Blog: Claudia Imhoff

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CEOs Take Stock in America's Future

I just read an interesting article in April's CEO Magazine entitled "Fixing America's Future". Apparently, our public school systems have caught the attention of concerned CEOs. More and more of them are committed to championing school reform. Why? Read on to find out.

Perhaps Bill Gates expresses their concerns best. The Microsoft cofounder said in a February speech, "When I compare our high schools with what I see when I'm traveling abroad, I am terrified for our work force of tomorrow."

Louis Gerstner (retired IBM CEO), Craig Barrett (CEO of Intel), Jack Welch (retired GE CEO), Chris Gabrielli (founder of GMIS) Reed Hastings (founder of Netflix), Jeanette Wagner (former Vice Chairman of Estee Lauder), and numerous other CEOS all say similar things. The reason for their interest is that these executives face increasing difficulty in trying to fill job positions with recent US high school AND college graduates. They believe unless something is done now, the problem will only get worse.

These business professionals would like to apply the very same principles that made their companies some of the best in the world -- competition, accountability, and merit pay -- to public schools. While each has a different approach to solving this dilemma (some want charter schools or increased funding for schools, others want to extend school hours or more testing, many want to put real managers in the school districts and institute merit-based pay systems, etc.), they each recognize that there is no choice but to take direct steps now to improve the quality of our educational system.

I encourage you to read the article. Any country's future is dependent on its ability to innovate, create, and basically to think. Without a quality public education available to everyone, there is no doubt that this characteristic, so critical to success, will diminish.

As always, I welcome your comments.

Yours in BI success.

Claudia

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