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May 2007
On May 2 Center member Ernst & Young convened a webcast that explored ways top companies can help transform K-12 public education. Moderated by Beth Brooke, Ernst & Young’s global vice chair of strategy and regulatory affairs and a keynote speaker at The Center's 2007 International Corporate Citizenship Conference, the webcast featured Bob Corcoran, president of GE Foundation, Robin Willner, vice president of global community initiatives at IBM, and John Kania, managing director, FSG Social Impact Advisors.
In conjunction with the webcast Ernst & Young released the findings of an independent white paper, “Best in Class: How Top Corporations Can Help Transform Public Education,” intended to guide corporations seeking to maximize their impact on the U.S. education system. The paper, which was written and researched by FSG Social Impact Advisors, includes practical recommendations for how companies can leverage the successes of businesses that already are making an impact on the U.S. education landscape.
“Corporate America has both an opportunity and an obligation to help the U.S. education system – our future workforce and global competitiveness depend on it,” noted Brooke. “The business world has unique skills and competencies that both individually and collectively can help to make a real difference in our education system. This white paper is a strategic framework for companies focused on education reform.”
Research participants included representatives from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, BellSouth Foundation, ExxonMobil, GE Foundation, GlaxoSmithKline, Goldman Sachs Foundation, IBM, Intel, Grantmakers for Education, Junior Achievement Worldwide, Microsoft, and the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, New York Public Schools, Teach for America, Business Roundtable, State Farm Insurance, and Texas Instruments, among others.
The research includes valuable lessons from leading companies that are blazing a trail in public-private partnerships on education. It also provides practical recommendations for how corporations can repeat the successes and avoid the pitfalls of past corporate initiatives in education. Opportunities for corporate involvement fall into three key areas that impact student achievement:
- Teaching and Learning
- Human Capital
- Systems and Structures
The paper highlights six key recommendations to guide corporations and key stakeholders as they design, structure, and implement effective corporate initiatives in education:
- Start at the top: CEO-level commitment can exert significant influence on education reform. A CEO’s decision to adopt the cause of education sends a strong message about the importance to employees and local education stakeholders.
- Lead with your strengths: Education professionals want help with something at which companies excel. Experience suggests that companies which offer initiatives most closely aligned with their own strengths are most effective.
- Scale Appropriately: Avoid trying to have large-scale impact on a school system by applying a small-scale commitment of time and money. A small investment of funding and time will need to be modestly scoped and tightly managed.
- Adapt, don’t prescribe: Create programs around local classroom, school, and district needs – don’t offer prepackaged solutions. The most effective programs include collaboration with partners and experts around existing entry points.
- Be in it for the long haul: Education improvement requires a long-term commitment – quick fixes and shortcuts are not appropriate. Improving educational outcomes is not a short term intervention.
- Measure and Manage: Measuring success will ensure a greater likelihood of improved educational outcomes. Setting measurable, achievable goals for initiatives is a critical success factor for a program that is sustainable and delivers results.
In addition, corporations can serve as better agents of change by adopting systemic problem-solving approaches to the persistent, chronic challenges facing the U.S. education system today. Only a handful of corporations are currently engaging in systemic methods to education reform (e.g. lobbying federal and state policy makers, convening stakeholders and communities, mentoring urban school district leaders) and there is a greater need for widespread involvement in this type of corporate philanthropy.
“The most effective firms have moved beyond simply writing checks to improve education and are applying their full range of management and technical expertise to address problems in the education system,” noted John Kania, executive director, FSG Social Impact Advisors. “Still, there is a unique opportunity for corporations to do more by focusing on more systemic problems, scaling effective solutions and collaborating with other companies and funders on educational improvement.”
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