School-Business Partnerships: Reading Between the Bottom Lines

SCHOOL-BUSINESS PARTNERSHIPS:

READING BETWEEN THE BOTTOM LINES

A Presidential Address to the Ohio Valley Philosophy of Education Society

Deron R. Boyles

Georgia State University

October 15,1999

Introduction

An assembly takes place at the local high school. Students file in and take their seats. Some are

raucous, some quiet. While teachers stand guard at the ends of rows of seats and point to

disruptive students in an effort to reduce chaos, the lights dim in the auditorium. Catcalls and

whistling are "shhushh-ed" as the curtain opens. Spotlights appear on the stage and a band

comes forward playing electric guitars, synthesizers, and drums. They sing, too, but something

seems a bit out of place. The band, it turns out, is not singing popular rock-and-roll music or

their own lyrics. The band isn't even from the high school. The band performing is, instead, part

of "Chemipalooza," the Dow Chemical Company "spin-off on the Generation X rock music

Lollapalooza tours of the 1990s. The assembly is sponsored by Dow Chemical and the

performance is a celebration of plastics and other chemistry-oriented products Dow produces.

The "tour," it turns out, is a festival for science, the chemical industry, and careerism. Dow is

promoting itself and its interests by linking chemistry and schools as a way to encourage students

to become future scientists and, in not-so-concealed ways, Dow consumers. The free market

comes to school.

Dow isn't alone. Scholastic, Inc., provides schools with instructional packages including

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secrets of the Ooze and Jetsons: The Movie as courses on

the environment.[1] Nike supplies shoe-making kits; Sprite advertises on the sides of school buses;

and Campbell Soup Company does "science experiments" comparing the "thickness" of its sauce

to that of its competitor Prego.[2] Writing in Business Week, Pat Wechsler notes, "The National

Soft Drink Association offers teachers a poster called. . . 'Soft Drinks and Nutrition,' which...

compares the heavily sweetened products of its member companies to milk and fruit."[3] Each of

these initiatives differ, but they share a common purpose-increasing corporate influences on and

in schools.

But is there any problem with such free-market entrepreneurship? In a capitalist society,

such initiatives are applauded and encouraged by those who see nothing wrong with using

schools as sites for product promotion.[4] There are "educational outcomes," so the consumer-

materialist argument goes, and since schools are in need of funding and corporations have plenty

of money, why shouldn't corporations get some return on their investment? Schools, after all,

are not separate from the societies they inhabit. Since students (and teachers) are constantly

subjected to advertising-as is the rest of America-it would be unrealistic to think schools

could keep advertising out of their buildings or their curriculum. True.

Yet what follows is a different perspective. I suggest that "Chemipalooza" tours and

Ninja Turtles marketing further reinforce schools as places for corporate training and corporate

profiteering instead of critical discernment and education. To be clear, the problem with schools

as sites for corporate influences is at least threefold. First, they limit and reduce the capacities of

students and teachers to be critical citizens (and critical consumers) by structuring the school

sphere-organizationally, in terms of the curriculum, for example, so that marketing strategies

such as quasi rock concerts and Hollywood-hyped cartoons hegemonically influence many young

minds into accepting the product connection between the programs, curriculum, specific texts,

and their "future."

The second problem with schools as sites for corporate influence is that it restricts

teachers to those programs that have corporate support (tacit or explicit) by highlighting

corporate needs for certain kinds of workers who possess specific kinds of "skills"-all codified

by corporations and reflected in state curriculum objectives. Ironically, businesses assert that

their involvement reduces bureaucracy and increases teacher autonomy. Even if this is initially

true and teachers find themselves free from much of the "red tape" of current public institutions,

teachers nonetheless face a different master: businesses that take accountability to mean

quantified, commodified, reductionistic measures in terms of "outputs" and "products."

The third problem with schools as sites for corporate influence is that it reinforces the

assumption that schools primarily exist for workforce preparation. "Chemipalooza," for

example, shows students possible occupations in chemistry. On this assumption, corporations

are doing the equivalent of a public service and are to be applauded for their involvement. I

encourage, instead, that we carefully consider who benefits most from corporate involvement and

argue that surface acceptance of capitalist realities glosses over serious consequences of class and

culture disparities and differences.

