EAST LANSING – Forgoing the usual discussions by education experts, the Governor’s Education Summit launched Monday morning with panels of business leaders and college students discussing how the various levels of education could better work with business to ensure students are prepared for in-demand careers.
Governor Rick Snyder, opening the event, called out both the education community and business for not working together to prepare students. Education tends to avoid career preparation, but the business community also has not been good at providing forecasts of its need, he said.
“For our most precious asset, we’ve built a system that doesn’t work anymore,” he said to the educators in the room. “You’re doing a great job giving them knowledge, but then you’re letting them go out (without any exposure to careers).”
Superintendent of Public Instruction Mike Flanagan said there has always been some tension between the business community and education. “When I was superintendent (at Farmington Schools), I gave space that we had to the Chamber of Commerce,” he said. “I couldn’t believe the backlash.”
“Most of us in education have grown up with an ethic that was something like this: education for education’s sake,” Flanagan said. “That’s just silly.”
But Snyder said the business community also has not made sure that educators know what they need now or expect to need in the future. “If you don’t know where the demand is, it makes it tough, he said.
Doug Rothwell, CEO of Business Leaders for Michigan, acknowledged forecasting skill need is difficult. But he said that is why it is also important for schools to teach students flexibility. “We need people with the skills to adapt to changes in their careers,” he said. “A lot of that comes from a good liberal arts education.”
Snyder said both sides need to take back the other’s messages to make necessary changes to the way they operate.
“That’s what the goal of all this is: to take collaboration and creation and connect the two worlds,” he said. “Whoever does it best and fastest will have an advantage. … By my estimation a 10- to 20-year advantage.”
Snyder said the disconnect between business and education is not new. He said when he was graduating high school and college, “there was very little help. You just went out and got a job.”
“Simply the most important thing that could come out of this session is a commitment by the education community to look at your career counseling and career curriculum,” Rothwell said.
Among the panel of students, none had heard of the career they are now planning before entering college.
“I came into school wanting to be a lawyer. Now I’m interested in fundraising and development,” said Page Narins, a student at Albion College. And she said her experiences in the state encouraged her to try to stay here after she graduates.
Kathryn Danielson of Baraga, attending Michigan Technological University, had only been exposed to a few careers, including nursing, so that was her planned track until she started college. She is now majoring in process engineering. “I got really involved in the math part,” she said.
“There seems to be something of a disconnect between education and business and the opportunities that are there,” said Michigan Economic Development Corporation CEO Michael Finney.
Bill Parfet, CEO of MPI Research in Kalamazoo, said some off the jobs currently in demand in some ways went against the usual message to students. “I was a little surprised about the skilled trades,” he said.
Getting students interested in those trades, those, is difficult, Rothwell said. “The kids’ perception of manufacturing isn’t very good,” he said. “One of the things business needs to consider is how can we improve the image of industry.”
Michigan was once a leader in the industrial workforce, he said, but the recent decline of manufacturing in the state forced many of those workers to find work elsewhere. “Now that we need them again, where is everybody?” he said.
Snyder encouraged educators to give the same emphasis to career awareness that they do to other subjects. “We invest a lot in bringing fourth-graders to the Capitol,” he said of the groups he regularly addresses there. “Why wouldn’t we have the same enthusiasm about exposing them to the private sector.”
In a press conference following his address, Snyder acknowledged the field trips have been among the things cut as part of recent budget cuts, but he said many in the business community would be willing to underwrite a trip to their facility, or at least be willing to come into the classroom to discuss what they do.
Student Heather Woldron of Petoskey said during the panel that students should be exposed to internships in high school and not wait until college.
“It’s really about developing a pipeline,” student Andrew Sierra of Flint. Schools should be preparing students for college, and colleges should be partnering with businesses.
Snyder said the business community also needs to reach out to students. He spoke of one student who sent out 50 resumes as she neared graduation. “What she got from that? Nothing,” he said. “That emphasizes that there’s a problem.”
There was general support among the conference leaders for maintaining the state’s standards and curriculum, including its adoption of the Common Core standards.
“We should feel proud of the Michigan Merit Curriculum,” Flanagan said. “The reason is look at the results.”
While he acknowledged the state still has improvements to make, it is seeing ACT scores and student achievement improve.
Dane Linn, vice president of education and workforce at the Business Roundtable, a national group of business executives headed by former Governor John Engler, acknowledged those who oppose the Common Core because it has, in part, been driven by the Obama administration. He said the Business Roundtable had urged the president not to make adopting the standard part of the “Race to the Top” competition standards.
And to those opponents, he said, “Get over it.”
“The Common Core state standards is the best effort in our country to have everyone college and career ready. We should be putting students on a trajectory that allow students to succeed whether they choose college or not,” he said, drawing applause from the summit attendees.
Snyder acknowledged some are concerned that the state is trying to push all students into a degree program, but he said the standards are the same no matter the student’s goals. “Why do we have the college part?” he said. “Shouldn’t it just be career ready?”
At the end of the day, though, Snyder said it was important not to shift education too much toward career preparation. “There are two reasons we have an education system. …The first is to help people get a career. … The other is just self-enrichment,” he said. “We should never tell anyone they have to pick one or the other.”
Snyder also broke the pattern for the event, providing not only the opening address, but also the closing, and he remained at the event for most of the day.
Snyder Communications Director Jeff Holyfield said his attendance at the event mirrored what he did at the economic summit, and was intended to show that both sides of the equation were important.
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