Make schools your business; take a page out of our book, five executives say - and make a difference in public education.

Take a page out of our book, five executives say and make a difference in public education.

A year ago, we issued a call to action: If North Carolina business wants better education, business should get involved - with state government, with local schools, with the students many companies employ.

No one can say that North Carolina schools in general have changed for the better since last September. Our high-school graduates now rank last in Scholastic Aptitude Test scores. Even students who score in the top 10 percent on the SAT fare poorly: Their average score is 85 points lower than that of top students in the rest of the country. North Carolina does lead the way in dropouts, however; we're among the 10 worst in that category. Just 69.9 percent of those who start high school will graduate.

The adult population has its problems, too: 850,000 North Carolinians over 19 can't read or do math at a fifth-grade level. Just 53 percent of those over 25 have a high-school diploma. And promised teacher pay raises - which many business leaders agree are essential to schools' long-term health - are being threatened by state budget shortfalls.

But some North Carolina companies are picking up education's tattered flag and bearing it into the battle for better schools in the state and the region. We asked five executives of such companies to discuss what they are doing for education and why they've chosen to get involved.

The things they're doing range from the national to the local. RJR Nabisco's Next Century Schools program will put $30 million into public schools - the most money a U.S. company has ever given to support kindergarten-through-12th-grade education. Last September, Pete Bednar of Bandag - a tire retreader that employs 215 in Granville County - helped found Education Does Guarantee Employment (EDGE). Members visit the homes of kids who say they're quitting and try to talk them out of it. "It makes me sick to see kids drop out of school," Bednar says. "You know they don't have any future." He called on six dropouts last year and talked at least one into going back to school.

Why has the business community in Granville County been so successful in its efforts to effect change and improvement in the local schools? Because we don't limit ourselves to just talking about it. We do it.

Two factors that have fostered success are that the school system supports business involvement as a key to school improvement and the business community realizes that we must support schools by providing hands-on assistance.

For the past decade, Granville County has been a community in transition. Once largely agrarian, now only a small percentage of the county's population works in agriculture. Industrial growth has done much to change employment patterns. Finding qualified workers has become difficult in a county that ranks among the highest in the state in the number of adults over age 25 with no formal education and highest in the number of adults over 25 without a high-school diploma.

But we - the schools and business have a vision for a brighter future. Together, we want to decrease the dropout rate, better prepare students for employment and unite the entire community in our efforts to place a higher value on education. From this vision, EDGE was born.

EDGE began with a proclamation that 40 business and industrial employers have signed, signifying their endorsement of education as the key to successful employment. The proclamation confirms a two-way commitment between schools and employers. The school system plans to monitor and report to the employers academic, behavior and attendance performance of student employees. The schools also promise to develop an assessment of skills employers identify as necessary for job success.

The businesses pledge to give priority in hiring to high-school and GED graduates in order to let students know that employment potential will be limited without a diploma. We also promise to hire high-school students only on a part-time basis during the school term. Student workers who do poorly in school will lose their jobs.

Businesses that consistently exploit student workers through long hours will be publicly identified by the school system. Businesses have agreed to promote the value of education by providing a place at work for parent-teacher meetings, by recognizing employees' and their children's educational achievements and by giving special encouragement to students to finish school.

Further initiatives include signs in downtown Oxford and at each high school, highlighting EDGE with monthly updates on the number of dropouts. The business participants in EDGE have had a major impact upon potential dropouts. At-risk students and business and community leaders meet weekly during the school year to discuss the impact of education on...