The business community will take another large step into the educational landscape of Chicago and the nation Wednesday, when Ford Motor Co. and Microsoft magnate Bill Gates announce a joint effort to create high schools in cities across the Midwest, with the first one opening in North Lawndale next year.
The $11.5 million venture is the latest effort by big business to take a more active role in educating the nation’s children. Gates, who has called American high schools “obsolete,” has pumped $1.7 billion into revamping secondary school.
In Chicago, local businesses and business leaders have ponied up more than $27 million as part of Renaissance 2010, an effort to close low-performing schools and open 100 new, innovative ones.
Business leaders say they have a vested interest in ensuring that the nation’s schools are graduating students who are prepared to compete in a global economy.
“This is going to sound trite, but children are our national future and, as an employer, I see that some of them are coming out of school ill-prepared and we need to change that,” William Clay Ford Jr., executive chairman of Ford and great-grandson of Henry Ford, told the Tribune this week. “Our students have to be the best and the brightest and we want to do our part.”
But critics contend that school leaders — desperate for money — have become too beholden to the business community and argue that corporations are buying influence into the education system.
“It’s good that the business community is interested in education, but the result is that the curriculum has narrowed and public schools have become an arm of the economy,” said Larry Cuban, professor emeritus of education at Stanford University, who has studied school reforms.
“We are losing sight of the larger goals that public education has always served in a democracy: produce engaged citizens, be respectful of the humanities and the arts. These goals are lost when the business community becomes too forcefully present in public schools.”
In Chicago, the business community is a driving force behind Renaissance 2010, much to the consternation of the teachers union and some old-guard community activists.
The business donations take many forms. Some donate lump sums to be spread out across schools.
Others, like Exelon Corp., have paired with top officials to create their own school. The Rowe-Clark Math and Science Academy opened this year after Exelon donated $2 million and John Rowe, chief executive officer of Exelon and Frank Clark, CEO of Exelon’s ComEd subsidiary, added another $2.2 million of their own money.
The new Ford school is a partnership among Ford, Gates, and a community redevelopment group, which is renovating the old Sears headquarters on the city’s West Side.
On Wednesday, Ford will announce that the Ford Motor Co. Fund will donate $8.5 million and Gates $3 million to open at least five small charter high schools. Each school will be in a prominent public space; in Chicago it will be in Homan Square, in the historic powerhouse of the original Sears, Roebuck and Co. world headquarters.
Ford will put $1.25 million toward the soon-to-be opened Power House High in North Lawndale. Gates will donate $400,000.
The money will be used to replicate the Henry Ford Academy, a 10-year-old charter high school in Dearborn, Mich. The school has a 95 percent graduation rate and last year, 99 percent of graduates enrolled in college.
“Chicago is a very important city to Ford,” Ford said. “We have a school model that works that seems to capture kids’ imagination and we want to replicate that in Chicago.”
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Power House High will have a career and college preparatory curriculum. It will be open to students across the city, but plans to draw most of its students from North Lawndale.
Cheryl Washington, a lifelong North Lawndale resident who served on the committee to develop the school, said her neighborhood desperately needs a high-quality high school. But she acknowledged that unease remains in the community, a result of the city closing nearby Collins High School a few years go.
“Personally, I am overjoyed,” said Washington, who has a son in 8th grade.
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