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Story posted August 8, 2011. Results updated September 25, 2012.

Results.

• Decreasing dropout rate: In 2009, only one percent of students dropped out, compared to eight percent in 2006.
• After 5 years of the Promise, test scores exceed those in other Southern Arkansas districts and throughout the state.
• Enrollment in SouthArk Community College in El Dorado has increased as 20 percent of those receiving Promise scholarships choose to stay in the region.

On January 22, 2007, residents of El Dorado, Arkansas learned that a unique initiative called The El Dorado Promise would allow graduates of El Dorado Public Schools the opportunity to earn college degrees tuition-free as a result of a $50 million commitment by Murphy Oil Corporation to El Dorado’s greatest resource – its children.

While not many districts have access to a Fortune 125 company that supports its community in the way that Murphy Oil has done here, there are certainly lessons for foundation and partnership leaders to learn - lessons about the motivation of corporate partners to do big things, and lessons on designing and overseeing an initiative that can produce concrete, dramatic results.

Origin of the El Dorado Promise

Located in the southernmost part of Arkansas, the city of El Dorado, with a population of less than 20,000, is not the kind of place you would expect to find the headquarters of a Fortune 125 company. But this is where the Murphy Oil Corporation calls home, and where it has a history of investing in its community - particularly in education.

According to Magen Parker, Director of Corporate Affairs for Murphy Oil, and El Dorado Promise Liaison for the company, the company’s leadership had a deep passion for education almost from the beginning. It was founded by Charles Murphy Sr. in the 1920s, and his son, Charles Murphy Jr., had to help with the business at a very early age due to his father’s stroke; as a result, he never had an opportunity to attend college himself. Though he was self-educated and very successful, the fact that he was not able to pursue higher education was always a deep regret, and the company’s focus on education philanthropy stems from that: his desire to give others the opportunity he was not able to pursue himself.

This interest was first expressed formally through the Murphy Oil Education Program, which was created to recognize and reward students for academic excellence on standardized tests, AP courses, and other measures. As one example, a child scoring as Proficient or Advanced on a standardized test would receive $500, half of which they would be presented with immediately, and half that would be placed into an interest-bearing savings account and released to the student upon high school graduation.

The El Dorado Promise represented an extension of the thinking behind this program; as Parker notes, “we had said, ‘we reward them for their work in K-12, why not extend that to college as well?’” This thinking coincided with reports of the Kalamazoo Promise, a similar scholarship program in Michigan. The CEO of Murphy Oil at the time, Claiborne Deming, went with a group to learn more about that program, and presented the idea for the El Dorado Promise to the company’s Board of Directors in December 2006. According to Parker, “many board members reported that it was easiest vote they took that day,” and it passed unanimously. The program was then announced in January 2007.

Operations

The Promise was designed so that 100% of the company’s $50 million contribution goes directly to student scholarships: Murphy Oil employs its own representative for the program (Magen Parker), and as part of the agreement, the El Dorado School District has hired a full-time director to manage the program from the school side. That person, Sylvia Thompson, manages all program activity, including communicating with all students from kindergarten through college, communicating with colleges, collecting data and tracking outcomes, and processing payments.

The El Dorado Promise provides complete scholarships that cover tuition and mandatory fees for up to five years. The requirements for students are simple:

• Students must live in the city and attend school there;
• They must graduate from high school;
• The must pursue either a two or four-year degree;
• They must remain enrolled full time (12 hours per semester) and maintain a minimum 2.0 average.

The program was designed to have as few barriers as possible, and El Dorado Schools and the community itself are seeing big changes as a result.

Outcomes

Program leaders realized the importance of gathering information on outcomes, and given the scope of the program decided that they not only wanted to look at student outcomes, but also the impact the Promise makes on the community at large. To that end, they are working with the University of Arkansas at Little Rock to look at the big picture, gathering historical and current data on community population, housing, business activity and more to gauge the impact of the Promise.

In terms of student outcomes, program leaders are looking at a large number of quantitative and qualitative outcomes. In quantitative terms, they look at enrollment trends, graduation rates, college enrollment rates, and what institutions students are attending. Qualitatively they are interested in the impact the Promise is making on student attitudes, changes in their plans for the future, and the impact the program is making on school culture.

Promise leaders recognize that the program’s impact may not reach its real potential for a few years, considering that when the Promise was announced, students in the upper grades may not have been on a college track and may not have been able to change in time. With that caveat, however, the program has still seen remarkable results: the district has seen a 5% increase in enrollment; graduation rates have increased; 80% of graduates go on to college, compared with 60% before the Promise; and even the culture of education has changed, with parents becoming more involved and teachers expecting more of their students.

According to Parker, while there have been some concrete benefits to Murphy Oil, such as a better employee recruiting environment, the real benefits the company receives are less tangible: “This is our home, where the company was founded, and community is important to us. We are so pleased to be able to give back and increase both the immediate and long-term prospects of our children and our community.”

Copyright (2011) K-12 Partnership Report. The K-12 Partnership Report is a free source for information on building K-12 partnerships and school foundations. For more information, visit http://www.kprnewsletter.com/.

Reposted with permission. To see the original posting of this story, go here.