The trouble with business-education partnerships.

The trouble with business-education partnerships. The steady barrage of redundant articles, task force andcommission reports and forums on "business-educationpartnerships" in recent years continues to represent rhetoric oversubstance. Except for some isolated examples of real collaboration, most"partnerships" that have formed between U.S. schools andbusinesses represent a piecemeal piecemealpatchy, e.g. necrosis of the liver in which groups of hepatocytes are separated by small groups of inflammatory cells and fine, fibrous septa following extension of the inflammatory process beyond the limiting plate. and ineffective approach to educationreform. Most business-education partnerships focus on student activitieswithin individual programs or schools. While these efforts areworthwhile, today's business-education partnerships rarelyencompass attempts to affect curriculum, the overall education processor the acquisition of basic skills. Those of us who directed industry-education alliances and careereducation initiatives in the 1970s and early 1980s were puzzled when theReagan White House seemed to ignore our efforts in favor of a new"business-education partnership" movement. President Reaganurged businesses, government agencies and communities to formpartnerships with every school and community college in the country bythe end of the 1983-84 school year, which he proclaimed pro��claim?tr.v. pro��claimed, pro��claim��ing, pro��claims1. To announce officially and publicly; declare. See Synonyms at announce.2. the NationalYear of Partnerships in Education. Though well-intentioned, what followed was a misguided mis��guid��ed?adj.Based or acting on error; misled: well-intentioned but misguided efforts; misguided do-gooders.mis��guid effort over13 years marked by "tinkering tin��ker?n.1. A traveling mender of metal household utensils.2. Chiefly British A member of any of various traditionally itinerant groups of people living especially in Scotland and Ireland; a traveler.3. at the margin."Business-education partnerships continue to be conducted, for the mostpart, on an unstructured, fragmented, duplicative and ad hoc For this purpose. Meaning "to this" in Latin, it refers to dealing with special situations as they occur rather than functions that are repeated on a regular basis. See ad hoc query and ad hoc mode. basis withemployer involvement primarily in a school here and a classroom there. The National Center on the Educational Quality of the Workforce,in a 1995 study, reports that ,'most partnerships have diffuse diffuse/dif��fuse/1. (di-fus��) not definitely limited or localized.2. (di-fuz��) to pass through or to spread widely through a tissue or substance.dif��fuseadj. andunquantifiable goals, and, in the worst cases, are exercises in publicrelations public relations,activities and policies used to create public interest in a person, idea, product, institution, or business establishment. By its nature, public relations is devoted to serving particular interests by presenting them to the public in the most ." "We sit on some advisory committees and run some programsthat help a few individual students and get good press clippings for thecompany. But we don't fool ourselves that any of this results inany fundamental, systemic change in the way schools operate," oneemployer told interviewers for the Public/Private Ventures survey,"School-to-Work or School-to-What," published in October 1995. How can we make relationships between industry and education moreproductive? At the outset, both sectors need to shelve shelve?v. shelved, shelv��ing, shelvesv.tr.1. To place or arrange on a shelf.2. the rhetoric andfocus on the mission of industry-education collaboration--fosteringsubstantive school improvement and workforce preparation. This requires the employment community to recognize that theentire education system needs help and that effecting change takes time,patience, discipline, hard work, money and commitment (in writing) forthe long term. The Industry-Education Council model put forth in the U.S. in the1960s has proven successful in states such as California, New York New York, state, United StatesNew York,Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of andOhio. Unlike a typical "advisory committee," IECs have afull-time executive director, support staff and a budget with asufficient allocation for staff development. Funding comes from severalsources, including local districts, school-to-work grants, foundationgrants and IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission, Geneva, Switzerland, www.iec.ch) An organization that sets international electrical and electronics standards founded in 1906. It is made up of national committees from over 60 countries. IEC - International Electrotechnical Commission membership fees. Members of the councils are leaders inbusiness, public education, labor, government and the professions, andmany are involved in local economic development initiatives. Once this umbrella mechanism is in place, the IEC can begin todevelop long-term improvements by concentrating on continuing intensivetraining for teachers, counselors and administrators; curriculumrevision; upgrading instructional materials and equipment; and improvingthe effectiveness and efficiency of educational management. For example, the IEC I headed in Niagara Falls, New York Niagara Falls is a city in Niagara County, New York, United States. As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 55,593. It is across the Niagara River from Niagara Falls, Ontario, both named after the famed Niagara Falls which they share. , achievedlong-term results with the steady commitment of its industry players.Over nine years we conducted two semester-long staff developmentprograms to establish career education teams of academic and vocationalteachers, counselors and principals in each school in the district. TheIEC also built an occupational information system and added careerresource centers to each secondary school. Our IEC also offered other semester-long in-service programs forteachers on subject matter, counselors on career clusters Career Clusters provide students with a context for studying traditional academics and learning the skills specific to a career, and provide U.S. schools with a structure for organizing or restructuring curriculum offerings and focusing class make-up by a common theme such as and centraloffice administrators on successful business practices. And weestablished six-week summer internships in industry for teachers andadministrators. All our efforts were geared to effecting long-termchange in the total academic and vocational program Noun 1. vocational program - a program of vocational educationeducational program - a program for providing education . I recommend that the employment community and educators tune outthe rhetoric on "partnerships" that typically function morelike project advisory committees. They could learn from the lessons oneffective, systemwide collaboration established in the 1960s and 1970s.We can't afford a dearth of substantive partnerships betweenindustry and education.Donald M. Clark is president and chief executive officer of theNational Association for Industry-Education Cooperation in Buffalo, NOWYork.