Educators Ask Businessmen to Invest Time, Money in Schools

Several hundred business and education leaders on Friday staked the future of Los Angeles’ public schools on public-private partnerships and the ability to track students from kindergarten to college.

More than 300 people attended the Valleywide Summit on Business-Education Partnerships at Universal Studios to identify obstacles to education reform and to showcase success stories.

The goal of the meeting was to introduce business leaders to ongoing educational programs in the San Fernando Valley in order to foster more private investment in public education.

“All these wonderful programs have been there,” said Gary Thomas, vice chair of the Economic Alliance of the San Fernando Valley. “What they needed was exposure.”

And with a large banner etched with the word “Hollywood” draped behind the podium, exposure is what the educators got.

“The schools are in worse shape than I thought,” said Richard H. Goodrich, a vice president at Bank of America. “There needs to be more involvement from the business side. I know I’m going to become personally active. Education was the primary driver of any success I’ve had in my career.”

The word of the day was “cluster,” in reference to the idea that elementary, middle and high schools must work in unison to achieve lasting educational reform.

“Individual schools can’t solve the problems all alone,” said James Ketelson, the Texas businessman who founded Project GRAD (Graduation Really Accomplishes Dreams). Funded by the Los Angeles Unified School District, the Ford Foundation and Walt Disney Co. chief executive Michael Eisner, Project GRAD was recently instituted in several schools in Pacoima.

Having turned around students’ test scores and graduation rates in Houston, Texas, and Newark, N.J., Ketelson offered the program as a model of a successful business-education partnership.

Another program, Joint Venture Challenge 2000 is being used at 63 schools in the Silicon Valley. Like Project GRAD, the Silicon Valley program starts in kindergarten and ends with 12th grade. Joint Venture is also funded by private businesses and foundations. Forty investors, including Hewlett Packard and the Knight Foundation have chipped in $24 million for the program.

Gary Hart, state secretary for education, encouraged more partnerships between businesses and schools, saying education reform was “too important to leave entirely in the hands of public officials.”

Hart also promised teachers that help was on the way in the form of more state funding outlined in four state bills recently signed into law by Gov. Gray Davis. The new laws, he said, would make schools more accountable with a ranking system based on standardized assessment exams, graduation rates and attendance figures. Schools that performed well would be rewarded with additional funds, those that do poorly will be sanctioned, Hart said.

He also touted the state’s plan to institute a graduation exam to make sure that no one receives a diploma without mastering certain basic skills.

Finally, Hart said more local control of more than $2 billion in state education funds would also hasten reform.

At that, Los Angeles Board of Education member Julie Korenstein clapped--but no one else in the crowded room joined her.