American public high school education has become very poor for the past several decades in a competitive world producing mostly unemployable graduates. In 2016, 74% of those who graduated with a high school diploma were not ready to be trained for a job beyond minimum wage. From 2017 on, they will be increasingly replaced by robotic automation.

USA PUBLIC EDUCATION - A SITUATION REPORT
Any Nation's Future Depends On Its Children's Education




INTRODUCTION

Updated February 21, 2020

Please read the entire introduction first. It includes explanations that are very important in order to understand fully what we present later.



It is very important to understand that high schools feed the workforce of all industries or government jobs, with or without university or graduate school training. Our success as a nation depends on the training level of the workforce, because we compete internationally with the best nations out there in virtually every product and/or service area.

I managed a large international business for 40 years. I remember that 50 years ago or so I saw great demand in about 90 countries for American-made products, IN ANY PRODUCT AREA. Everyone thought that American products are the best. Obviously they were. We human beings tend not to remember even very important things relating to anything changing around us, if the change is slow, around 1-2% per year. But slowly we started seeing foreign products that the public liked better, and after loosing several products to companies in other countries, we started loosing several industries in large numbers to other other countries. We became very vocal and blamed the lower wages in other countries. I saw with my international trips that we were wrong. Most big winners automated manufacturing much faster than we did. IF YOU DO NOT KEEP YOUR EYE ON YOUR COMPETITORS, BUT THEY KEEP AN EYE ON YOU, THEY WILL WIN, BECAUSE NOT KNOWING PRECISELY WHAT THEY ARE DOING, AND YOU THINKING THAT YOU ARE THE BEST, MAKES ONE A REAL LOSER FOR SURE. WE DID NOT DO OUR HOMEWORK ON FOREIGN COMPETITORS, AND WE ARE STILL NOT DOING IT WELL, AND WE ARE NOT DOING IT AT ALL IN A VERY IMPORTANT AREA, CALLED EDUCATION, AND MANY OTHER COUNTRIES PASSED US. AND THAT EXPLAINS WHY OUR INDUSTRIES’ COMPETITIVENESS DROPPED, IN FACT WE LOST ENTIRE INDUSTRIES TO COMPETITION (E.G., TELEVISION, ELECTRONICS, HEAVY MACHINERY AND OTHERS), BECAUSE THE WORKFORCES OF MANY OTHER NATIONS BECAME BETTER EDUCATED.

  • We will show you later in detail how our education declined against foreign competitors.


  • We will show you how much tougher the 8th grade tests were more than 120 years ago.


  • We will show you that we went from the horse and buggy to the moon in 100 years, but 80% of our public high school graduates today cannot read well, cannot communicate well, can read and write block letters only. They cannot do basic math, cannot even fill out a job application. And no single governor, and not a single teachers’ union leader stood up and said openly that “WE CANNOT CONTINUE GRADUATING CHILDREN SO POORLY PREPARED, AFTER ALL, THE PEOPLE’S MONEY IS PAYING YOU ALL THE HIGHEST AMOUNT OF DOLLARS IN THE WORLD FOR EACH CHILD WHILE YOU LIE TO THEM WITH YOUR SLOGANS THAT CLAIM THAT YOUR SCHOOLS DELIVER “EXCELLENCE TO ALL CHILDREN”! WE ARE STOPPING ANY INCREASES UNTIL YOU SHOW SIGNIFICANTLY IMPROVED ACT AND SAT SCORES ANNUALLY FOR THREE YEARS!” .


