Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 5, 1995 TAG: 9507060032
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: HEDRICK SMITH
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
But the forum mixed praise with the warning that America would lose its No. 1 status unless it develops better education for its high-school students.
Thoughtful American business leaders echo that concern about the high cost of America's educational shortfall.
According to Lou Gerstner, chief executive of IBM, Corporate America spends $30 billion a year on remedial education for new workers.
Gerstner says American businesses lose another $30 billion each year, unable to upgrade their operations and products ``because their employees can't learn the necessary skills.''
``We can't squander $60 billion and remain competitive,'' Gerstner declares.
America is justifiably proud of its college-level education and its college-prep track. But high economic performance also requires a world-class education for our average teen-agers.
Seventy percent of the jobs in the American economy do not require a bachelor's degree, and 70 percent of America's young people do not complete four years of college.
They are the backbone of our future work force.
Industry and the service sector need hundreds of thousands of paralegals, radiologists, engineering technicians, graphic illustrators, medical technicians, research workers, plus a more flexible, computer-literate generation for banking, insurance and other service industries.
But America lacks a nationwide educational strategy to meet the mushrooming needs of modern industry.
The most innovative American businesses, educators and communities have discovered that one solution lies in rethinking education and forging a close partnership between business and high schools.
Some innovators have found a model in Germany. Two-thirds of Germany's teen-agers take ``dual education'' that combines classroom learning with half-time training on the job.
This is not mere vocational training in a school shop class with outmoded technology.
German teen-agers are trained right in the modern work place - the factory, bank, hospital, newspaper, insurance company, electronics giant.
Business involvement drives classroom educational standards higher.
In 400 different career fields, German businesses and public schools deliver a world-class education: physics classes that help future auto workers understand electronics and computer-run automation; economics and finance classes that match the needs of modern banking; chemistry classes that prepare young printers to design and print complex illustrations on many surfaces.
Several American states and cities have adapted the German model.
In 1991, Wisconsin began a dual-education, apprenticeship-style program for high-school students in its high-tech printing industry.
So successful was the program that it moved into banking, insurance, health care, electronics, engineering, tourism, auto technology and manufacturing.
From two communities in 1991, Wisconsin's youth-apprenticeship program has spread to 200 businesses training 450 students from 85 high schools across the state.
Pennsylvania, Maine, Arkansas, Maryland and upstate New York have begun similar programs.
In Boston, hospitals and the financial industry are working with inner-city high schools.
In Tulsa, Okla., the lead has been taken by the Chamber of Commerce and the machine-tool industry.
These programs are generating great enthusiasm among businesses, parents, teachers and students.
The results are dramatic: Student motivation and performance have soared.
So a business-education partnership is taking root, but it is slow going. Many people do not know how to begin.
The gulf between business and education is still vast. They speak different languages and go their separate ways.
Rethinking America's educational strategy requires overcoming suspicions, accepting joint responsibility and sitting down together to find the common ground.
Business and education have to rewrite school courses, train industry mentors, retrain teachers and devise industrial and educational standards that meet the test of global competition.
German industry spends about $15 billion a year on dual education. To match that commitment, American industry would have to spend $60 billion a year.
Impossible, you say?
But remember, Lou Gerstner of IBM says that American industry is already spending or losing $60 billion because of our educational shortfall.
So why not spend the money upfront on a world-class, dual-education system?
In 1993, Congress passed the School-to-Work Act, authorizing $250 million a year in seed money for seven years to develop this new strategy for high school education.
States had to compete for federal ``venture capital'' to help them gear up for this new approach.
In 1994, grants went to eight leading-edge states and 36 local areas.
More are lined up this year - that is, unless Congress kills this wise investment in America's future.
That would shortchange both our economy and the next generation.
Hedrick Smith, a Pulitzer Prize-winning former New York Times reporter and producer of PBS documentaries, is author of the new book ``Rethinking America."
- Knight-Ridder/Tribune
by CNB