Our View: Georgia needs to invest in education

The successful effort to coax NCR Corp. to move its headquarters to Gwinnett County shows that the Atlanta region and Georgia can still draw economic development, tough times notwithstanding. That’s a tribute to our competitive advantages that remain strong even in the throes of a great recession.

While some argue about just how large a role tax incentives and other pot-sweeteners played in NCR’s decision, one point’s pretty certain. Which is that every company looking at Georgia as a potential place to set up shop takes a deep look at our state’s work force. And, if we’re to keep attracting companies of all sizes, we must continue closely monitoring our employees’ competitiveness and boost efforts to create the sharpest work force in the Southeast. That effort begins with education.

Georgia’s taken some needed steps toward creating processes and oversight for helping students and adults master employable skills. That’s a good thing, given that success demands an effort much more substantive than a feel-good nodding of heads and the recitation in unison of a few trendy buzzwords on the part of our leaders.

The Georgia Work Ready program, a joint effort by the state and the Georgia Chamber of Commerce, can prove its worth in times like these. Students who aren’t necessarily college-bound, for example, can earn a “Work Ready” certificate after being assessed in “portable” skills — things such as applied math and reading for understanding. In other words, basic know-how that’s directly applicable to today’s lifelong on-the-job learning. Work Ready seems a smart use of Georgia’s system of technical colleges. It’s also a wise acknowledgement that even jobs that don’t require four years of college are far more intellectually demanding than in the past.

It’s a lot harder to be work-ready if you’re a high school dropout. A study in 2004 by the Educational Testing Service showed that males with one to three years of college, on average, earn a total of $780,000 more during their working years than those lacking a high school diploma or GED. The earnings differential leaps to $1.7 million for men holding bachelor’s degrees. If it would improve Georgia’s too-low 75.4 percent graduation rate, those dollar-sign numbers should be read aloud at least weekly in high school homerooms from Bainbridge to Tiger.

In a world where Georgia competes with every place between Iowa and Indonesia for jobs and industry, it’s imperative that we boost graduation rates. Georgia’s high school graduation coaches are the current strategy. In truth, though, students often become troubled long before they reach high school. It makes sense then to be alert for problems even as early as in pre-K classrooms.

Ratcheting up graduation rates pays economic dividends only when those graduates can add value to their employers. So what skills and abilities are employers looking for these days? NCR, for example, says job qualifications vary across positions. Even so, its acronym STEM — short for science, technology, engineering and math — describes a combination of abilities that’s especially valuable to the company.

We’ve heard for years about the necessity of rigorous instruction in science and math as the U.S., Georgia and the Atlanta area battle for jobs in a rough-and-tumble global economy. Numeracy and the sciences form a solid base for marketable employees’ skill sets, but they’re not enough.

Softer talents, such as the ability to communicate well and collaborate with others, are also necessary, say experts such as Ann Cramer, an IBM executive and Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce’s career preparation sub-committee co-chair. The ability to learn continuously and think critically also are increasingly valuable from blue-collar assembly lines to white-collar front offices. “How do you educate and train people for jobs that don’t exist yet?” asks Michael Thurmond, Georgia’s labor commissioner. “As long as you know how to learn, [employers] can train you to do a job.”

Thus it’s vital that Georgia continue to invest heavily in education while simultaneously demanding results and accountability. Last Friday’s AJC story about state auditors being unable to measure the effectiveness of a kindergarten program for low-income kids underscores the need to know whether taxpayers’ money is being spent well.

For the fiscal year beginning July 1, nearly 57 percent of the state’s budget is slated for education. Now’s not the time to drastically narrow that slice of the budgetary pie. Given our historically low per-capita spending, Georgia can’t afford a temporary savings that we’d pay for through dampened growth for years to come.

Public-private partnerships and old-fashioned communication are important in all this, too. Business groups such as the Metro Atlanta Chamber have worked to update and define needed work skills and keep schools abreast of them.

There’s value in schools, communities and businesses working in concert to produce graduates well-prepared for today and tomorrow. Let’s keep those efforts going.

Andre Jackson, for the Editorial Board