Corporate Goals/National Goals

"Just as the sources blamed for the American economic woes had less to do with

education than with misguided federal policies and corporate investment strategies the

current focus of educational policy has less to do with education than with creating new

corporate profit centers. Children as children just don't enter into the calculations."

[5]

An interesting lineage of "2000" plans began with America 2000, which begat Goals

2000, which begat county and district attempts at "2000-ness," in the form of Cherokee County

2000, Hanover High 2000, and others. A fascinating incarnation of "2000-ness," however, began

in the summer of 1993 with Kroger 2000. Kroger is a major supermarket chain in the Midwest,

Southeast, and Mid-Atlantic regions of the U.S. Under the heading of "Partners in Education,"

Fulton County, Georgia, teamed with Kroger to promote a program titled 'The Kroger

Connection." The footer for the flyer is "Kroger 2000: For Goodness Sake." The point, recall, is

to explore the meaning behind school-business partnerships and raise questions about funding

conflicts and the degree to which business agendas influence schooling. As though aware of my

concerns, Kroger 2000 offers the following reassurance about their program: "This is real life,

hands on partnering as Kroger connects education and business in a win-win situation." Who

really wins, and why, is our focus.

The task, then, is to provide examples and illustrations of actual partnerships and adopt-a-

school partnering programs.[6] In so doing, the intention is to show that there are benefits of

partnering schools with businesses but that the benefits are essentially for businesses and only

residually for schools, teachers, and students. When the benefits for corporations are scrutinized,

they reveal an emphasis on training-oriented schooling, marketing, and consumer materialism

over possibilities for education-oriented schooling, authenticity, and critical transitivity. Such an

emphasis, if it remains unchecked, risks undermining the potential for democratic citizenship and

is sure to further reinforce the oligopoly currently enjoying power. The point here is to understand

the subtheme assumptions, such as the purpose of schooling as job preparation, in order to

question who benefits most from such a purpose. By bridging illustrations and examples

of corporate involvement together with schools, corporate assumptions about the purposes of

schooling are further revealed.

Assumptions are pervasive, for example, about what it means to be a teacher, what

qualifies as "student success," and what funding sources schools should have and should use.

Corporations view teaching much as one would view traditional methods courses in colleges of

education: perfunctory, procedural, generalizable, and non-propositional. Teaching is not left to

teacher interpretation, because teaching, on the traditional and corporate view, is fundamentally a

series of steps and strategies to be carried out in linear, sequential fashion. Corporations also use

national goals, particularly those that celebrate the need for international comparisons and

increased competitiveness, to qualify what teaching entails and what success connotes. Goal #3,

Goal #4, and Goal #5 from Goals 2000 are highly touted by businesses and corporations. Goal #3

states, "By the year 2000, American students will leave grades four, eight and twelve having

demonstrated competency in challenging subject matter including English, mathematics, science,

history and geography, and every school in America will ensure that all students learn to use their

minds well, so they may be prepared for responsible citizenship, further learning, and productive

employment in our modem economy." Goal #4 is, "By the year 2000, U.S. students will be first

in the world in mathematics and science achievement." Goal #5 is, "By the year 2000, every

adult in America will be literate and will possess the knowledge and skill necessary to compete

in a global economy and exercise the rights and responsibilities of citizenship."

Success is thus made contingent upon quantified measures and conformity to capitalist

competition expectations. Science and mathematics, as a result, are useful instruments for

consumer-materialist presumptions about what counts as valid curriculum reform. Such reform

also allows corporations to maximize the larger exploitative circle: business interests shape

national goals in the first place, national goals are used as the rationale by businesses to "reform"

schooling and teaching, and the consequences for curriculum (also noted in the national goals)

include the kind of reductionism upon which consumer materialism and corporate profit rely.[7]

This is perhaps not surprising. It is also not merely an exercise in revelatory narration.

Revealing flaws in programs and narrating what those flaws are to people does not require

reflection, thoughtfulness, or action on their part. Reflection, thoughtfulness and action, however,

are part of what is necessary to elevate schools from being training-oriented sites for consumer

materialism to being education-oriented sites for critical transitivity-the goal as I see it. To

achieve critical transitivity means interrogating the veracity of national goals assumptions and

businesses' use of those goals. It means dispensing with reductionism, passive acceptance, and

reliance on imagery. Instead, critical transitivity requires authenticity and not contrivance such

that connections are made between disparities of power and privilege, their causes, and potential

solutions.

