As businesses pour billions of dollars and millions of employee volunteer hours into schools, they wonder why these efforts have done little to narrow the achievement gap between American students and their counterparts around the world.

One reason, according to the book Disrupting Class, is that the way we learn doesn’t always match up with the way we are taught.

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I can’t think of anyone in the corporate citizenship space more passionate than Karen Proctor from Scholastic. On Karen April 27, Karen kicked off the Boston College Center’s Business-Education Summit in New Orleans. All you have to do is spend a few minutes with Karen to see and feel a tangible energy that gives immediate definition of passion. Read the rest of this entry »

At the Center’s 2009 International Corporate Citizenship Conference, Tony Wagner provided an energetic lesson on what’s wrong with education in American schools. Speaking during the final keynote session on business and education, Wagner began by explaining that “in education we frequently start with solutions to problems we don’t completely understand.” He labeled this phenomenon “answer-itis.” Read the rest of this entry »

Even with the financial crisis to handle, President Obama knows that improving our education system cannot wait until some sense of economic stability returns. On the contrary, the plight of education has reached a mission critical state and the time for corporations to step up has never been more urgent. Read the rest of this entry »