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November 2008— Vol. 86, No. 9

CBIA’s Education Foundation

Building tomorrow’s workforce today

Celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, the Foundation is poised to face some of its biggest challenges yet.

 

What is the purpose of education? Good question—and one that has vexed scholars, teachers, and policymakers for centuries. In fact, ask 100 people and you’re likely to get 100 different answers. Yet if you asked Connecticut business leaders in 2008, you might get some consensus: At least one key purpose of education is to ensure the economic competitiveness of our state.

“Connecticut needs to protect its strategic advantage, which has traditionally been its highly skilled workforce,” says CBIA President and CEO John Rathgeber. “Many other states and countries are investing in their workforces and are now surpassing us in key areas. To make up that ground, the business community, educators, and policymakers must work together to build a more robust education and training pipeline to the workplace—especially to those sectors that drive our overall economy and rely heavily on innovation and productivity to be competitive and successful.”

Helping to build that pipeline is job one for the CBIA Education Foundation. Established in 1983 as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit affiliate of CBIA, the Education Foundation is dedicated to developing a knowledgeable, highly skilled workforce in Connecticut—one that enables our businesses to compete in a technological and global economy.

Lauren Weisberg Kaufman, executive director of the Education Foundation and CBIA’s vice president for education and training policy, is well aware of the urgency of her mission. “We are letting far too many young people leave high school without the skills to succeed in post-secondary education or the workplace,” she says. “Given changing demographics and intensifying global competition, our state is at risk of not meeting the labor needs of its employers.”

That’s not going to happen if Kaufman has anything to do with it. And if history is any indication, she will. Since the Foundation’s inception, Kaufman has secured more than $20 million in grant funding to ensure a first-rate workforce for Connecticut’s manufacturing, bioscience pharmaceutical, and insurance and financial services industries. She explains the Education Foundation’s three-pronged approach to the task:

1. Improve school performance and student achievement by strengthening school/business partnerships.
2. Provide career exploration opportunities and hands-on workplace experiences for students and teachers.
3. Promote job training and school and college curricula that match employers’ needs.

“We’re not an endowed foundation,” says Kaufman, “so it’s essential that we keep grant money coming in
if we’re going to effectively address Connecticut’s workforce development needs. Our track record of
creating innovative model programs and cultivating public/private-sector partnerships in education and job training goes a long way toward assuring funding agencies that we can deliver.”

And, Kaufman adds, “we’ve beensuccessful at keeping education and workforce development grants focused on areas most important to CBIA members.”

Raising expectations for schools and students

One of those areas—perhaps the most critical right now—is improving school performance and student achievement. As last February’s issue of CBIA News made clear, schools need to ensure that all
graduates have the skills, knowledge, and attitude to succeed in college or the workplace—and in life.

The connection between schools and workplace readiness has not been lost on our state’s employers. According to CBIA’s 2008 survey Availability of Skilled Workers in Connecticut, 44% of employers blame the shortage of qualified job applicants on schools—more precisely, on their failure to prepare students for the job market. An overwhelming majority (85%) said improving the K-12 public education system could have a strong to very strong impact on Connecticut’s future workforce by preparing highly skilled, job-ready young people. And even more (98%) said that expanded initiatives in math and science are important to preparing students for future careers.

“We have two challenges,” says CBIA’s Rathgeber. “One, improving student achievement, especially in math and science, so that we can compete internationally. And two, closing the achievement gap for urban minority students who are far from meeting current state goals.”

Recently, small improvements in test scores suggest that we may be on the road to meeting those challenges. The results of the 2008 Connecticut Academic Performance Test (CAPT), taken by all of the state’s tenth-graders, show modest gains in key areas. The percentage of students scoring at or above goal in math, for example, increased by almost five percentage points from last year. In science, that number went up by two points. The percentage of black and Hispanic students scoring at or above goal in math increased by 4.1 and 3.6 points respectively. In science, those increases were 2.6 and 2.8 percentage points.

State Education Commissioner Dr. Mark McQuillan cautions, however, that there is much work to be done. “While these gains are genuinely encouraging,” he says, “it is important to remember that far lower percentages of minority students perform at proficient and goal levels than white students.”

CBIA’s Education Foundation is addressing the challenges of school and student improvement through three key programs: Project Opening Doors, Vanguard Schools, and the creation of learning academies—most recently the Academy of Engineering and Green Technology in Hartford. “Ultimately,” says Kaufman, “all of these initiatives work to raise expectations, both for school and student performance.”

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