In 1989, many businesses were concerned by the disparity between their workforce needs and the supply of qualified people graduating from public education in this country. The idea to create TBEC grew out of a sense of frustration as business people attended an endless number of education conferences and seminars with varying corporate representation and lack of follow-up or coordination.

Five years earlier, during the special legislative session in 1983-84, various business people, led by Ross Perot, a Dallas business executive, worked to support passage of H.B. 72. Since that time, certain members of the business community gathered during each legislative session, but there was no sustained attention paid to implementing improvements. As one early TBEC leader commented at the time, the 1984 involvement was a start, but business needed to make a long-term “unrelenting effort” to unite the community’s efforts, change public education policy, and implement reforms. That effort was institutionalized in TBEC.

It was soon recognized that companies interested in TBEC were the same as those contributing to chambers of commerce. The Texas Chamber of Commerce, with its Chairman Glenn Biggs and President Larry Milner, was a friend of the organization, and before becoming its own entity, TBEC operated as the Texas Chamber Education Task Force, chaired by Paul Roth, President of the Texas Division of Southwestern Bell.

Taking action to create TBEC as an independent organization, Roth and Tom Luce, of Hughes & Luce, contacted Charles Duncan in Houston to pull together all the business people in the state trying to do something in education. Duncan was the first business member of the State Board of Education that had become an appointed board under H.B. 72 in 1983-84. Mr. Duncan had also been a member of the 1983 Governor’s Select Committee on Education that set in motion the events that led to Texas’ current accountability system. On the State Board, Duncan expressed his concern that there was no permanent organization of business support in education, so that the influence on education policy was solely from within the educational community.

The education community also welcomed TBEC’s efforts to form an alliance. As Bill Kirby, the first education co-chairman of the TBEC Board and then the Commissioner of Education, reports, the business community gave credibility to the needs of the education community with the Legislature. TBEC created the opportunity for business people to fully understand the demands, expectations and pressure placed on educators. One business person noted that the worst day in business was not nearly as difficult as the best day in education.

In exchange for accountability, TBEC’s business members helped educators explain the needs of the school system. This meant that the story was no longer another request for aid from one of several established state agencies that seemed never to be satisfied with budgetary allotments. Kirby noted that educators have always been willing to be held accountable so long as they know exactly for what they are being held accountable. Another valued contribution by TBEC was helping to clarify the standards and expectations.

The group adopted an organizational design developed by Exxon executive Freeman Smith, which from the beginning was structured to include business and education co-chairmen of the board of directors.

The early issues TBEC focused on involved the community who managed the education system rather than the system itself. However, when business people realized there was no statewide uniform measure of students and schools, they began to advocate student testing and accountability for performance. Once those measurements were taken, the business community reacted by pushing for fundamental change. The group’s focus evolved to concentrate on accountability and standards and then to curriculum and delivery.

Duncan became the first business co-chairman of the TBEC Board of Directors, and as a TBEC founder, he personally recruited many of the original TBEC board members. Duncan had served as the former U.S. Secretary of Energy and as a senior executive in industry, experiences that proved invaluable during the early years of TBEC. Duncan, Smith, Roth and Darv Winick proved successful in raising money so that after Rice served for two years, TBEC’s leaders began to look for a permanent full-time executive director.

Among other individuals the group was considering, John Stevens had expressed interest in moving to Texas and was recommended by several people at the American Federation of Teachers who were well respected by TBEC. John became the first permanent full-time executive director of the organization in 1992, and served in that capacity until his retirement in July 2007. Ken Zornes, TBEC's Deputy Executive Director since May 2005 was named Executive Director in January 2008.

From the beginning, TBEC members believed it was important that the organization not lobby because there were programs the organization wanted to implement, policy issues which it wanted to objectively analyze, and the TBEC contribution stream was targeted for these purposes. Many of the same corporations and individuals who founded TBEC, however, also formed Texans for Education (TFE), a business lobbying group, to give them the capability to lobby for their interests on education matters. They believed this was important because candidates who were helpful to the business community with their policy goals in education were periodically sustaining attacks for their views, so that they needed the business community’s support.

While there was no formal affiliation with any national group when TBEC was created, at about the same time, the national Business Roundtable became more focused on education. Each member corporation of the Roundtable was assigned to determine how education could be improved in one state. Tenneco was assigned Texas. Charles Duncan and Bill Stevens were alerted to the Business Roundtable assignment, and they called Jim Ketelsen, CEO of Tenneco, to say they had the initiative the Roundtable wanted. They proposed that Texas representatives of the Business Roundtable fund TFE. With this funding, in contrast to a kitty of money during a session or campaign, TFE became the first group of its type to have a 12-month group and board.

The unique structure of TBEC has allowed business professionals and educators to begin and to continue a constructive dialogue about how to improve public education for all students. That interaction has provided an opportunity for both educators and business people to become highly informed on issues that matter greatly to both of them. Working together through TBEC, they successfully advocate and support reforms that would otherwise have become mired in infighting and controversy.