Diversity, stemming from historical and current immigration, challenges many institutions.  While equal individual outcomes cannot be assured, equal access to opportunities can and must be.  

Education inequities pose twin challenges to business.  The first is well understood:  the workforce of tomorrow is the student of today.  Student success today literally determines business success tomorrow.  The second challenge has only recently become visible.  Businesses cannot ask employees to accept different educational opportunities for their children as an unintended consequence of being located in any given community.  Business competitiveness in the recruitment and retention of talent, therefore, is linked directly to universal access to excellent K-12 education. 

Access to excellence must be real, not rhetorical.  The responsibility to assure access, performance, and excellence is widely distributed.  No one sector, institution or individual can be responsible for delivering excellence to all.  Yet, no one is exempt from playing a role in ensuring that the knowledge system works for all of us.

A Policy Framework for Action
The Business Council's experience in the education policy dialogues of the 1990's and more than a decade of involvement in mentoring programs, technology initiatives, afterschool program enhancement efforts, and school to career projects were the foundation for a series of business leadership conversations over the past two years. The subject was simple, but of crucial importance - what can business do to assure that all children receive excellent educations. In other words, how can we close the achievement gap? The following observations resonated with our dialogue participants. They are not intended to be "the answer" to an enormously complex question. However, taken together, they constitute a conceptual framework for businesses contemplating philanthropic and employee involvement in our public schools. 

1.  “Good enough” isn’t.
Our communities need to do a better job educating all of our children.  Too many children begin school under prepared.  Too few children achieve key skills mastery.  The gap in standardized achievement test scores among different groups of children is too wide to be explained by the word “diversity.”

3.  Longer and smaller are better.  “Outside the box” has virtues.
After school, weekend and summer programs targeted to students having academic difficulty and conducted outside of the public school system structure offer increased flexibility and the opportunity for tailored instruction, while delivering more instructional hours in smaller groups.

4.  Better teaching gets better results.
Professional development for teachers, improved recruitment and career launch strategies, and retention programs will upgrade student performance by producing better trained, more motivated, and more experienced teachers.

5.  Effective principals lead effective schools.
Leadership and management development programs for principals will upgrade student performance by improving teacher performance, engaging parents, and allocating resources more effectively.

6.  Employees are parents.
Involved parents have a powerfully positive impact on a student’s achievement.  Small numbers of empowered parents can have an equally positive impact on a school’s performance.  Employers can help employees to support their children’s educational success and to participate constructively in improving individual schools.

7.  Partners outperform lone wolves.
Coalitions are the most effective vehicles for business involvement. Creativity, staying power and school community acceptance are all enhanced when businesses work in broad-based efforts.

Implications for Business Leaders
These observations have a number of implications for business leaders interested in assuring that all children receive excellent educations. As a practical matter, they should:

2.    Support readiness programs for pre-schoolers to produce the greatest long-term impact.

3.    Support after school, summer school, and alternative schools that combine more instructional time with smaller class sizes in order to produce immediate results among in-school children.

4.    Invest in innovative continuing education and peer mentoring for teachers in order to quickly improve morale, effectiveness and student results.

5.    Invest in the professional development of school principals as the fastest, most cost-effective way of improving the performance of entire schools.

6.    Empower employees to participate in the education of their children with information, training, and flexible workplace policies.

7.    Join (and if necessary, start) inclusive community coalitions committed to closing the achievement gap.

A Starting Point
The responsibility for the achievement gap's existence should not be assigned solely to educators. Nor should they be given the sole responsibility for closing it. Our history, our social values, our state's political organization and our continuing role as a magnet for immigrants have created and sustain the gap. It is clearly in the interest of business to play a strong, defined role. It is in the interest of school boards and professional educators to invite us to the effort, in ways we can be effective. The ideas described above, from the perspective of one business organization in one part of our state, are a good place to begin.

Defining the Achievement Gap
Closing the Achievement Gap

Racial Politics and the Elusive Quest for Excellence and Equity in Education: Part 3 - Making Steps Toward Educational Equality

Remedies
Principals and School Leadership
Priorities and Barriers in High School Leadership: A Survey of Principals

Standards and Accountability
AERA Position Statement Concerning High-Stakes Testing in PreK-12 Education

Employees as Parents
How Your Business Can Support Family Involvement in Education - And Benefit

Outside the School-Day Box
Excerpt from: The Potential of After-School Programs

Additional Web Resources
Columbia Teachers' College Record (free registration required)

Connecticut State Department of Education

The Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) 

National Association of Secondary School Principals

United States Department of Education