CHAPTER 1

BUSINESS EDUCATIONPARTNERSHIP IN SOUTH CAROLINA:A CASE STUDY

NOTE: This case study is based on the original 1997 research. Whereappropriate, updated statistics along with information from interviewswith Riley, Peterson, and Youngblood have been included.

In 1983, South Carolina established a Business Education Partnership(BEP) program at the state level to monitor its public school system.Engaging business in state policy-making partnerships always has beencomplex and difficult to sustain. South Carolina's Business EducationPartnership constituted one of the nation's most intense educationbusiness partnerships ever formed. "At the time, economic conditionsstrengthened the prospect of achieving these changes," Riley explainedin a recent interview. "We were at a critical point in our state's historywhere we needed the right mix of top-down and, most importantly,bottom-up strategies. It was the appropriately timed opportunity tochange our history especially where we had done so poorly not only forour students but also for economic development."

Policy change partnerships are capital-intensive and requirecommitments from CEOs of large corporations to succeed (NationalAlliance for Business, 1987). Because policy partnerships require suchsubstantial manpower investments by the business community and canlast as long as six years, the study was focused upon the activities ofbusiness members who sustained interest in state-level public schoolreform for more than 12 years. In addition, this research sought touncover those elements that helped to support and impede businessinvolvement in South Carolina's Business Education Partnership inorder to present a viable and successful model for other states to emulatein engaging business partners effectively.

Since colonial times, laissez-faire attitudes toward economicsand politics had kept Southern property taxes low and public schoolsunderfunded (Void & Devitis, 1991). As a result, the Southeast enduredthe educational stigma as the nation's perennial underachiever instudent academic performance. In an attempt to remove this stigma,educational reform initiatives had gained strong support in theSoutheast since the 1970s (Void & Devitis, 1991) and had reinforcedthe belief in economic achievement (Business Roundtable, 1992)."There was no doubt that the recession from 1980 to 1982 motivatedthe stakeholders," Peterson said. "For the first time in the South, wholejob sectors were being lost or being threatened to disappear. As thestate and others in the region began to emerge from the recession in1983, the gradual recovery and memories of recent events galvanizedthe leadership."

In finding the right ingredient to gain public support for raisingrevenue, Riley's deep rapport with education proved to be an importantcatalyst at the outset. "With his wife, Riley energized the base includingboth sides of the political aisle as well as PTAs and superintendentsespecially were attracted to the prospects for a dramatic campaign.It was especially important for getting grassroots support especiallyamong those who needed to be encouraged that once they were outthere in the public spotlight, they were not going to be alone."

South Carolina's Business Education Partnership was one state'sattempt to influence state and local policy makers to restructureits public school system. Originating in 1983, Riley, as governor,commissioned two blue-ribbon committees to examine three issues:first, the feasibility of enacting a bold set of education reforms and newopportunities and increasing by a penny sales tax to fund these majoreducational reform programs; second, the viability of implementing abusiness-education partnership program to provide accountability forstate educational reform; third, the planning of legislation to supportthe penny tax and the business-education partnership.

The Business Education Partnership, comprising 12 prominentBusiness men at its founding, was charged with developing the overarchingset of education reforms and improvements, concrete phase-in budgetsfor each of the reforms or improvements, and developing a fundingmechanism to pay for the entire package. Ultimately the passage of thepenny sales tax increase was agreed upon as the funding mechanism. Inaddition, the Committee on Finance, consisting of education, business,and legislative officials, was designed to serve as a liaison amongschools, business community, and legislature to ensure that barriers toreform initiatives were overcome and the details of the needed reformswere developed through a business-education consensus. The blueribbon committees were successful in urging the state legislature to passboth the Educational Improvement Act (EIA I) and a penny sales tax.South Carolina's Education Improvement Act served to strengthen thestate's public education system by executing 61 initiatives that fortifiedstudent achievement in grades K through 12. The Business-EducationPartnership served as the accountability mechanism to monitor all 61initiatives of EIA I.

One of the key figures was Bill Youngblood, a 40-year-old attorneywho specialized in economic development and bond financing. "Therewas a sense of doom that the Sun Belt would lose out easily to theCaribbean Basin or to the Pacific Rim in terms of long-term businessdevelopment." When contacted by Riley, Youngblood did not hesitate,as he recalled. "When your government calls, you always take the calland do what your leader asks you to do," he explained. "At the time, Iwas not all that involved in education but I understood how importantit was to bring business executives and leaders, especially those whosenames were readily recognized around the state, into the project. Theoutreach was done individually. Only later did the state chamber ofcommerce become actively engaged in the efforts."

Subsequently, the BEP Committee and the Committee on Financemerged and became known as the Business Education Partnershipfor Excellence in Education (BEP). The BEP was responsible formonitoring and making recommendations to the legislature on publicschool reform from 1983 to 1995. Once the legislative frameworkwas approved, the committees faced the challenges of replicatingand maintaining the program at state level. These challenges wereaccomplished by implementing two educational improvement acts, thepreviously mentioned Educational Improvement Act (EIA I) and EIA II(Target 2000), both of which are discussed in greater detail later in thiscase study.

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