Test scandal tarnishes business recruitment

By Dan Chapman

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The standardized test scandal gives a black eye to Georgia’s efforts to recruit business and industry, relocation experts said Friday, though it’s premature to say what, if any, the long-term consequences might be.

Few companies make relocation decisions based solely on public-school educational standards. Low taxes, tax breaks, quality of life, access to the airport – those are the major relocation criteria.

Yet newcomers shop around for nice homes in good school districts. Site-selection firms compile lists of school test scores, teacher-student ratio and other comparative statistics that help their clients decide between, say, Atlanta and Charlotte.

The scandal “is sort of a stain on the state of Georgia, no question about that,” said Phil Curtis, a partner with Matteson Partners, an executive search firm in Atlanta. “It could be an issue with a company or a division or a regional office considering moving to Atlanta. These are not the kind of headlines you like to see in the newspaper.”

Recruiters large and small tout school test scores as an important measure of a region's  quality of life.

“Metro Atlanta’s public education system is critical to the region’s long-term development as a world-class place to live and work,” reads the Metro Atlanta Chamber’s website. “An educated home-grown workforce is key to business recruitment and retention and has a significant impact on economic development.”

Nick Masino, vice president of economic development with the Gwinnett Chamber of Commerce, said the spouse of a recently relocated NCR executive questioned him extensively this week about schools for her eighth- and ninth-grade children.

“Anything negative about our school system surely doesn’t help,” he said. “But I don’t think this specific scandal will hurt Georgia because metro Atlanta SAT and ACT scores are above the national average. And that’s what people look at, not the one-time testing that involves elementary and middle schools.”

Questionably educated students, though, won’t help attract a company that needs skilled workers.

“Clearly, there are some bad eggs, but that doesn’t necessarily make the whole system a bad system,” said Jay Garner who runs Garner Economics LLC, an Atlanta site-selection firm.

Indeed, most industries today demand more highly trained students armed with either a two-year technical college degree or company-specific training undertaken by the state of Georgia.

“In recruiting, you rarely have employees say they want someone who attended Wheeler High School,” said Curtis, the executive headhunter. “They just don’t drill down to that point.”