Classroom Crisis Is a Job for Business - Education: Today’s growing class of school drop-outs is tomorrow’s work force. Concerned corporate leaders know what they have to do.

President Bush’s historic education summit has cast the spotlight on the need for sweeping changes in our national education system. In calling for a restructuring of American education, the President and the nation’s governors have taken a much needed step. At the same time, the clear message is that any real action must necessarily come from the local level.

As we assess possible strategies, it is important to keep in mind that the responsibility for action does not rest solely on legislators and school administrators; a central role will also have to be played by the corporate community.

Reform will not come easily. For California, the picture is particularly urgent. Our growing economy will require 550,000 new workers annually through the 1990s. The question is whether our education system will produce enough skilled and capable employees to meet this demand.

I doubt that there is a business leader anywhere in the state who by now is not familiar with the grim statistics. One in every three California students drops out of school; by the year 2000, more than 1 million students will have left school before graduation, and another 750,000 who do graduate will be considered barely literate. The sad truth is that, when it comes to public education, California ranks near the bottom--only six states have a lower graduation rate.

Suddenly it seems that our ability to remain a healthy economic leader may rest on whether we can substantially upgrade our education system.

It doesn’t take any special insight to see the correlation between education excellence and competitive strength. The pressures of the global economy have brought a new sense of urgency to the push for enhanced productivity, efficiency and quality goods and services. Today’s increasingly complex workplaces, dominated by sophisticated technologies and rapidly evolving work methods, are requiring a new breed of employees--resourceful men and women with good reasoning and problem-solving abilities and a solid grounding in basic skills. Tomorrow’s jobs will be even more dependent on quality education: By the next decade, one in four jobs will require a college degree.

The business community is not unaware of these realities. Across the nation, companies are acknowledging--through innovative training programs and other measures--that they, too, have a vital stake in school reform.

We have to do much more. For one, the business community has to help sell young people on the relationship between good jobs and scholastic achievement. Creating such incentives as scholarships, summer jobs and after-school work programs, and the promise of a rewarding job upon graduation are extremely important.

Companies also have a responsibility to inform educators about the new realities of the job market. How can we expect schools to turn out competent workers if we don’t fully convey our own long-range personnel needs?

Certainly, we need to see more business leaders serving on school boards and taking a direct role in local education systems. One-on-one projects, where companies “adopt” a school, donate computer equipment, sponsor field trips, help train teachers and loan executives to serve as mentors and tutors can produce measurable results.

Here in California, the California Business Roundtable has made education restructuring its No. 1 priority. Members of the Roundtable, representing the state’s 100 largest corporations, have been actively promoting passage of legislation that would establish model demonstration projects in school districts throughout the state. The bill, introduced by State Sen. Gary K. Hart (D-Santa Barbara), would give school districts, in cooperation with businesses, institutions of higher education and other organizations, the opportunity to apply for grants to develop their own design for education restructuring based on various criteria, among them: providing free preschool services; more options for 11th- and 12th-grade students; encouraging parental involvement; providing greater support for beginning teachers; increasing the teaching of writing and critical reasoning skills; modernizing instruction techniques, and incorporating new technology in the classroom. A key element would be local autonomy and decision-making and special programs for low-performing schools.

Many of these criteria echo the general recommendations made at the President’s education summit. Now it’s up to us. By working together in community-based partnerships, we have an opportunity to make effective changes in our schools, as well as to ensure the flexibility necessary for responding to the needs of California’s unique social, cultural and economic climate.