  • THERE IS AN OPTIMAL PERIOD IN A CHILD’S AGE FOR LEARNING. IF YOU MISS ANY SUBJECT FOR ANY REASON, AFTER 18-20 YEARS OF AGE IT WILL TAKE AT LEAST TEN TIMES AS MUCH EFFORT TO LEARN THE SAME THING AFTER 20. THE BIGGEST MISTAKE WE MAKE IS NOT MAKING USE OF THE 3-6 YEAR PERIOD’S FAST LEARNING. A CLOSE SECOND ARE NOT TEACHING READING OR BASIC MATHEMATICS WELL, NOT TEACHING CURSIVE WRITING, ART AND CLASSICAL MUSIC AND ALLOWING CALCULATOR USE AND NOT LEARNING MULTIPLICATION AND DIVISION TABLES DAMAGES PATTERN RECOGNITION, CRITICAL THINKING AND DECISION MAKING. Talk to a neurologist if in doubt. People at the highest levels in education made some very foolish decisions along the years, or were convinced to do such damaging things. If we need to make important decisions about a single subject like pre-school education, we have to learn and understand several other related subjects also. For example, why do we have to deliver education to a certain level of standards by a certain age? Because the human brain’s ability to learn is the quickest between birth and six years of age. It develops its areas in order of specific developmental priority, for example “vision” first, then “hearing” second, overlapping and so on. As learning starts slowing, by age 15-18, learning starts becoming more difficult. We will cover more about this further on. We just wanted to show that critical thinking involves the knowledge of other fields, sometimes many, and it is very important to know other related subjects as well. Critical thinking is a very important skill in order to make good decisions, but it cannot exist without understanding other subjects as well that are related to the problem that one needs to solve. But there are subjects that can relate to most if not all problem solving, like reading and math, the subjects we learn in high school, that we are not teaching well. Our education system is talking about teaching critical thinking in high school. We disagree. One has to teach a lot more with much better results first. AND THEN, CRITICAL THINKING EMERGES AUTOMATICALLY UNDER NORMAL DECISION MAKING.


  • The standard for high school graduation rate must be to teach all students, who are not learning-disabled to a level where they cannot learn enough, to be able to earn a good living. The graduation rate we need today to be competitive is 95% with an average ACT score of 27. It seems too high isn't it? That is where we were as a nation 50 years ago. When you are low in school performance or anything, the normal competitive level appears to be too high. It isn't too high. ACT 27 performance is below the top ten countries in education, some of whom have an average at the equivalent of ACT 30-31. We should be graduating 95% of those children who entered high school at ACT 27, much better educated than we do today. We graduate ONLY 5% OF OUR SCHOOL CHILDREN AT THAT LEVEL INSTEAD OF 95%. WE GRADUATE 84% OF HIGH SCHOOL CHILDREN IN TENNESSEE WHO ARE NOT EVEN “ACT READY” (ACT 21-22 average). MOST CANNOT READ. MOST CAN READ AND WRITE BLOCK LETTERS ONLY. MOST CANNOT DO ANY MATH WITHOUT A CALCULATOR. MOST CANNOT FILL OUT JOB APPLICATIONS. THE SCHOOL SYSTEM SHOULD NOT GRADUATE A SINGLE PERSON LIKE THAT, BUT THEY GRADUATE MANY. IS THIS ALL RIGHT? WHAT IS THE EFFECT OF SUCH PERFORMANCE? We will show you two eight grade tests that are more than 120 years old. Few high school graduates could pass it today.


  • We were all newborn babies starting our lives. We were educated, had jobs to be self-supporting. Most of us had children, and decades later we retired and died. Then the next generation took over, to create a better future for them all. If the public education system is good, the children will be well educated. ONLY THEN CAN WE PROSPER AS A COUNTRY.

    If the public education is not good, the children will be poorly educated. The poor education weakens the nation’s workforce. That in turn weakens our industries against the almost 40 countries that passed us in high school mathematics. A less educated workforce weakens the products and services of the nation’s industries. All nations compete in the world with each other. When your products are less competitive, you sell less, and that decreases the national income and poverty grows in that nation. All this depends on how good a nation’s public education is. That is how a nation’s future is created, by our babies of “yesterday.” WE HAVE A VERY HIGH, FAST GROWING POVERTY RATE. Our children’s future depends on the quality of our leaders and workers today, and their quality depends on their parents, their health from conception on, their upbringing, their value system AND EDUCATION, both in and out of school during their entire life. Our ability to learn depends on how our brain develops during pregnancy and especially from birth onward.


  • A healthy baby is born with about 100,000,000,000 brain cells called neurons. Many neurons start interconnecting from birth in specific functional areas such as vision, hearing, emotions, feelings, math, reading, stress and so on. Stress can be destructive to brain cells. For this reason the education system in Finland designed a very effective teaching methodology that produces very high results in all minorities as well (gypsies, Lapp tribes and African immigrants) by end of high school. This is how learning improves brain functionality. You can read more about it by clicking here.

