A r c h i v e d I n f o r m a t i o n
Using Technology to Strengthen Employee and Family Involvement in Education - 1998
Corporate Experiences
Business can help address these challenges, its own needs, and those of families, schools, and communities as a key community stakeholder. The Conference Board surveyed 12 companies and organizations whose programs include the use of technology to strengthen employee and family involvement in education. Survey results yielded the following information:
Demographics
- The companies are from industries including telecommunications, networking, accounting, publishing, oil, insurance, financial services, high-tech, and educational publishing.
- Work sites are in local, state, regional, national, and international locations.
- Company-wide workforce populations range from fewer than 100 to more than 200,000.
Issues That Spurred Company Efforts
- Workforce skill needs
- Community relations, including consumer loyalty and local, state, and national school improvement
- Technology capability of schools, teachers, and students
- Local schooling (level of student achievement, dropout rate, etc.)
- The gap between what students are learning and what business needs
- Mobilizing communities to accomplish school improvement goals
- Employee and family well-being
History
- More than 50 percent have had their technology in education efforts in place from two to five years.
- Nearly 20 percent had their initiatives in place from five to eight years.
- More than 25 percent had their effort in place for more than eight years.
- Approximately 50 percent say that the planned length for their multi-year efforts is open-ended; the remainder have set the years 2000 or 2001 as a cut-off date, subject to review of outcomes.
Management Structures
- Structures range from within one company department or division to company-wide.
- Senior management—whether CEOs, a city's mayor, and/or managers of company-wide business units or divisions—have championed the efforts.
Needs Assessment
- Companies determined how technology would be used as a tool to support their efforts through internal company audits of employer, employee, and family concerns and community audits.
- Assessment strategies included market research, assessing customer needs, benchmarking, review of reports and studies identifying needs and current best practices, focus groups and task forces, interviews, and participation in blue ribbon commissions.
- Following the assessments, companies and their partners set priorities, standards, goals, and objectives to address identified needs.
Target Groups for Company Efforts
Primary:
students (pre-K-12), families, employees, other employers (in collaborative efforts), teachers and school administrators, and community groups and leaders. Secondary:
national education-related and other nonprofit organizations, government, and higher education. Technology Tools
- Training
- Computers
- Technical assistance
- Online information access
- LAN/WAN components
- Internet access
- Monitors
- Software manuals
- Speakers
Methods to Overcome Challenges
- Consistent and clear communication.
- Clear guidelines for schools and other community learning centers in relation to company-sponsored efforts.
- Collaborative procedures and strategies to ensure long-term stakeholder support and participation.
- Maintenance and/or expansion of strong company management support and volunteer efforts.
- Becoming a catalyst for purposes of program development, expansion, and leveraging.
- Adapting the training provided to schools/school districts to focus on strategic uses of technology rather than specific "how-to" instructions. (Company employees become trainers, mentors, and consultants for teachers and administrators. To overcome teachers' fear of change, training includes ongoing seminars and workshops, opportunities for sharing best practices via listserves, Web sites and conferences, and/or sponsorship of national training companies that provide low-cost and specific curriculum integration training. The training can take place in centers off-campus where teachers feel less constrained to ask questions and experiment and continue on an as-needed basis.)
- Educating school leadership about the need for staffing through company volunteers and loaned executives.
- Ensuring that company efforts are adequately staffed in order to respond efficiently and effectively to partners.
- Ongoing monitoring, review, renewal, and adjustment of a company's initiative to maintain relevance, timeliness, and effectiveness via numerous strategies:
- letters of commitment from school personnel;
- modeling the expanded uses of technology;
- providing schools with ideas that have worked in other communities to maintain project momentum;
- establishing incentives programs to encourage ongoing participation and commitment from schools and employee volunteers; and
- allocating and monitoring the use of resources (financial, human, materials/equipment) for training for leadership and participation.
- Expanding equal access by working to provide a range of solutions at varying price points to facilitate the sharing of best funding models from community to community, and to provide flexible license agreements that allow schools to rent equipment to those that cannot afford to buy them.
- Helping schools and other community centers to maximize the Universal Service Fund and leverage additional financial support from foundations and state and federal agencies through community collaboration and matching opportunities.
Monitoring and Assessment Tools That Document Results
- Anecdotal evidence or word of mouth
- Media reporting (print, radio, television)
- Reports
- Records
- Surveys/questionnaires
- Awards to the company
- Expanded employee volunteerism
- Internal and external studies
- Contracted evaluations
Documented results reported for the company and its employees (with or without children):
- Expanded family and employee involvement in education
- Increased family and employee use of technology to support learning
- Improved company image, morale, and balance of family life and work life
Documented results of community, school, family, and student efforts using technology:
- Support for and improvement in the preparation and skills of the entering workforce, high academic standards, and student achievement
- Support for school's access to technology
- Increased educator use of technology to manage and deliver instruction and curriculum
- Connectivity of employers and employees to schools, homes, and other community centers of learning
- Help to schools and community learning centers to upgrade their technology (infrastructure, hardware and software, connectivity)
Through creative uses of technology, 12 companies and organizations are successfully bringing together other stakeholders to strengthen employee and family involvement in education. These efforts appear to cut across all areas of support. However, program emphasis is placed on:
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[Conclusion: Business-Education Partnerships] 
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[Hewlett-Packard Company]