Educational Impacts of Private Sector

A panel discussion was held at the Center for American Progress to discuss the role of the private sector in education on Thursday, May 31.

“Clearly the diversity of the panelists here speak to the … multidisciplinary role to address this challenge,” mediator and Executive Vice President for External Affairs for the Center for American Progress Winnie Stachelberg said.

The panel consisted of Deputy Secretary for the U.S. Department of Education Anthony Wilder Miller, President and CEO of Civic Enterprises John M. Bridgeland, Director of the Center for Great Public Schools for the National Education Association Bill Raabe, and Beth Shiroishi, the AT&T Vice President of Sustainability and Philanthropy.

“I think perhaps business has taken for granted over the past century that we will be able to hire those that we want to hire,” Shiroishi said. “I think as you look over the next 20 to 30 years that really becomes the question if things stay the way they are … business takes the long term view of a talent pipeline.”

Stachelberg believes that an educated workforce is important to improve America’s economy and the improvement of it will make the economy more competitive.

The panel conversed about the current state of the education system and how it compares to other countries, such as Korea, which has a 63 percent college graduate rate compared to the U.S. with 42 percent. Miller discussed the amount of money Koreans spend investing into their children’s education as a top priority.

“The corporate and private sector has to be about broad public and parent engagement. As a society we don’t fully value education … not at the level that we need to,” Miller said.

Aside from science, technology, engineering and math skills, one thing the panel agreed on was the need for students to have better critical thinking skills as well.

According to Shiroishi the cost of training at AT&T has increased significantly over the past 20 to 30 years and new employees are severely lacking in critical thinking skills.

“There are 3.4 million jobs unfilled because where the jobs are you don’t have the right workers with the right skills,” Miller said.

The members of the panel all had different ideas as to what could be done for educational standards, such as systematic approaches, state models for education and targeting low performing schools.

“One of the things that I think in some ways indicts us all is that we can predict all of this,” Raabe said. “We know exactly what’s going to happen: if ‘X’ number of students aren’t going to graduate, ‘X’ number of students are going to end up incarcerated. So the question for us is how do we intervene in ways that make a significant difference. And this is not a union issue, a teacher issue, a public issue ─ this is a societal issue.”

Kate Powley is an intern at the American Journalism Center, a training program run by Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia.

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