Showing Students That “Achievement Counts”

To ensure that Maryland students are well prepared to succeed in the 21st century and to assure a brighter future for Maryland, MBRT works to achieve meaningful, measurable and systemic improvement in schools and student achievement. MBRT believes the keys to this improvement are high standards, rigorous assessments and strong accountability. The coalition identifies the most compelling education issues that need to be addressed and targets its involvement where the organization and the expertise of business leaders can be most effective.

Building on its policy successes and recognizing that education is everybody’s business, in 1999 MBRT began taking the message to achieve directly to students and parents through business volunteers, communications materials and Web sites. MBRT’s Achievement Counts campaign helps businesses invest in the education of their future workforce and reaches students and parents with valuable information about what it will take in high school to succeed in college and the workplace. The campaign reaches tens of thousands of students many times throughout middle and high school to help inform their decisions and motivate them to excel in school.

How did MBRT arrive at this comprehensive campaign? By realizing that students need to understand the connection between success in school and their ability to qualify for college, scholarships and good jobs—and that parents need timely information to help them help their children succeed.

Achievement Counts:

• Informs students of the realities of life in the “real world” and what they need to succeed in it
• Engages students in exploring exciting career opportunities
• Motivates students to take rigorous courses, achieve at high levels and begin planning their futures
• Inspires students to pursue their dreams

Each component of Achievement Counts - Maryland Scholars, Speakers Bureau, Teen Web, andParents Count - is designed to provide students with strong messages that are delivered early, often, and by many. Achievement Counts includes:

Maryland Scholars (8th through 12th grade)
Maryland Scholars encourages middle and high school students to make good decisions about coursework that will prepare them to succeed in college or the workplace. Business volunteers provide students with compelling information about how completing rigorous courses in high school will translate into broader opportunities in their personal and professional lives.

Speakers Bureau (8th and 9th grade)
The Speakers Bureau motivates high school freshmen (and some 8th-graders) to take learning seriously and begin planning their futures. More than 2,000 volunteers show students the connection between what they're learning in school and life in the real world, and provide them with concrete reasons why working hard in high school will enable them to get and keep the jobs they want.

To reinforce the messages and guide students to explore further, the volunteers distribute 90,000 copies of the Be What I Want To Be magazine, which MBRT publishes in partnership with The Daily Record. Now in its third edition, the magazine is formatted to appeal to teens. Volunteers also introduce students to the Teen Website.

Teen Website (6th through 12th grade)
www.bewhatiwanttobe.com sustains MBRT’s conversations with students and inspires them to move from interest to action. This dynamic, interactive website – designed for and with teens – allows students to explore exciting career options and take next-step actions, engaging students of many ages in an ongoing quest to create their future.

MBRT rolled out the full site in October 2005, allowing students to pursue more information about their career interests and goals. Using an engaging, multi-media format, the Web site bolsters student motivation by highlighting exciting careers and demonstrating what a student will need to accomplish in school to qualify for a great job. The site and the magazine present profiles of real people in Maryland who work in a broad range of careers, including high-demand industries. These individuals share what their work is like, their salary range, how they got their jobs and the impact of decisions they made in high school.

Parents Count (Birth through 12th grade)
Parents Count arms parents with effective strategies to help their children succeed in school. Through monthly emails, newsletters, and a website, Parents Count provides valuable information on a variety of topics, each customized for parents of infants & toddlers, elementary school children, and middle and high school teens.

To clearly spell out workplace expectations for students, parents, and educators, this survey of Maryland employers paints a compelling picture of Maryland workforce needs and the skills that Maryland firms expect new employees to bring with them to the job.

MBRT leverages strategic business expertise and advocacy tools recommended by Business Toolkit for Better Schools, including: 

• Join or start local or statewide nonprofit coalitions of like-minded business leaders to advance education reform
• Keep the public conversation focused on the vision for the public education system
• Sustain the public’s commitment to school reform over time
• Take the “long view” (beyond political election cycles) and bring neutrality to politically polarized situations
• Communicate with reporters and editorial boards; publish op-eds on education reform; give speeches
• Focus on state-level and school district policy and practice as the unit of change, rather than individual schools

• Lend corporate influence and prestige to key organizations and activities
• Define the skills and knowledge graduates need to get and keep well-paying, family-supporting jobs
• Advise on subject-matter issues, such as academic standards, curriculum and assessments
• Help nonprofit organizations and school districts with communications, public relations, marketing, branding and printing of materials

By the numbers: In 1999, 80 business people volunteered to speak in one school district. In 2006, 2,500 MBRT Speakers Bureau volunteers had made presentations to 83,000 8th- and 9th-graders in 200 schools in all 24 Maryland school districts.

For Maryland Scholars, success is measured by increases in student completion of high-level math and science courses that exceed the state minimum graduation requirements, including Algebra II, Chemistry and Physics. Each district partner collects course completion data, disaggregated by gender, ethnicity and socio-economic status, and sends it to MBRT annually. MBRT has collected three years of course-completion data from its two pilot districts; these show significant increases in completion of rigorous coursework, particularly among low-income and minority students. MBRT has two years of data from another three districts and baseline data from an additional five districts. Collectively, these data represent 113,000 high school students and 42 percent of Maryland’s school districts.

MBRT found, for instance, that in Frederick and Harford Counties between 2003 and 2005:

• 741 more students completed Algebra I by 9th grade (a 19 percent increase)
• The number of African American and low-income students completing Algebra I by 9th grade increased respectively by 60 percent (162 more students) and 80 percent (184 students)
• 596 more students completed Algebra II (a 15 percent increase)
• The number of low-income and Hispanic students completing Algebra II increased respectively by 58 percent increase (124 more students) and 89 percent (71 more students).

At www.BeWhatIWanttoBe.com, between 2005 and 2006, the number of students visiting the site and creating accounts has increased to 43,000 and 2,385, respectively. Sixty percent of visitors indicate that they learned of the site through an MBRT Speaker, with others increasingly reporting that they had been sent by a teacher, a parent or a peer.

• Maryland Business Roundtable for Education
• www.bewhatiwanttobe.com 

Updated: March 2007