OUR VISION: That all students graduate prepared and inspired to thrive in college and in careers.
OUR MISSION: MCBRE is a nonprofit comprised of senior business leaders who collaborate with the top education leaders in Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS). Together, we explore how our organizations can solve leadership challenges. MCBRE also runs programs that help students connect what they're learning in the classroom with the real world so they can translate their emerging skills into meaningful future careers. Visit www.mcbre.org for more information on the organization, our events, and our student programs.
MCBRE was profiled in a 2009 Harvard Business School Case Study as a strategic and innovative business/education partnership model. When several communities expressed interest in starting similar business/education partnerships, MCBRE launched a national program (the 114th Partnership) to help selected communities unite education, philanthropic and business leaders to collaborate toward college and career readiness goals.
THE 114th PARTNERSHIP & SPARK 101: The 114th Partnership, launched in 2011, expands some of MCBRE's most successful models and programs in order to ensure more students around the United States are better prepared and more inspired to thrive in college and in their careers. Visit www.114th.org for more information. Our programs include:
- Communities of Deliberate Excellence: We work directly with a school system, and neighboring foundations and business leadership, to help them navigate the transformation toward increased college and career readiness goals—working from pre-kindergarten to 12th grade. We help school system implement education best practices, adapt appropriate tools and strategies of high performing organizations, and better leverage volunteers and expertise from the business community to accelerate their goals. A demonstration site is currently being developed with California's San Rafael City Schools through the support of the Marin Community Foundation. An industry advisory team comprised of organizations with operations in the San Francisco Bay area is supporting the school system's goals and transformation. Efforts are underway to expand this offering to more districts within California and to seed new partnerships in other states, as well.
- Advisory Services: Through our advisory services model, we sharing our proven engagement models with existing business education partnerships, Chambers of Commerce, or other nonprofit organizations focused on college and career ready high school graduates. We help those organizations more strategically support their local or national education goals, reaching even more students.
- Spark 101: Spark 101 helps educators bring real-world challenges from industry into lessons to inspire and prepare students for college and careers. The online tool aligns short videos created by professionals directly to course objectives for national curriculum programs. We are starting with the College Board's Advanced Placement (AP) STEM programs—which reach nearly 2 million students—and plan to strategically expand our offerings to educators using other national curriculum programs, eventually including the Common Core. While existing websites provide teachers with supporting educational videos, no other site aligns interactive videos directly to curriculum and to future careers as well as their related education pathways. Spark 101 makes it easy for teachers to find what they need, plan lessons, and engage students in problem-solving exercises. Visit www.spark101.org for more information and to see our videos.