The Kroger Connection

Kroger, recall, is the large and successful supermarket chain in the Midwest, Southeast,

and Mid-Atlantic regions of the U.S. In 1993 Kroger distributed copies of their "partnering"

program with Fulton County, Georgia schools (See Figure 1).

Kroger and Fulton County Partners In Education

Proudly present

The Kroger Connection

Teacher Summer Employment Opportunity

Summer employment.

Oppportunity to learn the multi-facets of rapidly growing food retailing.

Enrich teaching experience by gaining a better understanding of today's workforce and beyond.

Become liaison between business and the classroom by helping students obtain a winning career match.

Come be a part of the future and take the Kroger challenge!

This is real life, hands on partnering as Kroger connects education and business in a win-wind situation.

Contact Partners In Education at 763-6772 if you are interested.

Deadline: Friday, June 11, 1993

Kroger 2000

FOR GOODNESS SAKE

Figure 1: The Kroger Connection

(Reprinted by permission of The Kroger Company, Atlanta, GA)

"The Kroger Connection" is, upon careful scrutiny, a summer employment program for teachers.

The flyer characterizes the job opportunity in terms of teacher roles: "Enrich teaching experience

by gaining a better understanding of today's workforce and beyond"; and "Become liaison

between business and the classroom by helping students obtain a winning career match."

Little is left to interpretation. Kroger wants teachers to work for them and when they

return to their classrooms in the fall, wants teachers (as unpaid "liaisons") to promote Kroger as a

place where students can find a job. Kroger, in this way, furthers the assumption that the primary

purpose of schools is to prepare future workers. Kroger also stands to benefit from those teachers

who do encourage their students to seek employment with the company.

Look again at the flyer. It has at the top a "Partners in Education" logo including the

image of a mortar board. Mortar boards symbolize scholarship insofar as they are traditionally

worn at graduation ceremonies.[8] By connecting a summer employment program with symbols of

scholarship, Kroger furthers the imagery that their interest is educational. The flyer reinforces

this by using the term "education" four times and "classroom" once. 'This is real life, hands on

partnering as Kroger connects education and business in a win-win situation." Kroger is actually

attempting to connect employees (those teachers who fill one of the Kroger slots) with potential

employees (students contacted by teacher/Kroger workers). The "connection" to schools is in

recruiting teachers from them to work behind bakery, seafood, and deli counters.

To be clear, Kroger enjoys a good reputation and is successful enough as a business to

continue expanding and adding stores. Double-coupon savings, 24-hour operations, and extra 5-

percent discounts for seniors add to Kroger's positive image. Jobs at Kroger are worthwhile

positions and those who fill those positions are as hardworking and upstanding as most citizens

in the U.S. In terms of business, the company offers extensive benefits to some of its workers,

but many positions are part-time and allow Kroger (as with many businesses) not to extend full

health benefits or savings and retirement plans. Most of the employees in area stores are also not

typically college-educated. This point is only important when we consider which people the

Kroger flyer targeted and which people it did not. The flyer was not distributed to engineers or

accountants or any other groups that have college degrees as a common basic requirement.

Teachers are different, however. Like nurses, they have a hard time defining themselves as

professionals, even with certification requirements and college degree standards.[9] The Kroger

flyer only reinforces the nonprofessional regard attributed to, in this case, teachers. "Opportunity

to learn the multi-facets of rapidly growing food retailing." Teachers, who already face

inordinate procedural duties in their schools, would be successful in such a position, but this is

beside the point: retailing and teaching are not the same, current expectations for teacher practice

notwithstanding.

The bottom of the flyer includes another logo; this one has Kroger's name in corporate

symbol form and font, but it is connected to "2000" reminding readers of the plethora of "2000"

reports that began with America 2000, followed by Goals 2000, etcetera. The corporate slogan,

"For Goodness Sake" is underneath "Kroger 2000." The enticements for summer work are in

keeping with the spirit of national education goals, they are not out of sync with them. On first

glance, the flyer may appear anachronistic, that is, not fitting the thrust of the national goals

movement, but it actually exemplifies subthemes in the goals reports: schools exist to supply

workers for companies and teachers are the hirelings to advance the cause of international

economic competition. Seeing teachers as deli-clerks is not insulting, so the flier assumes,

because teachers are also "liaisons" who will return to their classrooms and recruit "new hires"

for their corporation. Like corporate-culture consultants who rename clerks "associates" and

hairdressers "cosmetologists," Kroger assigns teachers the moniker "liaison." By so doing,

Kroger blurs the distinctions between the roles of teachers and the roles of other workers by

reducing the complexities of teaching to the simplified and simplifiable-though no less

important-roles of producers.

