Rod Ward is the CEO of Corporation Service Co. and chair of Rodel, an education nonprofit. Paul Herdman is the CEO of Rodel and chair of strategic planning for the Delaware Workforce Development Board.
National rankings from a news organization that involve 88 metrics and a fair amount of subjective judgment always need to be taken with a pretty big grain of salt, but CNBC’s America’s Top States for Business sends signals to leaders both inside and outside the state, nationally and abroad, so we need to pay attention. In so doing, we need to build on what’s working, own and fix what’s not, and correct the record where they get it wrong.
Each state was ranked across 10 categories based on a methodology CNBC developed. Delaware scored:
Delaware’s aggregate, combined ranking came in at 28th — in the middle of the pack among our regional neighbors Maryland (27th), Pennsylvania (17th) and New Jersey (42nd).
Where can we build on what’s working? Given the global competition for talent, it was great to see Delaware ranked among the top five in the nation in terms of the quality of our workforce. This reflects well on our higher-education institutions and our K-12 schools that helped students get there. It supports the work our state officials have done to improve scholarship opportunities for training and college. It also suggests that our work on career pathways, seen by some as the best in the nation, is worth expanding.
What do we need to own and work to improve? We collectively have a lot of room for growth in that we were only in the top third of states in two of CNBC’s 10 categories, but two that stand out are improving our cost of doing business (37) and education (42).
Efforts like Ready in 6, led by the Delaware State Chamber of Commerce to make the permitting process faster (in no less than six months), are important, so that new and existing companies can launch here quickly and easily. This is one of many efforts we need to expand if we want to be competitive in our region and nationally.
On our public education system, where Rodel focuses, we have work to do, but we’re not in the bottom third of states. We strive to be among the best in the nation, so we would have been disappointed with a rank in the 20s, but we are definitely not in the 40s. When we looked at the methodology of these rankings, we believe a few factors may have negatively skewed Delaware’s ranking.
That said, we’re not claiming we deserve to be in the top tier of states yet. Our National Assessment of Educational Progress scores are about the national average, and like most states, our gaps based on race and income are unacceptable. Our high school graduation rates are also at about the national average, at 90%. Maryland, Pennsylvania and New Jersey are roughly the same.
The point is that our education shouldn’t have been ranked among the bottom third of states. If our K-12 system was systematically not preparing our young people on the front end, those issues would present themselves on the back end. Instead, the same analysis also ranked us in the top five nationally in workforce readiness.
This is motivation to keep building on what’s working and actively pushing to get better. In Delaware, we know how to work together to get things done. For example:
National rankings are never an exact science. Where they get it wrong, we need to address it, so that inaccurate perceptions don’t get amplified as fact. But they also give us a chance to look in the mirror; to reflect on where we are making headway and where we can do better. So let’s get to it.