Growing the Role of Business in Education

Nationally recognized education experts are in Cheyenne for this year's Governor Matthew H. Mead Business Forum.

Education and industry leaders are exploring ways that Wyoming's business community can increase its involvement in the development of education policy.

"First of all it (the business community) has to make a commitment to be involved in education," said Bill Schilling, President of the Wyoming Business Alliance/Wyoming Heritage Foundation. "The business community typically is standoffish about education, other than in private conversations where they express themselves very vociferously, but in reality, business leaders struggle with trying to understand how can they be involved in a fruitful way regarding educational improvement."

"The first thing we have to recognize is that our (education) system is pretty antiquated," said Tim Taylor, Co-Founder and Executive Director of America Succeeds. "It was designed for a previous era and we've got to update that system."

Taylor says that's difficult work because a lot of people want the system to look like the one they went through.

"The world has changed," said Taylor. "You can come out of high school and get a job, but you can't come out of high school and get a career."

"The business community wants people who are innovative, good thinkers, and yet there's a struggle in how we deal with that," said Schilling.

"That's a little bit tricky, that is trying to move this big system, but you got to start asking for different outcomes," said Taylor. "We're not keeping up with the gains that the rest of the world is making and we've got to figure something out."