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March 2008
How can a corporation – even a major multinational – hope to make a real impact on solving the problems of the U.S. public schools? This question troubles many corporate leaders who are frustrated with the slow pace of progress in improving our schools. After all, while many companies have created impressive education initiatives, their impact is often limited to a relative handful of schools. As such, they can't make much of a dent in a system that educates more than 50 million students. Meeting this challenge will clearly require more aggressive efforts to take the most promising solutions to scale. This is one of the major issues we'll be discussing during the special pre-conference event The Center is hosting in Boston on Saturday, April 5: Transforming Business/Education Partnerships: Seeking Solutions for the 21st Century. (See box at right.) The event is timed to immediately precede our International Corporate Citizenship Conference taking place in Boston on April 6-8.
We are pleased that our discussion on scaling up will be led in part by Gerald McElvy, President of the ExxonMobil Foundation.
Last spring, ExxonMobil launched what is arguably the most dramatic effort yet by a U.S. corporation to scale up promising education programs. Exxon gave $125 million – the largest grant in its history – to help launch the National Math and Science Initiative (NMSI), an innovative, non-profit organization dedicated to expanding programs that have a proven impact on math and science.
Exxon's grant was a notable break with standard corporate practice. Typically, companies insist on "branding" their education initiatives. Indeed, the publicity such programs receive is often a major rationale for undertaking them.
With NMSI, Exxon resisted this impulse. Even as it gave $125 million, it didn't insist that the program be renamed the "Exxon" Math and Science Initiative. The reason: Exxon is hoping that the National Math and Science Initiative will attract many other corporate supporters who will use this vehicle to help scale up the most promising programs. Obviously, other companies would be far less likely to support the initiative if it bore Exxon's name.
But how realistic is it that other companies would be willing to give up at least some of the benefits of branding to support an initiative like NMSI? And how can NMSI work with corporate supporters to help them get credit for their support? These are some of the questions our panel will address on April 5.
McElvy recently spoke with William Symonds, a senior fellow at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, who is organizing The Center's April 5 conference. His remarks offer a preview of the stimulating conversation we can expect that day.
QUESTION: How long has Exxon been supporting education?
MCELVY: For more than 100 years. John D. Rockefeller provided significant early funding for Spelman College in Atlanta in the late 19th century. And we have had a foundation focused largely on education since 1950.
QUESTION: What led to your decision to support NMSI?
MCELVY: This is quite a departure from what we have done before. We are hoping to have a significant impact across the country, as opposed to just those communities in which we operate. We recognize that we cannot do this by ourselves. Even though we have made a significant commitment with our $125 million grant, that is still only about one-eighth of the funding needed just to carry out NMSI's initial plan.
QUESTION: So from the very beginning, your aim is to recruit other companies to join this crusade?
MCELVY: Yes, we need significantly more collaboration among companies. The basic challenge is that we are trying to change or influence an education system that spends in the range of $500 billion a year. Yet there are many different approaches to reform. But if we're going to influence math and science education, we need to have a stronger focus on those programs that have been proven successful. And we need to provide the resources to make sure these programs are made available to as many students as possible.
QUESTION: What attracted to you to NMSI?
MCELVY: It has a very experienced management team – a team that understands our political system, the Department of Education, and that has worked around the country. Because of this team, you can really think about moving a program out across the country.
QUESTION: How do you expect to get other companies to support NMSI, if they feel they need to get credit for their philanthropy?
MCELVY: That's a great question, and it's tougher to answer. One possible solution: NMSI is more than willing to allow a company to adopt one of its programs in an area where the company is based, and co-brand it with NMSI in that area. It is tough. But ultimately, I think a company has to be willing to stand back and agree that the greater good is more important, especially when we're addressing a national problem.
QUESTION: How did Exxon and NMSI select the first two programs that NMSI is scaling up: UTeach and Advanced Placement Strategies?
MCELVY: The seed corn for all of this was the 2006 report of the National Academies, "Rising Above the Gathering Storm." Exxon's then-Chairman Lee Raymond was part of the committee that produced the report, and it recognized both these programs. One clear conclusion was that if we want to solve our national competitiveness problem, we need to get more kids to take and pass Advanced Placement (AP) courses. Until now, many low-income kids haven't had access to AP courses, because their school didn't offer them, often because they couldn't afford the cost. Yet in Dallas, where this program was piloted, AP Strategies was able to achieve a remarkable increase in the number of kids who are taking and passing AP exams. And if we can do it in a district like Dallas, we should be able to do it across the country.
QUESTION: You have said that these two programs are just the beginning, and that you'd like to see NMSI scale up other good programs as well. Do you have any in mind?
MCELVY: Yes, right now Exxon is supporting a program called Reasoning Mind, which represents a fairly radical departure from the way we teach math to middle school kids. It has been very successful, based on the small pilot studies we have done. We have gotten Houston and some other districts to try this. But having to sell this district-by-district is an awesome problem. We think this is a highly scalable program that could benefit from NMSI, once it has been proven as truly effective.
CLOSING: Thank you. We look forward to hearing more about NMSI, and the challenges of scaling up, on April 5!
On Saturday, April 5, The Boston College Center will host a one-day conference, Transforming Business/Education Partnerships: Seeking Solutions for the 21st Century
Speakers will include Gerald McElvy, President of the ExxonMobil Foundation, Sarah Dillard, chief of staff at the National Math and Science Initiative. And they will be joined by Cathleen A. Barton, U.S. Education Manager for Intel, who will discuss Intel's innovative ideas for achieving scale – including a framework for "pre-competitive collaboration" that allows medium and smaller companies to work on a project with giants like Intel.
The challenge of scaling up the best programs is just one of the major issues we'll be tackling on April 5. Other panels will discuss:
» why business as usual is no longer good enough in business/education partnerships
» the need for rigorous measurement in creating effective programs » how some corporations have created pro-active partnerships.
In addition, we'll be hearing from two stimulating speakers:
» Paul Gudonis, President of U.S. First, which runs the acclaimed First robotics competitions. These lively events are remarkably effective in turning high school students onto the excitement of a career in engineering.
» Tony Wagner, director of the Change Leadership Group at Harvard, who will be speaking about his new book, "The Global Achievement Gap." This book discusses how U.S. students are falling behind their overseas counterparts.
Learn more and register
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