PLATFORM : Help Wanted

When I say business involvement, we’ve got to move beyond that old feel-good partnership, where we went in and spoke to a group of kids, or we adopted a school. We left those buildings feeling like, boy, we’ve really done our job. The reality is we left them far short. There are 364 other days to contend with.

We need to get involved for the long term and for the maximum extent economically possible. We can’t take over the cost of education in the state, but we do need to get significantly involved.

In 1980 I probably had a fail rate on our tests of 40% to 50%. There were an awful lot more entry-level individuals available. We could be rather selective; we brought into the business very qualified people.

Today, I’ll probably have to process 400 to 500 (job applications) to get 50. We have an absolute solid decline in the entry-level population. All of the companies that we work with are suffering from an exceptionally increased cost per placement. You want to add to that drug screens and such, you’ll lose another 20% after you’ve screened them for ability to do the job.

When we get them in the door, I will say that they’re in approximately the same quality level that we had in the ‘80s, in the ‘70s. But it is getting more difficult to find them. You’ll find people in business who will say, they can’t even read their diplomas. That’s a stretch.

There are people who have very great difficulty in reading, people who are functionally illiterate. Those numbers are mounting because of the high dropout rate in our system. But what we get into our business, we’re happy with. The problem is, what happens to the other 80 or so percent?

That worries me. What do we do with them? Where do they go? Who do they work for? Will they ever find meaningful employment? Will they ever have a career path? Will they be able to survive in the California economy?

We have to contend with that. We can’t just say, “We rejected them, who cares.?”