    Fast connections form during the first three years of a child, in basic functions like vision, hearing, speech and so on. Then other most advanced areas start interconnecting and forming at a slightly slower rate with timing depending on the specific developmental sequence of the functional areas within the brain. By the end of the third year of life 15,000 neuronal interconnections have taken place by each single neuron, and the baby has 100 billion neurons! That is 1,500,000,000,000,000 interconnections in only 3 years! The rate of neuronal interconnections start slowing more around six years of age, but it is still increasing at a high rate. The areas of the brain that have to do with vocational preference will not be ready until age 18-20.

    The slower these interconnections are forming, THE SLOWER WE LEARN. If a child does not learn to read by grade 4, learning becomes harder and the child is not likely to learn later. The chances are that being a poor reader will become a handicap for life. Not being a good reader will make learning anything more difficult. Things we do not do well or at all, like mental math, reading and writing script, basic math, reading, and other things, we are to learn when learning is easier, because if we do not learn it then, it will become much more difficult to learn later when the neuronal interconnections’ formation becomes 10-20 times slower.

    That makes pre-school between the ages of 3 and 6 a very important period to start learning. For this reason, the emphasis needs to be on the basics like more math and science in public school. Also art and music that we discontinued in the USA, develop most right hemisphere neuronal interconnections that are very important for critical thinking and decision making. Learning is much easier during these early years and start getting more difficult between fifteen and twenty years of age, depending on specific areas of the brain that cover the same function, like hearing, seeing, mathematics, and so on.


Unfortunately, things like allowing the use of calculators in school, Graduating more than 80% of our children who are not even ACT Ready, and not teaching subjects liker art and music, reading well and so on, create lasting disabilities that will create big problems for the child. IT WOULD WELL JUSTIFY A GOVERNMENT INVESTIGATION WITH HEAVY PENALTIES FOR THOSE PEOPLE OR GROUPS WHO CREATED SUCH HIGHLY DAMAGING ACTS THAT DUMB DOWN THE POPULATION. Graduating many children who cannot communicate, will create significant problems for those children for the rest of their lives. We would urge parents to supplement the children's public education, by getting some of the excellent tutorials that are available on the Internet to bring the children's knowledge up in reading, writing, all pre-calculus mathematics and chemistry as well as physics, before they graduate from high school. The more they learn now, the better their future will be. If they do not learn enough now, they will not do it later when learning is more difficult. ALL SKILLS WE HAVE TO LEARN IN LOWER GRADES BECAUSE ARE PREREQUISITES FOR FURTHER LEARNING.

The public noticed since 1995 that high school graduates who worked operating a cash register, could not make change or do any mental mathematics if the cash register lost power. This was the result of governors and state education managers deciding to allow the use of calculators in school. This decision ignored the necessity of mental mathematics developing, limiting the formation of some neuronal interconnections in children's brains. In other words the use of calculators at an early age prevented some brain cell connections to be formed, reducing the brain's ability to perform some brain functions in mathematics.

Today, 25 years later, according to employers and college professors and ACT: nationally more than 74% of high school graduates (Tennessee 83%) cannot read and write well enough, and don't know enough basic math. They read and write only block letters, cannot fill out job applications and have a bad attitude on the job. The overly optimistic opinion of the school performance by teachers and principals and superintendents to “encourage” BOTH STUDENTS and parents is welcome - if they are telling the truth. This is what happened. As a result of the “saving children’s self-esteem” movement about 40 years ago, the schools/teachers/principals told minority children and their parents, that “all children are not created by God for college education, but little Johnny will learn a trade, and will do well.” Then little Johnny graduated from high school poorly prepared and was accepted for a job. But he could not do anything and thought that he just has to go to work on time. Supervisors and other employees became very unfriendly, and he started hating his job because most people in every company “treated him badly”. It was the school that created the problem both for the employer and for the employee. This has been happening on a large scale. All of this is a symptom of a huge negative impact on the brain development of a child at a time when the brain cell (neuronal) interconnections are NOT being formed for life in specific functional areas.

