Marguerite Kondracke, President and CEO, America’s Promise Alliance—“Every Child, Every Promise: Mobilizing Business to Make Children a National Priority—Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business Distinguished Alumni Speaker Series
October 31, 2006
It is a privilege to be here with you today.
I’d like to begin by asking for a show of hands. How many of you looked at the subtitle of my remarks, “Mobilizing the Business Community to Make Children a National Priority,” and thought this would be another speech about community relations or corporate social responsibility?
How many of you wondered, other than altruism, what critical business interest is at stake in making children a national priority?
Let me answer those questions by telling you a little bit about your workforce of tomorrow.
- More than 1 in 4 will be high-school dropouts. Most won’t have the skills that your companies need.
- When it comes to math skills, you won’t be picking from the best of the best. You’ll be picking from the best of the 29th best. That’s where American 15-year-olds finished on standardized tests compared with students from 34 nations.
- We’re not behind just in math, either. Over 70% of our eighth-graders score below proficiency in science and reading.
Once upon a time, we could simply import the talent we needed. But as Thomas Friedman explains in his book, The World Is Flat, we don’t live in that kind of world anymore. The best and brightest no longer have to come to America to pursue careers as business leaders — not when a fully wired world creates so many opportunities so much closer to home in places like Shanghai and Bangalore.
In two weeks, the America’s Promise Alliance will release a major report titled Every Child, Every Promise. It’s the result of two years of extensive, nationwide research and analysis. Let me share with you one of the sobering findings: Less than one-third of our school-age children have enough of the developmental resources they need to be confident of success as adults.
Here’s another: More than 20% of our young people have so few of these key resources that their chances of success right now are very slim.
Our young people really are our future. But far too many are simply not ready for the challenges of that future. And that has profound implications for America — and American business.
Colin Powell, the founding chairman of the America’s Promise Alliance, reminds us that “A promise is a solemn obligation.” As Americans, we have a duty to renew the promise of America for each generation.
But keeping the promise is also an economic imperative. It’s not just good citizenship but good business. We all have a stake in the well-being of our young people. Investing in their success is an investment in a better prepared workforce for the 21st century. It’s an investment in customers who are better able to afford your products. It’s an investment in our nation’s security and in continuing our values.
Clearly, we all have a stake in this. I am here to persuade you that we also all have a responsibility and roles to play.
Many of you pursuing an MBA here will specialize in an area like Finance or Marketing or Supply Chain Management. That kind of expertise will be a source of strength for the companies you help lead. But in our larger society, over-specialization is source of weakness when it comes to equipping our young people. It contributes to a mindset that lets us think: “Preparing young people is the job of educators and parents. It’s not the responsibility of business.” But nothing could be more wrong, and here’s why.
We know from a great body of research that children need five fundamental resources in their lives to be successful. We call them the “Five Promises”:
- Caring adults in all areas of their lives;
- Safe places and constructive use of time;
- A healthy start and healthy development;
- An effective education that builds marketable skills; and
- Opportunities to make a difference by helping others.
We know from our research that children who have a strong presence of at least four of these Five Promises are twice as likely to succeed in school. (By the way, did you know that graduating from high school is the number one predictor of whether you’ll succeed as an adult?) They’re twice as likely to avoid using violence. They’re two-thirds more likely to be socially competent. They’re 40% more likely to give back to society through volunteering. These figures hold true regardless of race or family income or parents’ education.
We also know that these Promises take firm root only if children experience them in multiple areas of their lives. They need these positive inputs from across the environments where they live, not just home and school.
Let me put it another way. Children who become successful adults are the products of communities that care. They’re the product of parents and schools and neighbors — and business — working together. The job is too big for the public sector alone. And the need is such that children thrive only when the whole community makes them a priority.
Knowing all this — and knowing that American leadership and prosperity are not sustainable if our students continue to finish 29th in the world… or that one in 11 of our young people will attempt suicide… or that obesity-related health conditions mean that today’s children may actually have a shorter life expectancy than the previous generation — our Alliance laid the groundwork for action the way a business would. We measured the problem. That was the genesis of our report, Every Child, Every Promise. Instead of focusing on the statistics that suggest the symptoms of a larger problem, we sought to get at the root causes. Instead of measuring just the outputs, such as low test scores, we conducted the first nationwide study of the INPUTS: how many of the critical “Five Promise” resources children have in their lives.
We found that we have a lot of work to do as a nation. As I mentioned earlier, nearly 7 in 10 of our young people — that’s 34 million school-aged children — aren’t getting enough of the Five Promises for us to feel confident that they’ll succeed. Over 20% are experiencing just one — or none — of the Promises in their lives. Young people themselves recognize this gap. We found that over 90% have set goals for themselves and are willing to work hard for them. But over 40% now doubt that they will be able to achieve those goals. They are asking adults for more help: for more challenging expectations, for more opportunities to learn about the working world, for more skills, for more chances to make a difference by helping others.
