California Business
Leaders Join Forces to Pursue
Education Reform Agenda
Leading California business organizations
and businesses today announced the formation of California Business
for Education Excellence.
The coalition, composed of seven business
organizations and four California companies with a long term
involvement in education reform, will focus on insuring that
recently adopted statewide academic standards are implemented
in all public schools.
Coalition Chairman Bill Hauck, President
of the California Business Roundtable said, "California
business leaders, while pleased with the progress made in the
last few years in improving public schools still believe that
we need to do more to assure that our young people are properly
trained to succeed in a very competitive world."
California Business for Education Excellence
will concentrate on school accountability and additional competition.
In the area of accountability the group will work to assure that:
- Academic standards are set to globally
competitive levels.
- Curriculum and teacher preparation is
aligned with the standards.
- Statewide assessments measure performance
against the standards and the global competitors.
- Meaningful consequences are directly related
to student, teacher and school standards-based performance.
Additionally, the coalition will concentrate
its efforts related to competition to achieve the following goals:
- Permitting parents and families to choose
the best public
school for their children.
- Increasing choice in education by supporting
the creation of
more charter public schools.
- Increasing school site control of non-charter
public schools.
Reed Hastings, President of the Technology
Network and a proponent of Charter Schools indicated that the
coalition would work to expand the number of charter schools
and specifically for assistance in funding classroom facilities
for start-up schools.
The initial policy goals of California
Business for Education Excellence will be to:
- Develop new statewide assessments that
are aligned with the
new standards.
- Provide financial support for Charter
School facility costs.
- Facilitate innovations and improvements
at the local level by
reducing statewide regulations.
- Provide new consequences for students,
teachers, administrators
and schools based on standards-based performance.
In addition to Hauck as the Chairman, other
officers are: Reed Hastings, Vice-Chairman, and Joe Dooling of
AEA as Treasurer (Please see attached
quote sheet)..
The coalition is in the process of recruiting
an executive director and will initially be housed with the American
Electronics Association in Sacramento.
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