The following is a very interesting area. Imagine the body as if it was a huge computer system with billions of high speed computers everywhere. On the “outer side of the body”, in the “sensors”, like the eyes, the ears, the skin, the finger tips and so on, the computers do something called pattern recognition at very high speed, and they send the results to a specific area of the brain for “final decision” and action. Groups of neuronal interconnections take place in very specific areas of the child's brain as a result. Recreational drugs present in the mother’s body 90 DAYS BEFORE SHE BECOMES PREGNANT and malnutrition DURING PREGNANCY will reduce the number of neurons a baby has at birth. Various groups of neurons are specific to do certain talents or jobs. “If you don’t use it you lose it” applies. You have to keep using your brain to solve the most difficult problems and learn the difficult subjects, become the best when your brain is flexible enough - when you are young.

One could say that brain cell INTERCONNECTION ACTIVITY is LEARNING, and one could think of the already formed neuronal interconnections as KNOWLEDGE itself. Learning music and art interconnects neurons between the two hemispheres of the brain, and also within the right hemisphere. Not having these courses in school has a big negative impact on critical thinking and decision making. Not teaching to read and write script, and we graduate children without reading well enough has a similar impact plus it handicaps learning itself. Teaching less in most subjects during the school years also has a similar impact. The formation of neuronal interconnections starts slowing down in the brain around 20 years of age and keeps decreasing, unless the young person studied hard and received the best grades always. But if he or she did not, it becomes an impossibility to learn all the things that he or she did not learn at an early age. That is why learning becomes much more difficult as we age. Talk to a neurologist to verify these facts, read books written by them. We use only 4-6% of our brain “wired” or interconnected. Einstein used 8%. CAN YOU IMAGINE HOW FANTASTIC LIFE COULD BE FOR THOSE WHO COULD LEARN ENOUGH TO INCREASE INTERCONNECTIONS IN THEIR BRAIN JUST TEN MORE PERCENT? It is very unfortunate that our public education is doing the opposite.

American poverty grew to the second highest in the world. Education Management will tell you that “Children in poverty cannot perform well” as THE REASON for poor school performance. That is NOT TRUE. Success Academy Schools, a charter school chain in New York City produces much better results than public schools and most private schools in New York (with New York state being the 5th best performer in US education) WITH POOR, BLACK, INNER CITY CHILDREN! Poor school performance is not the result of poverty. POVERTY IS THE RESULT OF POOR EDUCATION. It is not the result of parents not doing what they "should". The parents that do not, simply cannot. Where poverty rules we will not find a lot of well educated people. We spoke to many parents in poor inner city areas. The most common story we heard in such areas was “I did not finish high school. When he found out that I was pregnant with his child, he disappeared. Since then I had to work my fingers to the bone every day, and I am just too tired to look after my little Johnny.” She was crying by that time. I wish I could help. They were not fortunate enough to get a good education. AND OUR CHILDREN ARE NOT GETTING A BETTER EDUCATION YET, EXCEPT FOR NORMAL FAMILIES THAT HAVE ENOUGH MONEY. AND ENOUGH MONEY COMES ONLY AS A RESULT OF GOOD EDUCATION. It is not the result of bad teachers. It is the result of declining teacher training programs everywhere in the US, management people in education who never had management training and cannot solve management problems. Very interesting that while we found the teaching major curriculum in colleges deteriorating, no other college program for a different major declined. As a result, teacher turnover is sky high, teachers are not treated well in the most important job that our future depends on as a country, AND WE ARE NOT RECOGNIZING THE PROBLEM. THAT IS THE RESULT OF OUR SCHOOLS HAVING DUMBED DOWN THE PUBLIC OVER MORE THAN 50 YEARS

THIS cannot be accidental. Talk to a doctor called a neurologist if you do not believe what we write about brain development impact. Was this all part of a state effort to make school report cards look good to everyone as our children's knowledge was actually decreased? It certainly looks that way. Unless it was the objective to have the population dumbed down so far that they will not realize what is happening until nothing can be done about it. Very sad.

Why can't we fix the public school performance without dumbing down the children? We are one of the highest spenders per student in the world. That means that more money is not the solution. That means that money is being spent in the wrong places in the school budgets and on unqualified “friends” that they promote from within or hire. That means that our standards are not increasing but decreasing and are based on our staying "qualified" to spend the high budgets. Success in the education of our children only comes if our standards are based on the COMPETITION, the top five countries in education. They are not. This is the biggest contributor to OUR teacher turnover being the highest in the world. And that points to poor, untrained management. Not more money. Most of our schools are not fun places to work or learn. They are boring to the students for six hours a day. I sat in on many classes in 16 school districts. We should not call them schools. "Failure Factories" would be a more appropriate name as you will see later.



