Education is Fundamental: How Executives and Entrepreneurs Can Support the Push for Quality

Access to quality education is the key to a strong business and cultural infrastructure as well as a healthy and sustainable economy. Few leaders would contest that. Yet the data below provided by the National Education Association is disturbing at best. (See http://www.ed-data.k12.ca.us/welcome.asp and click on the Compare California link.)

• California is one of the wealthiest states, but the personal income per student, (the sum of all residents’ personal income divided by the number of K-12 public school students) is just below average (ranked 19th in 2002), a little less than $100 below the national average of $187,122, because California has a higher proportion of young people compared to most other states (ranking sixth in the percentage of residents under 18 in 2002). (More recent numbers are not yet available.)
• In 2001-02—for the first time in more than 20 years—California was above the national average in per capita expenditures on K-12 schools, but California still consistently falls below the national average in per-pupil expenditures, ranking 31st in 2001-02, according to the National Education Association (NEA) Rankings & Estimates 2004-05. In 2003-04 the state moved up to 29th in the nation. At $7,584 per student, California was at 92% of the national average and ranked in the middle of the five most populous states.
• California has higher-than-average pupil-teacher ratios. In 2003-04 teachers were expected to handle about 35% more students and principals/assistant principals, district administrators, guidance counselors, and librarians even more. In 2003-04 California ranked 3rd in the nation with the largest pupil-teacher ratio (20.6 to 1) except for Arizona and Utah, according to NEA.
  In addition, California was last in librarians and next-to-last in guidance counselors and principals/assistant principals in 2003-04, according to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). The state also ranked 48th in the nation in officials and administrators per pupil and last among the five most populous states.

FountainBlue's September 8, 2006 panel on the topic of Education is Fundamental: How Executives and Entrepreneurs Can Support the Push for Quality featured facilitator Usha Sekar, Geoff Ainscow from the Sunnyvale School District Education Foundation, Hillary Aitken from BUILD, and Paula Wasowska from Cisco. Their candid stories, concrete data and detailed descriptions of successful programs have sparked an overwhelmingly positive response. Special thanks to Usha Sekar, who has commited to follow up and create the ability to compile data, coalesce energy and drive, and present concrete concepts so that we can follow up on our passion to forge concrete change on behalf of our children! Below are some notes from our discussion.

Facts About Our Schools

• Schools can be resistant to change and innovation.
• Schools lack resources and funding: See

http://www.eddata.com for the details

We as a culture need to have a greater interest in the needs of our children. The most dominant factor in a child's education is the parent, the second most dominant are teachers. Class size is a distant third. Yet we as a culture do not support our teachers as well or as much as we should.

California schools rapidly went from being the best educational system in the US in the 1970s to the worst in the nation in 1998.

What Executives and Entrepreneurs Can Do to Support the Push for Quality, Despite the Challenges

• A public-private partnership with clear leadership, direction, and focus on results is not only necessary but urgently needed.
• Get educated and involved. Research online and other resources already available
  http://www.mathscore.com; http://www.discoverychannel.com Discovery Channel Resources, unitedstreaming.com
• Believe that you can make a difference acting locally, impacting globally, sharing your time, talent and dollars.
• The problem is immense, so break it down into smaller pieces. Develop a clarity of path on specific actions to be taken; Focus on the big picture, what really matters; Join forces with like-minded, passionate individuals who are committed to make changes and with the knowledge, skills, resources to make a difference.
• We can learn from how others how other cultures Countries that invest in their children are investing in the economic future of their country. Example: although Ethiopian children may not have shoes, there is an investment in computers at their schools because the community leaders recognize that the education of these children will allow them to meet their basic needs and well beyond that.
• Do not compare ourselves to ourselves, look cross-culturally success stories and emulate the working models. Example, in Sweden, schools are well funded, they are the hub of a community. There is cross-age tutoring where children teach their grandparents computer skills for example.
• Influence policy to make sustainable changes for our educational system. (FountainBlue will have a follow-up event on this topic.)

We invite your comments.