Mark Jacobs began his business career in commercial banking in Dallas, and a few years and an MBA later headed off to New York City to join the investment banking world at Goldman Sachs. By age 45 he was CEO of Reliant Energy in Houston, where he led a team that engineered a turnaround of the company. While living in Houston, he served on the board of a charter school system in which 95 percent of students from mostly low-income homes graduated and 45 percent went on to college. Since returning to Des Moines a few years ago, Jacobs has been busy working on ways to turn around Iowa’s K-12 public education system, which has slipped to the middle of the pack among the states in performance. Reaching Higher Iowa aims to make Iowa’s K-12 public education system more effective and re-establish the state’s leadership position in education. 

Why did you leave the corporate world? 
I have been incredibly fortunate; I had the opportunity to lead a Fortune 500 company. Our company ended up merging with another company of equals that turned out to be not so equal. I stayed about 10 months after the transaction was done to help with the integration. But then I decided it was time to do something else. I went through a period of self-reflection after that and concluded that I had been blessed with so many great experiences in my life that I wanted to use those to help others. At the same time, I got a calling to come back home to Iowa to work on some problems in the state. 

How did Reaching Higher Iowa get started? 
I started doing some background work in 2012; my jumping-off point was that Iowa had one of the best K-12 school systems in the country when I graduated. After I retired and moved back home I started doing a little bit of homework on where we were, and I was very disappointed to learn that we had fallen to middle of the pack — not because we had gotten worse, but we were close to the bottom of improvement in student achievement. Based off of that work, I made the decision to start Reaching Higher Iowa in early 2013. 
What buy-in have you gotten from the business community? 

I think it’s been very good. One of the things I focused on initially has been to build a board of directors. I went around the state and recruited well-known business leaders, and we announced our board of directors earlier this year. We’ve got a great, great group that cares very deeply about education. Currently we’re working on broadening our base of support. One reason is to build the financial capabilities, and the skills and experience we can add to the organization. Secondly, it’s to recruit companies that are like-minded and care about having a high-quality education system in Iowa. 

What successes have you had so far? 
Our initial focus was on trying to change the statewide assessment. One of the core problems I believe we have in Iowa is that we don’t measure and transparently report how much each child learns each year. To do that, we need an assessment test that’s aligned with our academic standards. We had some very early success in a 2013 reform bill that the state have a test that does measure annual academic growth (the Smarter Balanced Assessment). So we’ve demonstrated as an organization very early on the ability to be successful in getting policy changes enacted. 

Will legislation be the key avenue for effecting change? 
Based on the research I did, I came to the conclusion that the system is the problem. We have some incredibly talented educators, but they’re working in a system that is not conducive to continual improvement. … I believe there are four key elements for success: First, measure and transparently report what you’re trying to do; second, support our educators with professional development; third, make sure we are able to attract the best people into the education field; and fourth, selectively introduce some additional choices through charter schools. 

What’s the track record for charter schools? 
If you look at the 15 states that have improved educational outcomes the most over the past 10 years, 14 of those states have a successful charter school program. And that’s something that we don’t have in Iowa today. … (Being involved with charter schools in Houston), that’s part of where I developed my strong passion for education because I saw firsthand children growing up in incredibly challenging circumstances, that when provided access to a high-quality education (succeeded). Demographically, we’re starting to see a number of the same challenges as other parts of the country. Today, 43 percent of our children qualify for free and reduced lunch, up from 26 percent 15 years ago. And the number of English language learners is growing. 

What do you see as the biggest challenge in accomplishing your goals? 
The biggest challenge we face is raising public awareness. A lot of people I visit with still think that we have the best education system in the country. Or some people say, I know we’ve slipped a little, but we’re still pretty good, aren’t we? Many are shocked to hear that today we’re in the middle of the pack. And that’s actually a misleading statistic because we have an easier demographic in state-by-state comparisons. If you look at comparable demographics, our results actually fall to the bottom of the third quartile. I think the biggest challenge that we have is recognizing there’s a need to change. 

What are your hobbies? 
I’m an avid golfer and I love water sports. We’re a very active and outdoors family — hiking and biking.