 1970sforced "the business community to mobilize their formidable politicalresources behind demands for high-quality academic education."
Businesses during the 1980s became increasingly aware of the needto produce an educated workforce in order to help the nation competein a global economy. Corporations began to look at school-businesspartnerships as one strategy to improve public education (Chubb &Moe, 1990). Businesspersons, armed with recent memory of businessrestructuring, were helpful in education reform (NAB, 1989).
The 1980s manifested an explosive growth in partnerships (U.S.Department of Education, 1988). President Reagan believed thatschool-business partnership programs would revitalize a decliningnational public school system (U.S. Department of Education, 1988).A "new" economic self-interest on the part of industry, complementedby Reagan's "new federalism," led to an increase in business volunteersin the nation's public schools. By reducing spending on education,Reagan posited that the "greater hand of society" would improve publiceducation more than would federal programs. The government wasdoing less and the business community was asked to do more. Thesepolicies continued under President Bush's "Point of Light Foundation"and "America 2000" educational initiatives (Purdum, 1997). Bushconsidered volunteer business-education partnerships as "sociallyresponsible" action to improve public education.
The initial wave of business involvement in the public schoolsconsisted of "Adopt-A-School" and "Helping Hands" programs. Duringthe early 1980s, these school-business partnerships mushroomedthroughout America as businesspeople became increasingly involvedin business-education partnerships in local public schools. Accordingto Timpane (1991), these programs provided resources that schoolscould not otherwise afford, such as guest speakers, computers and otherequipment, business employee grants, and mini-grants to teachers. TheCouncil for Economic Development estimates approximately 170,000business-education partnerships in 300,000 schools nationwide. Today,business involvement in the public schools is focused on school-businesscollaborations that can help offer students real-world applications sothey see the practical value in what they are being taught. (BusinessPartnerships to Advance Stem Education: a model of Success for theNation CED (May 17, 2013)
"A Nation at Risk" (1983) offered corporate America a strongimpetus to become substantively involved in education reform. Thereport stressed the economic and competitive aspects of education.Business leaders such as Owen D. Butler, retired chairman of Procter& Gamble, at the time, concluded that business people needed to carrythe word to policy makers, business leaders, and educators to stimulatepublic debate and promote subsequent proposals for educational reform(Timpane, 1991). Thoughtful business leaders concluded that "too fewAdopt-A-School partnerships were designed to tackle the toughestproblems" (NAB, 1991).