AMERICAN EDUCATION HAS BEEN DECLINING FOR A VERY LONG TIME.

WHY?



The quality of education depends 100% on the governor of each state in the USA, but it is also influenced by the USA Department of Education. Looking at the states that use ACT scores (59% of USA high school graduates), the average ACT scores are very poor in those states. That means that governors are hiring the wrong people for their departments of education or preventing them from doing the right things. This huge problem exists in the USA Department of Education, the state Education Departments, and in all 13,500 school districts nationwide.

No organization can produce good results, unless every employee focuses on the right objective that top management decided.

The top managers must have been hired or promoted because they successfully improved results in previous jobs. In public education, this important fact is ignored and political behavior rules. Example: A person who was never even a school principal and never managed more than 100 people, was backed by the wealthiest family in the state, and was hired as superintendent to improve the performance of 89 schools with 9,000 employees. He befriended the principal of the lowest performing high school who was teaching physical education before he was promoted to principal. He could not improve the extremely low performance of his high school over 6 years (ACT Readiness only 6%) and the superintendent promoted him to manage all 89 schools to improve their performance. For 8 years now the 89 schools performance did not improve, but they graduate 88% of the children, and 4 out of 5 children are getting a diploma who are not prepared to get any job. The entire state of Tennessee is even worse.

Employees MUST have a clear understanding of what the organization’s objective is, and exactly why they have to focus on specific things they have to achieve. By the way, in management "goals” and “objectives" are different. They must be measurable, as a number, they must be the key indicator of success or failure. No one has such objectives in the USA Department of Education, in any state Education Department, or in the school districts. NOT ONE! The difference between goals and objectives is that objectives are for the current fiscal year, measured monthly and must be planned so that one achieves them. A goal on the other hand has to do with what one is planning to achieve in 5-6 years. There is no such planning.

Management must hire employees who are well educated to do the job and who will be happy to do their best in their job. That is also a very important task for which management training is necessary and the potential employee’s qualification and past performance must be tested. They do not have such qualifications or a good past performance record.

What you must not have is the opposite - no specific measurable objectives and everyone just works the same way based on what they think is best. That is exactly what we do in education to produce the bad results.

The organization needs monthly objectives in writing for every single operating unit, in this case every single school, and an operating plan for each such unit that details in writing with mutual agreement between bosses and employees who work for them, what the MONTHLY objectives are.

Such plans then are consolidated for the individual school districts, and they are consolidated for the state and the states are consolidated for the country.

If an organization has less than 100 employees, and if the top manager is very well organized and educated, he or she may be able to focus all employees to ensure that a plan is clearly understood by everyone about what the employees must achieve in clear measurable terms, that cannot be misunderstood.

Objectives must be measurable preferably in numbers so that they cannot be misunderstood. The objective must be a key indicator of success or failure for individual supervisors, or managers. If such an objective is not met monthly, then it is the boss of the manager or supervisor who has to decide if there were circumstances that could not be met and why, in writing. When you do not have such objectives in writing, then no one is going to focus on improvement, and people just come to work and they do the same thing every day, the same way, and performance will not change.

We were shocked to find that the objectives used by school districts, states or even the nation, in education results is totally meaningless and unmeasurable. Especially in organizations with more than 100 employees, if we do not have in this case an objective that is an indicator of educational performance, the objective must be an ACT or SAT average that is 10% higher than the one achieved the year before, and also a MONTHLY GPA average in every school, similarly 10% above the previous year, all of which could be or should be generated automatically, including the objectives themselves. If that does not exist, the ship of education is totally LOST. In addition, since it is the schools that produce the results, an operating plan needs to exist for each school that shows the measurable objectives of each supervisory and management person MONTHLY, that is important for the GPA achievement. If we do not have that in ANY TYPE OF ORGANIZATION with the key indicator of positive or negative performance, it is not only an AIMLESS SHIP, BUT IT IS SINKING WITH OUR CHILDREN ABOARD IN THE CASE OF EDUCATION, WHILE THE CAPTAIN IS SCREAMING THAT EVERYTHING IS FINE, EVERYONE IS DOING A GOOD JOB, WE ARE HEADING IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION. And that is the only news that the public, who is paying for this cruise receives. No organization can be other than a failure without having such measurable monthly objectives and operating plans for the same fiscal year. There is no possibility of improving the poor results we have with such a huge mistake at all levels in public education. When you do not plan with such detail, you are actually planning to fail.

