Educational Efforts Sponsored by Businesses

In Lawndale, Illinois, Chicago business leaders are developing a new privately funded school. Founder Joseph Kellman, president of Globe Glass and Mirror Company, has initiated Corporate/Community Schools of America, a group that proposes to open business-directed schools in other cities if the Chicago experiment proves successful.

Other initiatives funded or sponsored by businesses include Rich's Academy in Atlanta, an alternative high school for dropouts and low achievers who cannot function in a regular school setting; John Hancock Company's program to provide a range of services to English High School in Boston including tutoring, career counseling and school renovation; and Honeywell's effort to tutor minority students who are having academic difficulty in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C.

The Valued Youth Partnership program in San Antonio, cosponsored by Coca-Cola and the Intercultural Development Research Association, identifies high-risk students as "valued youth" and gives them an opportunity to serve as tutors of younger children. Since the program was implemented, absenteeism has declined; the dropout rate is lower; and the student tutors' grades, self-image, and behavior have improved.

The evidence suggests that serious school-business partnerships have achieved some modest success in their efforts to increase school attendance, reduce dropout rates, and improve academic performance. In its initial years the Boston Compact has witnessed a 6 percentage-point increase in the high school attendance rate, a 14-point increase in those city schools with the worst attendance rates, and substantial districtwide improvements in reading and math skills. However, the unchanging 43 percent high school dropout rate has led the compact to devise new strategies. The Philadelphia Academies, which deal exclusively with disadvantaged students, have achieved attendance rates that exceed 90 percent and high school graduation rates of approximately 80 percent. These are substantially ahead of the districtwide high school average (75 percent and 67 percent, respectively).

All of these programs illustrate the importance of self-esteem and a sense of purpose in achieving academic success, especially for those youths who already are not doing very well in life and who usually lack individual teacher attention and additional school support services. Business-school partnerships cannot work miracles but they can add an important impetus to school reform. Many public schools can also do much better by combining an emphasis on the life goals of disadvantaged students with mentoring, counseling, and a more innovative approach to the curriculum. Alternative schools may best draw out the abilities of students who are more deeply estranged from the existing educational system. Various combinations of school reforms and business partnerships should be pursued to ensure that we do not give up on disadvantaged youths.