Corporations Find No Easy Cure for Education’s Ills

At 10 o’clock Tuesday morning, Robert E. Wycoff, Arco’s president and chief operating officer, was sitting in the principal’s office at Manual Arts High School, getting a crash course on the school and its students.

Over at 102nd Street Elementary School, attorney and businessman Richard Riordan was taking the reins of campus operations--and bringing along former junk-bond wizard Michael Milken to teach math classes for the day.

Not far away, GTE Telephone Operations’ west area president, Charles A. Crain, was settling in at Bethune Junior High School in Los Angeles, while Toyota Motors USA’s senior vice president, Todaoki Ishikawa, was heading for North High in Torrance.

On any other weekday most of these corporate executives would be immersed in the high-powered world of commerce. But on Tuesday they joined about 40 other local business leaders in a “principal for a day” program.

One purpose of the program, part of a weeklong focus on the growing role of private business in public education, was for corporate executives to get a handle on how they can help the schools do a better job.

Increasingly worried that the nation’s public schools are unable to turn out enough graduates equipped to fill the work force, corporate America is pouring unprecedented amounts of time, money and other resources into the education system. Nationwide, there are more than 140,000 partnerships between business and the public schools, the U.S. Department of Education estimates, while large corporations, such as Chevron U.S.A. and Pacific Telesis, are giving millions annually to programs that hold out the promise of school reform.

Locally, the Los Angeles Educational Partnership has raised $10 million since 1984 for such programs as cash grants for projects by innovative teachers, an anti-dropout project and new ways of approaching math, science and the humanities. A group of California’s top executives has proposed legislation to overhaul schools throughout the state.

Some corporations are giving large chunks of money for ambitious projects, such as aerospace firm TRW Inc.’s plan to donate $1 million over the next 10 years for a special math and science high school at Cal State Dominguez Hills. And attorney Riordan set up his own foundation to improve the education of elementary school children; the Riordan Foundation’s activities have included buying computers for reading programs for schools in poor areas.

But all this largess has so far failed to make much of a dent overall in the schools’ dismal performance record. And a few educators are beginning to sound warnings about the nature of some of the corporate involvement.

It has been nearly six years since the National Commission on Excellence in Education released its report, “A Nation at Risk,” which warned that American schools no longer prepare students adequately and which is generally credited with touching off wide interest in education reform.

Yet the most recent national “report card” showed that American students still lag well behind their counterparts in other industrialized countries, especially in math and science.

To try to fix the deficiencies in its young work force, American industry spent $210 billion last year for on-the-job remedial skills programs, the Bureau of Labor Statistics says.

Attorney and entertainment industry executive Virgil Roberts, who is chairman of the Los Angeles partnership, said it is difficult to sustain corporate interest in demonstration projects and other reform programs unless they get wider dissemination--and results.

“There is a growing sense of frustration that the reform efforts haven’t worked and that more radical steps are needed,” Roberts said in a recent interview. Through funding various pilot projects at dozens of area schools, the partnership has found a number of tools that do get results, but they are not replicated elsewhere, in part because public school dollars are so short, he said.

The group hopes to focus attention on what is happening in the schools with its “Educational Partnership Week” activities.

While chambers of commerce, the educational partnership and other groups have been most active locally, California’s largest firms have been busy at the state level.

The California Business Roundtable, made up of representatives of 100 of the state’s biggest corporations, commissioned its own study of the education system and in 1988 came up with a broad proposal to reform it. While some of the ideas were initially labeled “wild” and “impractical” by state Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig, he has since endorsed the resulting legislation proposals.

Another statewide business group, the California Educational Partnership Consortium, is sponsoring a conference on school reforms next month in Sacramento, and corporate leaders were a highly visible part of last winter’s “education summit.”

Locally, school officials say they no longer have to scratch for corporate volunteers.

Los Angeles’ Adopt a School program, which began in 1978 as an expansion of Arco’s hands-on liaison with the 10th Street Elementary School downtown, has grown into the largest program of its kind in the nation. Businesses large and small have set up links with 670 campuses, from preschool centers to adult schools.

But business involvement in the schools, while generally laudable, is not without its drawbacks, some educators say.

“None of the major players in the school reform movement are interested in school reform per se,” said Lewis C. Solmon, dean of UCLA’s Graduate School of Education. “Self-interest is the primary motivation of most of those involved in school reform, and at times interests of a particular constituency are at odds with what is good for schoolchildren.”

Solmon said it is “work force issues affecting their bottom lines that now throw them into the battle for better public education.”

Some of these firms are more interested in selling computers, textbooks and other educational materials than they are in improving school performance, Solmon said. He suggested that firms that really want to make a difference should consider granting flexible work hours or occasional leaves so parents can become more involved in education.

Alex Molnar, a professor of education at the University of Wisconsin and chairman of a task force on business involvement in the schools, has expressed similar concerns, saying that some firms are trying to impose their own ideology on the schools.

But education professor Michael W. Kirst of Stanford University said he has seen no such tendency on the part of California business.

“They didn’t come in with an idea to control or to impose a business ideology, “ said Kirst, who is also a director of Policy Analysis for California Education.

Noting that business is “just one of many players” in the state’s centralized education system, he added: “They are here because they saw the work force quality was dropping. If they were happy with the quality (of the public schools) they would pull back from education and go on to (such issues as) housing, transportation or taxes.”

For Kirst, a bigger question is whether business would back a tax increase to pay for improvements in the schools.

And many administrators of financially strapped school districts are not about to dismiss a helping hand from the private sector.

Leonard Britton, superintendent of the troubled Los Angeles Unified School District, has sought more corporate involvement, not just for its money but also for reform ideas and wider public support for the schools.

On Tuesday morning, before sending the high-paid corporate executives off to their “assignments,” Britton told them: “We value your time. . . . This is important to us. You can help us define what the agenda is going to be in public education in Los Angeles.”

At Manual Arts, a sprawling campus of coral-colored buildings near the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, Arco’s Wycoff spent his day visiting classes and talking with faculty members and students--from gang members to college-bound high achievers.

The school’s 2,100 students--63% Latino and 37% black--live surrounded by poverty, drugs and gangs. Nearly two-thirds leave school before graduation. Many of the 800 students enrolled in the school’s four-level bilingual-education program are recent immigrants just learning to adapt to life in a new country, according to Principal Marvin Starr.

Yet Wycoff said he was impressed by much of what he saw Tuesday--a busy but orderly campus, the skills exhibited by Lorrie Freedman’s pre-algebra class, the machine-shop class with its large collection of state fair ribbons, and the computer labs for math and writing.

Noting the diligence and high motivation of Arlene Andrews’ students of English as a second language, Wycoff told them: “I know you’re all going to finish high school, right? I’m really glad you’re here in the United States with us.”

At lunch, he told students and staff the time at the school had been valuable: “Sometimes as an outsider you have a different impression of inner-city schools.”

Award-winning English teacher Jo Zarro’s composition class also impressed Wycoff.

“I like her, I like her enthusiasm. Is there any way you can reward her?” Wycoff asked Starr. “Only with praise,” the principal said.