The performance reviews must be based on meeting the measurable objectives. It is viewed as very difficult, very high and IMPOSSIBLE at first. We said before that when a long poorly performing organization that had no objectives to meet, no operating plans to focus everyone on what needs to be achieved, looks at itself, everyone feels that they are good, they just want more money. Management must explain clearly why we have to do this: past results for decades were bad. Why? Because people slip back into their comfort zone, which is bad performance. So we must change. If we keep working the same way, our children will be replaced by robots. Use incentives. Improve teachers and principals and help them become experts of a new way, because the old way does not work, and will not work. Like always, people rise to high expectations, and in a couple of years you will have performance like you could never imagine before. Change is inevitable.

When people are not trained even to know only this much about management, they cannot succeed - even if the government pays them for bad results. In that case we have to wait for decades.

But when it comes to spending, you see specific numbers, however, spending that has not been planned with similar monthly detail about what CORRECTIVE ACTIONS NEED TO BE DONE WITH A SENSE OF URGENCY TO MAKE MAJOR CHANGES TO OUR EDUCATION SYSTEM, to eliminate the high failure rate and overspending.

Such poor results as we have, do not happen without having the right management talent without education management at all levels having been dumbed down and are directed from the top nationally (could be from outside the president’s authority). Several such methods have been developed, tried and worked since WWI. Public opinion can be manipulated with “education” of the public, and dumbing down of the public using public education can do this extremely well. Lenin of Russia started this method by frequently preaching that “If we tell people a lie a thousand times, they will accept it as truth!”. This method has been used for a long time by leaders before Lenin, even today and with lies. The biggest liars are always the ones who are the loudest and lie the most.

Another example: The majority of a school board hires a superintendent with a $300K salary because someone with influence recommended the person. The candidate never managed a single school, he was jumping around in different jobs, never managed more than 50 people, and in the new job, he has to improve the results of 89 schools, with 9000 employees. Such a person will not improve anything because he has never done it. He also misrepresented a few things on his resume and the school board believed the headhunter’s background check who was receiving a $130k commission for him. Somebody kept organizing constant flag-waving in public to elevate his public image, calling the candidate a “miracle maker” in the newspaper, a “saint”, and this “celebration” went on for 3-4 years without saying anything about his poor results. And he even received a plaque naming him the best superintendent from a group. But the man’s results were poor, and through the newspaper his image created is that of a saint who is a genius. We are mentioning this to show how the public can be manipulated. Our children’s future depends on such people, and no one raised the most important question about “how are the student results improving?”. Always focus on the improvement in the results, his past results for 5 years before he is interviewed, and ask the tough questions. Our children’s future depends on it. BUT WE FAIL TO DO THAT AND STAND UP.

Well qualified people do not like such an environment and leave within a few years at most. I believe that it is vital for us as a nation to investigate public education using forensic audits and other methods, the quality of people compared to the best performers in the world. Create new laws to punish behaviors that have been and are producing the bad results and to undertake such action totally disconnected from the existing public education, but with full access to their records. We no longer have the time and option to make modest changes in the right direction, and no nation can survive without a competitively educated population any more. Our very survival depends on it.



As we just explained, the number of employees increase above 100 under a manager, the more management knowledge compared to “product” knowledge (e.g., teaching experience) is needed by that manager. If the top manager works in a poorly performing industry such as education, the top manager such as a state or school district superintendent should come from the best performing country or industry to improve performance. Anyone who is excellent, will quit within two years a poorly performing organization OR WILL BECOME AS BAD AS THEY ARE. Maybe education board members should not hire a superintendent from the poorly performing education industry. Why don't they consider someone from an industry that is doing well, because excellent management-trained talent is available there, they happen to be the "customers" for the student, the product of the education system. They know better what is needed. They know better how to treat employees. They know better how to create happy work places. Such companies use management training, whereas education organizations do not do that on the needed level.

