Evaluating Corporate School-Reform Initiatives
Guidelines for Policymakers
Educators and policymakers are working with corporate leaders to design and implement a growing number of local and national school-reform initiatives. The following questions are designed to stimulate discussion and provide a basis for guidelines in evaluating specific reforms.
Initial Inquiries
The following questions could prove particularly useful in evaluating a reform for approval:
- How will students benefit from the reform?
- Does the proposed reform meet the district’s standards of educational adequacy?
- What is the advocate’s track record on past school-reform efforts or school-business partnerships?
- What was the educational outcome of the advocate’s past interactions with schools?
- Does the proposed reform have a proved educational outcome?
- Is the initiative supported by systematic studies of the proposed practice or policy? If so,
- Are there a number of studies conducted by different institutions over the years?
- Are the institutions that conducted and funded the studies credible?
- Do these studies adequately address competing educational theories?
Likely Effects
School districts generally apply a variety of approaches to the process of defining an adequate education, whereas school reforms advocated by businesses tend to center on the needs of employers, businesses, and the larger economy. School reforms initiated and advocated by businesses often directly or indirectly equate positive educational outcomes with future employability.
Educators evaluating such reforms might consider whether the proposed curriculum change or skills test meets the school district’s standards of educational adequacy. They also might consider the possible outcomes of the proposed reform, intended as well as unintended, long-term as well as short-term.
- How does the proposed reform define a positive educational outcome?
- Is this outcome in keeping with district goals?
- Does the outcome complement or potentially undermine an existing successful educational practice or reform?
- How does the proposed reform relate to educational reforms already in effect?
- How will the reform affect other schools within and across districts?
- Is the initiative a systemic educational reform that effectively redefines the mission of public schools in terms of employer/business needs?
In evaluating systemic educational reforms, educators and policymakers might consider judicial rulings that address educational adequacy in their district, in their state, and throughout the country.
Available Funds
Reforms that raise school standards and hold schools accountable for student performance on newly mandated tests without allocating the necessary public funds could result in what critics call "unfunded mandates." Such mandates effectively call on schools to implement reforms using existing (and often already inadequate) funds or face loss of accreditation and closure.
- Does the reform initiative create an unfunded mandate?
- Does the proposed reform allocate adequate public funds to cover the expenses of implementing the reform?
- Have any of the reform’s corporate advocates lobbied for tax cuts that resulted in reduced funding for public schools?
Valued Partners
Mandated reforms not accompanied by adequate funding can pressure schools to turn to school-business relationships they might otherwise forego. Some educators and policymakers have criticized school-business relationships that commercially exploit children in the classroom, compromise the educational mission of public schools, and violate the public’s trust.
Moreover, some reforms may increase funds to certain "magnet schools" by diverting public funds from the schools that are suffering the most from lack of funds. Schools hardest hit by such reforms are especially susceptible to forming what many critics consider to be inappropriate and unethical types of school-business partnerships.
- Does the reform directly promote school-business partnerships? If so,
- What are the specific terms of these partnerships?
- Are the partnerships structured to be positive learner-centered partnerships that meet the school’s educational requirements?
- Do the partnerships include commercial activities in the classroom?
- Even if school-business partnerships are not directly promoted, is an increase in the number of corporate sponsorships a reasonably foreseeable effect of the reform?
Public Input
Parents and members of the local community have a stake in school reform and in most cases should be involved throughout the process.
- Is the approval process open to the public?
- Is there full public disclosure of the goals, processes, and resources of the corporation or corporate advocacy organization lobbying for the reform?
- Was the proposed reform announced to the public at the very outset of the approval process?
- Are the discussions between corporate advocates and local policymakers open to the public?
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