DeKalb Chamber not ‘Waiting for Superman’ to Leap Into Education Issues

With accreditation, budget and leadership issues breathing down the DeKalb County School system’s neck, the Chamber of Commerce is not waiting around.

At a screening last week of the Davis Guggenheim 2010 education documentary “Waiting For Superman,” followed by a moderated question-and-answer forum, the business organization opened up an opportunity for the community to weigh in.

Panel participants, moderated by Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Maureen Downey, included DeKalb Technical Institute president Robin Hoffman, Organization of DeKalb Educators president David Schutten, Atkins Engineering regional vice president Douglas Hooker and the Communities in Schools of Georgia co-founder and president Neil Shorthouse.

The screening was sponsored through grant funding from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s National Chamber Foundation, and the event took place at the Rehoboth Baptist Church on Lawrenceville Highway in Tucker.

“The U.S. Chamber is particularly interested in getting business more involved in education and education reform,” said DeKalb Chamber President and CEO Leonardo McClarty. “There is room for educational reform and balance, but income too often dictates the options the kids have. Business involvement can help turn that around.”

In general, the panelists expressed doubts that quick-fixes and gimmicks such as for-profit charter schools or outsourced management systems would supplant trained, well-supported educators as offering the best way to improve schools. All placed the responsibility for good schools squarely on the communities they serve.

“It takes more than a good school to create a good student,” Shorthouse said. “If the community doesn’t want to take responsibility for the school’s success, then they won’t have success… The parents that say their schools are good don’t know what they’re talking about. A lot of times they grew up in that school; it was a bad school, but because it’s their school, then they say it's a good school. They just don’t know.”

In higher education, Hoffman said, students need to know their options. “We need to let kids know there is more than one type of college. Only 20 percent of jobs will require a four-year degree, so we need to define what college means for them.”

While she said not all students will or should aspire to a four-year bachelor’s degree, she agreed the schools’ current emphasis on minimum, across-the-board, college-prep diploma for graduates is good policy. She bemoaned, however, that more than 35 percent of new students require at least one remedial course and that some will have to have as much as a year and a half of remedial work before they are prepared for post-high school study.

Schutten urged that businesses put more than just money into the schools. “When you focus primarily on the money of education, you’re mistaken. We must look at the execution, because the money put in the system is not changing the outcome… The biggest investment that businesses can put into the schools is their time. We need you to go in and tutor the kids.

We have young boys with huge anger problems, and they need mentors.”

The panelists also weighed in on the kind of superintendent they hoped DeKalb would find as its next leader, one they hoped would have a “passion for education” and “is not afraid to challenge the status quo.”

In some ways, they charged, DeKalb’s system has been compromised by too many cuts, leaving voids in leadership of the gifted and some math programs. Hooker called for a rethinking of the 180-day schoolyear, one he charged was outdated and based on the 19th century agriculture-based economy more than todays’s highly specialized and competitive global economy.

The chamber will continue its education dialogue at a June 6 "First Monday" luncheon with Kennesaw State University President Betty Siegel. For information on the panel, including the link to a YouTube screening of the panel discussion, click here.