Just such a collaborative effort is under way on the issue of educational assessment and it offers insight into how it can happen and what motivates the companies involved.

Andrew Thomson, the public sector consul on global education at Cisco Systems, has witnessed firsthand the power of this collaboration. The former Saskatchewan minister of learning tells how and why his company is working with Intel and Microsoft to maximize what they can bring to the table in a multi-sector approach to improving education.

Having made the transition from public sector official to a private sector education role, Thomson says he enjoys the benefit of getting to say what he wants. But while he can talk about the issues more freely, it’s the inability to take action on those issues that he finds frustrating in the private sector.

“All of our great ideas don’t go anywhere if you can’t get buy-in,” he explains. And that’s where the need for partnership and collaboration between sectors comes in.

To be a part of putting ideas into action, Cisco is in a partnership with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the International Association of the Evaluation of Educational Achievement aimed at transforming global educational assessment and improving learning outcomes. Joining Cisco in this effort are Intel and Microsoft. Thomson says the three companies came together in January at the Learning and Technology World Forum in London “with the intention of changing the world.”

The three large, global technology companies have different business models – Cisco sells networks, Microsoft sells licenses and Intel sells devices – but they all compete for attention in the education market. All three are also committed to changing education in the United States and globally, and, according to Thomson, their leadership became convinced through the World Economic Forum that “education itself was still the best way to drive change in the world.”

The sheer number and variety of educational systems worldwide poses a significant challenge to any effort to effect change on a global scale. Thomson points out, however, there are three characteristics common to any system of education that guides the partnership’s work:

1. Education everywhere is a social construct. It is not an industry or a vocation. “People come together to provide skills competencies and abilities for their children to succeed.”
2. Systems are comparable enough in their desire to measure progress. A kind of assessment unique to education is common across all systems.
3. There is still an economic component to education. In all countries its purpose includes fostering social development, citizenship and an ability to participate in the economy.

Thomson says that collaborating to tackle the issue of educational assessment worldwide requires Cisco and the others to step out of their “comfort zone.” They are accustomed to relationships through which they sell billions of dollars in technology to the education sector. Now they have to listen to those same customers and ask what they are using it for.

“And sometimes saying to customers you don’t really need to buy more technology from us.” Thomson remarks. “What we need to do is figure out a better way to use it.” Figuring these things out cannot be driven by revenue generation, he stresses. “It’s not about selling more. It’s about changing things.”

The kind of change that Cisco, Intel and Microsoft are striving for will not happen without involving academics, countries (the owners of the educational systems) and corporations in identifying and assessing 21^st century skills. Thomson points out that these “aren’t the skills that will get you hired. They are the skills that will you get fired if you don’t have them.”

The need for skills like collaboration, innovation, articulation and application of knowledge is common throughout the world in the 21^st century. To determine how best to assess and monitor the teaching and learning of these skills worldwide will take an approach that involves all of the sectors of society where these skills are put to use.

Thomson says that the “Uncommon Table” the Boston College Center seeks to create for collaboration on education will need a “big tent.” That’s just the approach being taken by Cisco and the other companies. Their initiative on assessment draws from educators in Australia, Finland and Portugal, parts of Asia, and the United States, if the fragmentation of the U.S. educational system can be worked with. He says success will take willing partners open to foreign advice and academics prepared to collaborate and ready to adapt change into their own systems.

Just a few months into the collaboration on educational assessment, Thomson describes the process as “remarkable.”

“If we can find that right way to keep that disparate group of people working together; if we can find that right ecosystem at a national level to actually implement, we’re going to make a tremendous difference,” Thomson predicts.

“And that’s a difference that’s not there to drive revenue. It’s not there to create new product streams. It’s there simply to create a better world.”

So if you want to know what the story is with the mystery of successful business investment in education, IBM’s Stan Litow is your man. As a product of the New York City public schools, an education activist, a former deputy chancellor of New York’s school system and IBM’s vice president for corporate citizenship and corporate affairs and president of the IBM International Foundation – the point man in its efforts to improve education – Litow has lived this saga on both sides.