THE GOVERNORS ALL PROMISE TO FIX EDUCATION WHILE RUNNING FOR GOVERNOR. BUT AFTER THE ELECTION, THEY SPEND MORE MONEY BUT NO CHANGES ARE MADE WITHIN THE EDUCATION DISTRICT TO RAISE OUR CHILDREN'S ACT RESULTS. THE ACT IS THE NATIONAL TEST THAT SHOWS HOW MUCH THE CHILDREN HAVE LEARNED FROM GRADE ONE TO TWELVE. STATE TESTS ARE NOT RELIABLE BECAUSE STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENTS CHANGE THE SCORING SYSTEM TO SHOW HIGHER GRADES WITH LESS KNOWLEDGE. We wrote to the previous governor of Tennessee (2011-2018) seven times; not one reply from anyone. Look at the ACT performance in the chart during his years. We wrote to the current governor in 2019 four times, identifying problems and suggesting solutions for them. Again, not a single response.

  • NO ONE IMPROVED THE DETERIORATING TEACHER TRAINING PROGRAMS AT OUR COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES AND THAT IS A MAJOR CONTRIBUTOR TO OUR PUBLIC EDUCATION PROBLEM. Teaching is known among college students as the easiest degree to obtain. So, they switch to teaching if they cannot or do not want to work hard enough. In the US teaching programs, they teach the teaching college student a little about 5-6 subjects. In the US schools it is not uncommon to switch a teacher to a class with a subject that the teacher knows nothing about. Who loses? The student. Among the high performing nations in education, they hire a teacher candidate from the top 30% (some countries from the top 10%) of the master's program for the one subject that they will teach from 4th grade on up. They never turn a class over to a teacher who is not fully trained for that subject.


  • No one reduced the massive paperwork that eliminates teacher preparation time for classes.


  • We are literally choking teacher performance in many ways. Lack of money is always a superficial reason. They have 6-8 TIMES MORE people in central management than what is normal. When you do not have real measurable objectives, the place with the highest salaries gets stuffed with friends. If you fired them all, there would be no change in the low performance. All that extra money should be invested in making the teachers more effective. They create the results! But when the superiors and colleagues treat you like the lowest factory worker because there is no real well-trained management presence, how can teachers be happy?


  • 8% of American teachers leave their schools for another school every year. An additional 8% leaves the profession every year. A total of 16% leaves their jobs is the national USA average; extremely high. Employee turnover is very expensive. Declining performance, decision to leave, time to find a new teacher and training the teacher to be productive (most new teachers are inexperienced just out of college) costs a school system more than one year's salary with overhead expenses. The skill level is in decline because the new teachers are inexperienced college grads who leave teaching within 7 years to be replaced by inexperienced teachers, BECAUSE SUPERINTENDENTS IN EDUCATION ARE UNTRAINED IN MANAGEMENT. This is part of the real big problem, which is lack of real management training, part of which is the need for measurable objectives and operating plans to make sure that your results are on target every month, instead of not having them and you get surprised by bad results at year end.


  • The teachers' unions are of no help in the above areas to teachers, and that damages our children's education.


  • Teaching is a very important and unique job. For someone to be a good teacher they require several unique personality traits and a high I.Q., yet we do not test to qualify potential teachers before acceptance into teaching programs.


  • Schools are to achieve a 90% graduation rate with a 21 ACT score that is too low. Such a score represents only a 20% readiness. Schools need to achieve a 90% ACT readiness rate! That means an average 27 ACT score. Quite a few countries are performing above that level.


  • The 90% graduation drive puts enormous pressure on teachers and management during the last month of the school year to pass as many children as possible. There have been lawsuits about advancing children prematurely and pressuring teachers to pass children, but there are many who need their jobs and will not report such actions.