Stop & Shop, Shop, Shop

Kroger is not the only grocery chain to connect itself with schools. Stop & Shop, Safeway, Shop

Rite, Von's, Bruno's, and Publix Supermarkets all have programs targeting schools. The

programs advertise that a portion of all sales will go toward purchasing school equipment,

typically computers and printers. This kind of corporate involvement exists because schools lack

adequate funding to buy enough equipment. As a result, schools are forced to accept grocery

receipt "charity." Consider the issue of school funding.

Schools are largely funded by property taxes, with nearly 47 percent of financial support

coming from local communities. The federal government contributes only 6 percent or so to

school coffers.[10] What this means is that school districts with large amounts of taxable wealth

will have more money to spend on the schools in those districts. Areas with fewer amounts of

taxable wealth will have less money to spend. Spring comments that "there is a major difference

between the $17,435 per student spent in the Long Island community of Shoreham-Wading River

and the $7,299 spent per student in New York City."[11] Since property taxes are the major source

of local revenue, they advantage the wealthier communities because of the interplay between

property value and property tax rates. Newman illustrates this by considering two school districts

of about the same size that are located in the same state. One district is an upper-middle-class

suburb where homes have an average market value of $200,000. The other district is much less

affluent and where homes have an average market value of $50,000. For sake of the illustration,

Newman assumes that the properties in question are taxed at full market value.[12]

The residents of the upper-middle-class suburb have set their school tax rate at $1 per

$100 of property value. The average home in this suburb, therefore, brings in $2,000 for

the local schools. With the average family paying school taxes of $2,000 each year, these

citizens can truthfully say they are trying hard to support public education .... The

residents of the less affluent community have set their tax rate twice as high-at $2 per

$100 of assessed value-yet the average home in their community generates only $1,000

for the schools. These residents can say they are trying twice as hard, but their effort-a

technical term in school finance that means exactly what it says-yields only half as

much.[13]

Such funding disparity provides the opening for businesses to "aid" schools. Stop & Shop helps

by contributing a small portion of its sales toward the purchase of computers. The portion

contributed is so small, in fact, that "register tapes documenting $250,000 of grocery purchases

from Stop & Shop, for example, nets a school an Apple Macintosh Classic 2/40; and $125,000 in

tapes an Apple HE color computer."[14]

This is not a donation from Stop & Shop as much as it is Stop & Shop's acting as the

conduit for customers who spend money at participating stores. That is. Stop & Shop puts itself

in the position of "aiding" schools when customers shop at their stores. The fewer customers, the

longer it takes to raise the $250,000 to purchase one computer. The more customers, the faster

the donation will take place. Schools get "needed" equipment and Stop & Shop gets a gold star

for philanthropy. Stop & Shop also gets repeat customers, increased volume, and increased sales.

Stop & Shop's motive is profit; the same as in any business. This point is the focus of

critique. The issue in question is that Stop & Shop, like other food stores, utilizes disparities in

school funding as an opportunity to increase volume and revenue. Underlying this concern,

furthermore, is the basic question regarding why schools are faced with shortages in funds for the

very computers grocery chains are supplying in the first place. Kozol explores one response to

this question noting first that corporations oppose paying school taxes. "City and state business

associations, in Chicago as in many other cities, have lobbied for years against tax increments to

finance education of low-income children. 'You don't dump a lot of money into guys who

haven't done well with the money they've got in the past,' says the chief executive officer of

Citicorps Savings of Illinois. 'You don't rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic."[15]

Kozol continues,

In recent years, however, some of the corporate leaders in Chicago who opposed

additional school funding and historically resisted efforts at desegregation have

nonetheless attempted to portray themselves as allies to poor children-or, as they

sometimes call themselves, "school partners"-and they even offer certain kinds of help.

