Develop a Strategic Plan to Raise Graduation Rates throughout the Greater Atlanta Metropolitan Region
Company/Organization: Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce
CEO/Board Chair: Richard A. Anderson, 2007 Chair of Board and Group President, Global Business Services, AT&T
State: Georgia
Level of Involvement: District
Community: Atlanta
Type of Initiative: Advocacy, Expertise and Leadership
Target Education Priority: Prepare All High School Graduates for College and Careers
“For 30 years, the chamber has been the door the business community walks through to engage in education – and that tradition continues. As business leaders, we understand the work force of tomorrow is sitting in the classrooms of today. Investing in them is the smartest things we can do to make sure Atlanta continues to prosper.” Michael D. Garrett, president and CEO of Georgia Power Co & 2006 chairman of the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce and 2006 honorary co-chairman of the A+ Awards.
The Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce is no stranger to education reform. For the past three decades, the Chamber’s Regional Education and Atlanta Public School Education Committees have cultivated and maintained strong relationships with Atlanta’s public schools, simultaneously providing the region’s business community with a variety of opportunities to volunteer time, money and expertise to improve education in Atlanta. Having created a variety of successful programs connecting the business community with Atlanta’s education system through the Atlanta Partners for Education, such as Principal for a Day – which facilitates partnerships between CEOs and principals – and the A+ Awards – a recognition of outstanding teachers and administrators – when the business and education community each expressed a desire to do more to “move the needle,” the Chamber was ready to find new ways to revamp and expand their programs.
In an effort to streamline, reenergize, and leverage business-led efforts to improve the entire metro Atlanta region, the Chamber divided its education efforts by forming a committee, Atlanta Partners for Education, to focus only on AtlantaPublic Schools and another, the Regional Education Policy Committee to focus on the metro Atlanta region’s schools.
In gearing up to develop a new strategy for involvement in Atlanta Public Schools Education, the Chamber’s Atlanta Partners for Education Committee adopted a business-oriented approach. It first explored the impact of existing partnerships, hiring a consulting firm to evaluate various high-impact programs throughout the U.S. and the Chamber’s own education-based programs from the past three years to find out what was most effective. The Chamber realized there was much to learn about strategies developed by themselves and by other organizations across the country. Additionally, the Atlanta Partners for Education was reorganized to allow for greater communication, strengthened resources, and greater synergies for Atlanta base projects.
The Regional Education Policy Committee also convened a task force of the major “clients” of the partnerships, inviting a number of the region’s superintendents, educators and business and community leaders to participate in discussions, focus groups and surveys. What emerged loud and clear from these discussions and evaluations was a consensus that the Chamber should both broaden its focus to the state level and sharpen its focus on specific areas of reform. In 2006, the Committee formed four new subcommittees to focus on high-impact areas as identified by a number of the region’s superintendents: High School Graduation; Teacher Recruitment; Local Board Governance; and Workforce Development.
The Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce leverages strategic business expertise, advocacy and leadership tools recommended by Business Toolkit for Better Schools, including,
- Use the bully pulpit to make the case that the global economy demands higher expectations, a renewed commitment to math and science investments and data-driven decision making
- Communicate with the public, media, employees and students about the importance of public education reform to companies, America's competitiveness, individual citizens and society at large
- Identify and support senior staff to focus their time on education policy and reform
- Join or start local or statewide nonprofit coalitions of like-minded business leaders to advance education reform
- Sustain the public’s commitment to school reform over time
- Take the “long view” (beyond political election cycles) and bring neutrality to politically polarized situations
- Partner with school districts to upgrade educator professional development, in, for example, mathematics and science
- Serve as “loaned executives” in school districts
There is little doubt that the Atlanta Partners for Education program is still going strong. When the Chamber first began cultivating business-education partnerships in the greater Atlanta region, the leadership established a goal of ensuring that every school in the district would have a business partner. In 2006, the Chamber achieved this goal, with business involvement in all 89 of the district’s public schools. In part, reaching this goal combined with the significant commitment of the business and education community to change that spurred the Chamber’s decision to evaluate the current programs and look for new ways to form sustainable partnerships.
Since the Regional Education subcommittees have only been created in the past year, the major work is yet to come. Leaders throughout the Atlanta region work now are developing long-term strategies to reach their defined goals. In one of its first actions, the subcommittee on high school graduation hired a consultant to complete a data gap analysis to find out exactly what education data is being collected versus what education data should be collected. The goal: Ensure interventions can successfully reach all students in the education pipeline. More generally, with the huge buy-in from both educators and administrators, along with seasoned leadership, the Regional Education Committee and the four new subcommittees are setting the Chamber’s next wave of initiatives up for success.
Website
Materials for the Public
- Michael Garrett, “Why You Should Care About City’s Public Schools.” Atlanta Business Chronicle, April 14-20, 2006
- Atlanta Partners for Education - Summary of Best Practices, Prepared by Bain Consulting, Jan. 2007
- Regional Education Committee Fact Sheet
- Regional Education Committee, High School Graduation Subcommittee Vision Statement
- Atlanta Partners for Education Fact Sheet
Updated: March 2007
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