‘Stealth’ Help Is Failing L.A. Schools : Education: If business cares about its future work force, it must develop and sell reform ideas from its own resources.
During the past seven to 10 years, hopes for improvements in Los Angeles public schools have gone unfulfilled, disappointing the business community and the public. In fact, the disillusionment has increased and the slide continues. For example, a recent nationwide survey of high school completion rates in 37 metropolitan areas showed the Los Angeles/Anaheim/Riverside area to be 31st out of 37.
In 1985, the Los Angeles Educational Partnership was established to “mobilize the private sector to improve the quality of public education in Los Angeles.” Its fund-raising in the business community was an unparalleled success and its budget and staff grew rapidly. It established myriad new school programs with the infusion of private-sector funding, yet the performance of the Los Angeles Unified School District, in practice and perception, remained the same or grew worse.
Seven years and $7 million later, the business community may have been snookered. It appeared that business was a partner in education reform in Los Angeles. Appearances, in this case, were deceiving.
Business was involved to the extent that anyone really believes that simply writing a check is sufficient or that providing volunteers and equipment for a particular school are anything more than a stopgap at best and a pacifier at worst. Nor is the influence of a few well-intentioned, but overly used, business leaders sufficient. Despite the heartwarming success of a few of the Los Angeles Educational Partnership’s programs during its seven years, its relationship with the business community here pales in comparison with the accomplishments of alliances in other urban areas.
At present, some Los Angeles business leaders and their organizations are lending their names and providing funding for yet another “collaborative” educational reform organization, called LEARN (Los Angeles Educational Alliance for Restructuring Now); others helped the Los Angeles 2000 Partnership several years ago. It is preposterous to think that such efforts represent the views of the Los Angeles business community, because recent census data show that there are more than 70,000 businesses in Los Angeles. Furthermore, business has not even begun the steps necessary to know what its constituency believes about education reform in Los Angeles. And business will continue to feel involved but, in fact, be snookered until it does.
To be fair, it should be said that the business community has not been properly motivated by the education community--that is, besides asking for money, either directly or in the form of “Adopt-a-School,” educators and their supporters haven’t a clue about how to harness business’ desire for educational improvement. But this does not absolve business of the responsibility for its massive gap in leadership and initiative regarding practical solutions to vexing social problems. Public education is a communitywide investment and too important to be left to the schools alone.
Business has failed to use its resources to research the issues, develop its own ideas and a plan for reforming the district despite the fact that the success of public schools is a critical barometer of economic vitality. In recent years, business has come to the table, so to speak, with pomp and circumstance and checkbook in hand. But “the emperor had no clothes” when it came time to contribute ideas, challenge the status quo or inspire a vision. The bottom line is that the business community has failed to organize within its own constituency and, as a result, is allowing its potential contribution to reform to be diluted. The school district’s multiple and unique problems deserve the focused attention of Los Angeles’ own business community, and more than the generalities of a statewide report or national nostrums.
If it chooses to change its modus operandi, Los Angeles’ business community can look to other urban models throughout the country for inspiration. Perhaps the best example is a business organization in Indianapolis, Ind., called CLASS (Community Leaders Allied for Superior Schools), which maintains dialogue with more than 150 area businesses about educational change and improvement. As a voice for business interests in educational reform, CLASS will release next month a document titled “Blueprint: 2005: What Indianapolis Businesses Desire of Schools.” And in Philadelphia, through its Committee to Support Philadelphia Public Schools, leaders of the business community helped lobby the state for more funds for restructuring and for improved health and social services for students. With this kind of support, Philadelphia’s School Superintendent Connie Clayton has fundamentally reformed the schools and sustained the improvements. There are numerous other examples that demonstrate a business community’s capacity to give meaning to the word partnership, get beyond cosmetic assistance and learn the issues and develop an agenda that can be brought to the table of urban education reform.
There is no dearth of innovative ideas about school reform from business leaders throughout the country. From individual companies like RJR Nabisco and Honeywell, to statewide organizations like the California Compact and the Kellogg-funded “Foundation Schools” to national business organizations like the Committee for Economic Development (The Unfinished Agenda: A New Vision for Child Development and Education, 1991), there is abundant stimulation for the seemingly lethargic business leadership of Los Angeles.
Why must the business community coalesce in order to effect change?
Organizational experts agree that great leaders challenge the process and inspire a vision.
If business researches opportunities, takes risks, breaks self-imposed restraints and reaches a consensus it can take to the table, it may inspire a vision that will enlist others by appealing to values, interests, hopes and dreams.
As one Los Angeles school board members puts it, the business community can’t be a “stealth entity.” It must offer ideas so they can be judged. It is too safe to sit back and “simply collaborate.”
This is not a call for yet another report. It is a challenge to the business community in Los Angeles to take a self-inventory, engage in practical deliberations and begin constituency-building actions. After an era of Adopt-a-School Band-Aids and checkbook diplomacy, it is time for the business community to come to the education partnership table with the strength of ideas and the vision of leaders.
