Education works - we need your experience and ideas!

Several of us at the Fund have been spending considerable time of late on the issues of talent (i.e., work force preparation and educational excellence). In conjunction with The Cleveland Foundation, the Jennings Foundation, and the Gund Foundation, we have just launched Education Works, which is intended to identify and sponsor innovative collaborations between high schools, higher education, and work force programs to increase the rate at which students go on to higher education, are prepared when they arrive, and graduate successfully. This program hopes to build on successful models such as Youngstown’s Steel to Scholars, the Stark Education Partnership, and some of the creative programs of our community colleges. As end products, it aims to highlight best practices (nationally and regionally), fund a series of pilots, build a regional network of players across the sectors, and set forth a program to bring what works to scale.

 

The planning committee is led by Bill Hiller of the Jennings Foundation, a seasoned educator (a former high school principal) and one of the most active philanthropists in Ohio education. The project manager is Ann Smith, who also has experience as a middle school teacher (Montessori!), and whose professional background spans law, consulting, and more recently, executive search. Assisting the team will be Cambridge Leadership Associates, a firm that specializes in “adaptive leadership,” which focuses on building networks of the type targeted in this work.

 

Imagine if we could get the percentage of high school students moving on to higher education up to 80% (it is below 60% today), those needing “remediation” below 25% (from over 40% today), and those who complete their degree within 6 years to 75% (it is now less than 50%). The early experience in Stark County and elsewhere suggests this is possible. The return would be measured in the tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars and, more importantly, we would be on a course to real and sustainable economic competitiveness.