Flathead Valley a 'rising power'

Chamber speaker addresses local career conference

The Flathead Valley is poised to be a "rising power" in the country's new, knowledge-based economy, because its business community is committed to working with local school systems, according to a member of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Stephen Jordan, vice president at the U.S. Chamber and executive director of the Business and Civic Leadership Center, addressed about 300 people Wednesday night as part of the Montana Career Clusters Conference taking place in Kalispell this week. Educators, administrators and business leaders from across the state are meeting at the newly opened Hilton Garden Inn to discuss partnerships between the academic and business worlds.

Although attempts at collaboration between businesses and schools have occurred since the 1980s, it wasn't until a few years ago that a serious effort began to create a business and education network, Jordan said.

In 2004, more than 200 companies met to examine the role of business in education. At the conference, they learned that U.S. students were ranked 18th in the world in math and science.

That was a "definitive moment" in the U.S. Chamber's role in American education, Jordan said. It convinced business leaders of the need to work with schools to give students the skills they'd need to compete in a global economy.

More than 450 people met the following year, and "by 2006, education, which had not been on the radar screen at the U.S. Chamber … had become a top-five priority," he said.

Today, one of Jordan's biggest concerns is that the United States will become a two-tiered economy, with little opportunity to bridge the gap in between.

Over the course of a lifetime, college graduates may earn as much as $1 million more than high-school graduates, he said. And while more than 70 percent of children from families in the economic top one-fifth will go on to college, only 8 percent from the bottom one-fifth will do so.

It's important to give these students opportunity to succeed in the new knowledge-based economy, Jordan said. He encouraged talking to business owners and human-resource managers about what skills will be necessary to succeed in the new economy. Partnerships between businesses and educators are a good place to start, he said.

"It's not cheating to find out what kind of skills are going to help kids find a good-paying job in the future," he said.

Reporter Kristi Albertson may be reached at 758-4438 or by e-mail at kalbertson@dailyinterlake.com