Business-education Partnerships - Lessons Learned: Assessing The Long-term Impact of Short-term Results

Lessons Learned: Assessing The Long-term Impact of Short-term Results

Donald M. Clark of The American Association for Career Education (AACE), concurs with the report to Congress on the implementation of the School-to-Work Opportunities Act of 1994 that "more must be done to involve employers." He states that studies of "business-education partnerships" since the White House announcement in 1983 urging this type of connection between the two sectors, have consistently pointed out that they have had little, if any, impact on producing fundamental change in the educational system. More specifically, they rarely encompass attempts to affect the curriculum, the overall educational process, or the acquisition of basic skills. Nor have they significantly affected the dropout rate of participating students (Clark, 1996). The evidence of this growing disenchantment by business and industry was seen in the nationwide surveys of employers conducted by the National Center on the Education quality of the Workforce (EQW). The surveys revealed that most partnerships have diffuse and unquantifiable goals and most of the partnership activities are brief and episodic and involve low levels of investment; they seldom run long enough to make a long-term difference.

HRDC’s evaluation of programs for in-school youth, taken from its June 1997 final report on the Effectiveness of Employment-Related Programs for Youth: Lessons Learned from Past Experience sheds more light on the long-term impact of limited short-term results. This study found that the most effective programs for young people provide sustained adult contact. Results indicate that the most effective strategies for keeping young people in school are those that build bridges to the world of work while young people are still in school. The most effective strategies were found to combine a training component with strong links to the employer community, more formal training linked to on-the-job training and work experience, and job search assistance and transitional wage subsidies (HRDC June 1997). There is some evidence that co-operative education programs lead to improved employment outcomes in post-secondary school although the number of work experience placements offered by employers is quite limited. There are a number of concerns regarding the presence of corporations in the school. There is a fear that the active involvement of business will encourage governments to retreat from their role as the primary funders of education (Torjman, 1998). Other issues of corporate involvement in schools reveal disquieting implications of a corporate ideology and ethos entering the learning experience of our young people (Hill and McGowan, 1996). Teachers are concerned that partnerships with corporations involved in military research and development send a clear message to students. The presence of military contractors in classrooms suggests that schools are not concerned with violence and oppression in the world (Hill and McGowan, 1996). Some school boards have developed business-education guidelines which are intended to act as a code that partners can apply to regulate themselves throughout the duration of the partnership but according to the Conference Board of Canada, guidelines and codes of conduct differ significantly (Hill and McGowan, 1996). A code of conduct serves as a screening process to ensure that only socially-responsible businesses are granted access to schools and the partnerships activities would be monitored by an external evaluation committee of parents, community members, teachers and business representatives.