There’s good news from the research, too. There’s a do-able way to reverse this tide.
A major research component of Every Child, Every Promise examined the kinds of investments we make in young people. It was led by Dr. James Heckman, a Nobel Prize-winning economist from the University of Chicago and one of the country’s leading experts on the development of human capital. His landmark findings point a way forward.
For example, we also need to invest early — and not stop. Dr. Heckman found that that society reaps the greatest return when we sustain our investments throughout the whole arc of childhood, instead of concentrating on just one stage of development such as preschool. And the children who make the greatest gains of all are the ones who are now most at a disadvantage. Target young people at greatest risk to get the greatest reward.
Dr. Heckman’s research involved a population of boys born to disadvantaged mothers. Here’s what their futures looked like. Only about 4 in 10 would graduate from high school. Only 5% would enroll in college. Over 40% would wind up convicted of crimes or on probation, and over 20% would wind up on welfare. Dr. Heckman created an econometric model to simulate the effects of human capital investments in these children. When they received a comprehensive preschool program, their high school graduation rates jumped to 65% and college enrollment almost tripled. When you added skill-building investments during their adolescent years, graduation rates went up to 85%. Welfare dependency went down by half. And when these children received balanced investments throughout their childhoods, the results were best of all. Over 90% graduated from high school and nearly 40% would attend college; just 2% would wind up on welfare.
You don’t think we have a powerful economic case for investing in our young people?
The findings from Every Child, Every Promise suggest an approach for bringing more of the Five Promises to more young people. Our Alliance has set a goal of targeting 15 million under-served young people and changing their lives over the next five years through the power of the Five Promises. We’ll use our research as a benchmark and measure our progress nationally every two years.
America’s Promise is in a unique position to achieve this ambitious goal. Ours is the nation’s largest cross-sector alliance for young people. We bring together mayors, governors, community leaders, business, nonprofit groups, faith groups, foundations, parents, teachers, media… and young people. We create partnerships with and between them.
We know that working together is the only way to succeed. And we know it works. Just this past summer, we put together the first cross-sector collaboration in Houston to target the displaced children of Katrina. Now that success has become a model not just for other communities affected by Katrina but for youth-serving efforts across the country.
We are convening our Alliance partners, such as the YMCA and United Way, and they are making specific commitments that will move us toward our 15 million goal. They are helping plan cross-sector collaborations at the community level. And they are engaging their local affiliates to incorporate our Five Promise framework and their organization’s five-year commitment into their day-to-day work.
The business community will play a key role. Just one example: the US Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable have committed to work with the education community to improve graduation rates and double the number of technology, engineering and math graduates by 2015. They get it. They understand the implications for our workforce and our economy. They recognize that households headed by high school graduates pay $3 billion more in property taxes than dropouts — and $50 billion more in income taxes. They know that putting just one young person on track for success saves taxpayers an average of $2 million. They know that just a 1% increase in graduation rates reduces the number of crimes by 94,000.
You had better believe that business benefits when we keep America’s Promise.
Your business doesn’t have to be in a position to make a national impact to make a difference. I’ve seen first-hand what a difference business can make. Some years ago, before I joined America’s Promise, I helped found a company with Senator Lamar Alexander and Bob Keeshan — Captain Kangaroo. It’s now known as Bright Horizons. Our business involved helping companies offer on-site child care centers for their employees. Having a safe place with caring adults and skill-building for school readiness made a difference. Making it easier for parents to balance work and family, see their children at lunch, and take part in their activities made a difference. And it made a difference for the employers, too: less absenteeism, higher productivity, less turnover. It’s a win/win.
CVS Pharmacies saw a growing shortage in the number of pharmacists and worked with America’s Promise to start a program called Pharmacies of Promise. They give promising high-school students opportunities to work in pharmacies as summer interns with on-the-job mentors. Safe places, caring adults, effective education — and wins for CVS and for young people.
As a companion to Every Child, Every Promise, we are issuing a call to action with ways that every sector, including the business community, can get involved. Some companies allow time off so employees can volunteer as mentors or in their children’s schools. Some provide spaces for structured after-school programs. Some get involved in advocacy. Some help community organizations reconnect dropouts to school and work. Some set up flexible spending accounts to help employees defray the cost of quality of child care. Everything you do to help spread any of the Five Promises is an investment in human capital that will pay dividends.
It is also a smart investment in our national strength and our prosperity. More than ever, the research bears out that our young people need ALL of us. And in a flatter, more competitive global economy, we need all of THEM. I am not exaggerating when I say that our future is at risk today. It is up to us to keep the promise of a better future. When you look at it that way, investing in our young people isn’t just a good community relations strategy. It’s a fundamental business strategy.