From his unique perspective, Litow recognizes that at a time when business may be more concerned than ever with the condition of education in the United States, it will take an uncommon approach to effectively address problems with an institution like no other. This approach must marshal the resources and expertise of every sector of society.

A crushing economic crisis is threatening business and society while every aspect of both is becoming integrated on a global scale. Simultaneously, American students are losing ground academically, posing a threat to the competitiveness of their nation and its businesses. The question is not whether business should be involved in bringing about change in American education, but how. Unfortunately, past experiences of many companies with education efforts are marked by frustration and failure.

Litow acknowledges that education “is a very difficult enterprise,” and while there have been successes with model programs and some great schools, they don’t come to scale. Why?

“Because there are a variety of entrenched, difficult, thorny issues, structural problems that inhibit them,” says Litow. Ideas such as introducing unconventional people into school management and teaching are put out there but they don’t really take off because of barriers in the system. “It’s not going to happen at scale,” Litow says, “unless somebody understands why it hasn’t happened before.”

Litow points to the “structural impediments” of a 20^th century institution operating in the 21^st century. The consolidation that has brought 20 to 30 percent in cost savings to the private sector in the past 15 years hasn’t arrived in an institution where 16,000 school districts spend $55 billion on operations and management alone. “It’s an outmoded institution,” remarks Litow. “Why is a school run in the exact same way that it was run in 1925?”

But Litow stresses that business can’t merely charge to the rescue with solutions. There’s more required to create significant, lasting change. “You can’t change something you don’t understand.”

Litow notes that when you look at business management consultants, the best are those who understand the organization they are being asked to change. “You don’t bring in consultants who’ve never worked in that industry before and expect success.” It’s no different with K-12 education, which is “complex, difficult, expensive and high stakes.” To succeed you must devote time and effort to learn how it operates, looking at every issue from the length of the school day to teacher seniority and how those teachers are educated.

And Litow explains that it’s not about finding and knowing “best practices,” which can be dismissed as irrelevant because they came from somewhere “different.” It’s about understanding why reform efforts designed to improve schools failed or did not come to scale. Was it because of costs, labor issues, politics, management or governance? Don’t expect it to be that easy.

“It’s not one of these issues,” Litow says, “There are no silver bullets.”

On the bright side, Litow sees a platform for change today perhaps like none before. The economic downturn and increased competition and performance in places such as China and India are powerful incentives alone. But they are coupled with incredible opportunity and energy provided by a new White House administration that is making education important, doubling expenditure on K-12 education and creating a $5 billion innovation fund.

Litow emphasizes, however, that business must see its role is not about “writing checks.” The key to success, Litow says, is “really figuring out who has to be together to figure out what didn’t work, and who has to come together to figure out what would, in a way that would inform not just the business community but inform the public about what we could do to improve education.”

This means bringing together academics, politicians, unions, higher education, nonprofits and business. Business needs to be represented, Litow reminds, because long after individual politicians are gone, business will be around with its resources, ideas, expertise, political capital and leadership.

This collaborative approach – the kind envisioned by the Boston College Center as an Uncommon Table – requires an environment that is safe and inviting for all. Litow explains that since business always weighs what could go wrong, “if you want them involved in something as messy and as difficult as K-12, you have to provide a safer way to be involved and increase the likelihood of success.”

On the other hand, he comments, you don’t want business to come in “throwing hand grenades.” Litow describes as “empty rhetoric” the notion of “just wipe it all out.” Educators, too, must feel invited, respected and engaged in a collaborative effort.

Litow hopes that an Uncommon Table can bring a greater level of understanding and promote more partnership across all sectors, leading to broader consensus around what needs to happen and helping to create community. He sees emerging leadership on education as the real purpose of the discussions and “the one single, most important thing that’s needed. Without it, systemic strategies to improve teaching and learning will simply not reach scale.”

Collaboration and leadership alone won’t address the problems of education and there is no one-and-done solution to be delivered, Litow cautions. “You can’t invent something like it’s the Ten Commandments and that it will exist forever.” Things will get better, he says, but the key is to stick with it and do the hard work required to continually assess, improve and monitor.

While the road ahead may be long and winding, Litow has no doubt about the starting point: “I don’t know how you get to the hard work unless you get the right people around the table to at least begin.”