Study outlines how businesses can better serve local schools by Laura Devaney

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"Harvard study reveals how a new roadmap could benefit U.S. public education. summarizes Laura Devaney, Director of News.

U.S. businesses could increase their positive contribution to and impact on public K-12 education if they adopt a newly-established approach that connects students in poverty to services essential to their success.

Photo: eSchool News

The study, released by Harvard Business School’s U.S. Competiveness Project, focuses on communities across the nation that have implemented the Collective Impact approach and have seen meaningful improvement in educational outcomes.

The report, Business Aligning for Students: The Promise of Collective Impact, provides a roadmap for how business leaders can actively participate in Collective Impact. American businesses donate $3 to $4 billion dollars and countless volunteer hours to American public education every year.

Collective Impact provides a process and structure to the system communities usually have for supporting their students. The approach brings together community leaders from the school district, business and nonprofit organizations, government, parent groups, and religious organizations. Collective Impact helps these diverse stakeholders work together to ensure pre-K-12 students are receiving services essential for learning from tutoring to nutrition to mentoring.

By focusing on specific goals, improving the quality and coverage of services, identifying best practices and rigorously measuring results, Collective Impact moves the current service delivery system from chaos to coherence.

Photo: Allen S. Grossman

“Despite the sustained commitment of business leaders, they are often frustrated by the slow pace of education improvement in their communities. We found that if businesses join forces with others through Collective Impact – they can align and coordinate their efforts and together make more meaningful progress in improving students’ performance,” said Allen S. Grossman, Senior Fellow at Harvard Business School and author of the new report. “We encourage business leaders, who collaborate and rely on data to run their businesses, to take a similar approach to supporting public education. Collective Impact has the potential to be a game changer in American education.”
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Additional resources

Business Aligning for Students: The Promise of Collective Impact (PDF)

Source: eSchool News