Some of the help they give is certainly of use, although it is effectively the substitution of

a form of charity, which can be withheld at any time, for the more permanent assurances

of justice; but much of what the corporations do is simply superficial and its worth

absurdly overstated by the press

.[16]

Corporations would rather "donate" computers than pay taxes because "donations" can be

curtailed. Corporations benefit doubly. They enjoy tax breaks for locating in their respective

municipalities and, with only some of the money they would pay in taxes, cast themselves as

beneficent charities and responsible members of the community. In so doing, corporate interests

are able to leverage the curriculum as well as the general purposes of schooling by reinforcing the

community belief that schools exist to prepare future workers.

Pizza Hut: BOOKIN' IT!

PepsiCo Inc.'s Pizza Hut has a national BOOK IT! campaign. If students meet the reading

goals set by their teachers each month, they receive a free individual pan pizza. In this example,

the corporation is not influencing the curriculum because the goals are set by teachers. Viewed

positively, what Pizza Hut influences is student reading. Viewed negatively, Pizza Hut is bribing

students and taking the intrinsic worth out of reading. Viewed more broadly, however, we should

consider what benefits the company reaps from such a program. When first graders win a free

individual pan pizza, they do not make their way to the local Pizza Hut and eat by themselves.

Their families take them. Their families also eat with them. For the "free" individual pan pizza,

Pizza Hut makes money on the meals the family eats.

That was apparent one recent evening when five-year-old William Griggs went to a Pizza

Hut in a Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C., to claim the free pan pizza he earned for

reading aloud with his parents. Of course, the kindergartner didn't make the trip to the

restaurant by himself. While William got a $1.99 tomato-and-cheese pan pizza for free ...

his mother, sister, and another adult spent $15.81 for a sausage-and-green-pepper pizza,

two light beers, an orange soda and a Pepsi. Multiply that by the 16 million children

going to Pizza Hut to claim their Book It pizza each month.[17]

This represents a variation on the "bait and switch" ruse: lure customers with free gifts, then steer

them to purchase other, more expensive goods. In the case of Pizza Hut, they lure students with a

free personal pizza, then capitalize on the meals those who must join the students consume.

There really is nothing new here. Stores offer similar promotions on regular bases, but there is

one major difference: the school-business campaign exploits student achievement for profit.

Unwitting children are pitted against their parents in a sort of consumer-materialist love test.

Students work hard to achieve the goals outlined for them and are awarded a free pizza. Parents

who refuse to take their children to redeem the free pizza coupon risk undermining the work the

child has done and are saddled with the "you don't love me" test that children (unfairly, if

understandably) raise in such situations. While similar exchanges are not rare to families,

programs that knowingly foster agendas that precipitate such a test force families into

consumerist battlegrounds already charted by corporate marketing researchers to the advantage of

business interests. Molnar puts it this way:

. . . BOOK IT! unethically uses schools to get Pizza Hut inside students' homes. Since

the BOOK IT! program can create a classroom atmosphere in which a child who doesn't

join in feels odd, it is very hard for a parent to demand that a son or daughter not

participate. Parents who may want nothing to do with Pizza Hut are forced to either go

along with the program or face struggles with their children. Moreover, children who do

participate and meet their reading goals feel cheated if they are not then taken to Pizza

Hut for the promised reward.[18]

Pizza Hut nonetheless benefits from promoting itself as interested in learning, interested

in children, and interested in supporting schools and the community. While PepsiCo and Pizza

Hut do not put their corporate logo on the BOOK IT! buttons students wear or on the posters

used to promote BOOK IT! in classrooms, they do put their logo on General Mills cereal boxes

when they promote their BOOK IT! program. On a recent Golden Grahams cereal box, Pizza

Hut provides a free coupon to any student in grades K-6, ostensibly to get the word out that

Pizza Hut has the BOOK IT! program. Note that PepsiCo and Pizza Hut are the primary

benefactors of such promotion and sponsorship. Perhaps a double-edged sword or a catch-22, one

wonders whether subversive, non-logo advertising is worse than advertising with the logo, but

the overarching point is that students who get rewarded with a small, personal pizza for reading

achievement are pawns in a game of corporate profiteering.

Six Flags over Literacy

Six Flags Theme Parks, Inc. also has a reading program. Their program is called "Read to

Succeed" and rewards those in the "600-Minute Reading Club." Students who complete the

form receive a