The average ACT scores are stuck in a bad performance area because too many children, the great majority are not educated well enough in a boring classroom, where 75-85% of students are not prepared well enough for any job, and the state of Tennessee gives them a diploma! The qualification the state of Tennessee sets for a diploma is a low 21 average ACT score. ACT Readiness (the percentage of a four-subject ACT benchmark that is known by the student or group of students) by ACT itself indicates that either an individual student or a group of students know only 20% of a subject or the four benchmark subjects to qualify for an ACT 21 score. The education establishment constantly talks about high expectations, excellence for all children, providing a world-class education. When they have a low expectation goal of ACT 21 score achievement, and cannot even reach that, that obviously means that they have no confidence in knowing how to plan better results and MAKE THEM HAPPEN. They do not even know where they should be to make 80% of the four benchmarks subjects known, and what teacher qualification and student curriculum would be needed to be at 80%. We investigated that internationally and can tell you that a minimum 27 average ACT score would be required. We also explain further on exactly what objectives and annual operating plans would be needed, along with the qualifications needed by key personnel to achieve that.

PEOPLE RISE TO HIGH EXPECTATIONS, AND MEASURABLE MONTHLY OBJECTIVES AND OPERATING PLANS THAT ARE A STRETCH, COVERING ALL MANAGERS’ AND SUPERVISORS’ MONTHLY OBJECTIVES TO FOCUS THE ENTIRE ORGANIZATION. PEOPLE MOSTLY IGNORE LOW OBJECTIVES, THEY KEEP WORKING EXACTLY THE SAME WAY AS BEFORE, AND THE RESULTS WILL BE THE SAME AS BEFORE. Under our previous grading system, knowing less than 60% of a subject was a huge FAILURE or “F”, AND A STUDENT COULD NOT GRADUATE AND GET A DIPLOMA THEN, UNLESS ALL OF THE COURSES THEY TOOK IN HIGH SCHOOL SCORED HIGHER THAN 60%! BUT TODAY WE GRADUATE THEM IF THEY SCORE AT 20% (THE READINESS AT ACT 21)! For 15 years Tennessee’s Department of Education selected that low score as the goal that we could not reach and had a slogan on letters and everywhere that was a huge lie: “EXCELLENCE FOR ALL CHILDREN!”. LENIN, THE FAMOUS COMMUNIST HAD A FAVORITE SAYING: “IF YOU LIE TO THE PEOPLE A THOUSAND TIMES, THEY ACCEPT IT AS TRUTH.” Sadly, we do that very well. The charts show no improvement. The public schools are dumbing our children down. But one hears lots of excuses, false positive statements to the public, blaming others and playing political games and the truth about public schools remains elusive. Our education dropped to the bottom of the industrialized nations. Clearly parents have to learn how to separate truth from fiction.

WE THE PEOPLE MUST STAND UP TO GET A MUCH BETTER EDUCATION SYSTEM FOR OUR MONEY! We have been paying one of the highest rates for public education in the world, and our education results have been one of the worst in the industrialized world for many years. We deserve better for our country's survival. And we deserve far better for our children since we were and are paying for it, while public education lied about how our children were doing. It was easy for them to mislead the poor and uneducated especially, while the public education systematically increased our poverty to the second highest in the world by poorly educating our children for decades. we are only asking for fairness for our children to ensure a bright future for them, our states and our country.

ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT THINGS WE NEED TO UNDERSTAND IS WHAT A CHILD WILL NEED TO KNOW BY HIS/HER HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION IN ORDER TO MAKE A REASONABLE LIVING. We have several important new technologies coming and that ALWAYS raises employer requirements in employee education. We are already behind with high school graduates, requiring two years of remedial training. Teacher morale is bad, but the schools produce a multiple choice guided survey that shows morale is good. Such a morale survey is invalid. The real survey for such issues has to be confidential by an outside firm, and must be open ended instead of structured, multiple choice. Our teacher turnover is 16%, the highest in the world, that raises our education expenses very high. Since many employers met with governors during the last 15 years complaining about our poor education, and governors did not respond to correct the problem, work intensified to create superior teacher robots with artificial intelligence in a handful of years at most.



The latest version of this teacher robot, in late 2019, was tested to teach grades 1-4 to more than 30 totally uneducated children, using the IB curriculum, and all of them passed higher than 90% in 18 months. Does that mean that an education robot could outperform our schools and teach a child covering grade one to a master's degree in any science in 6 years, ten years from now? Absolutely! And this is just a start. Does that also mean that not a single governor or anyone in state education management, in any year in the past, did anything to improve education to raise the state ACT score? ABSOLUTELY.



WHAT IS ACT READINESS?

ACT Readiness is only a small start. It simply means that a student scored minimum 22, 23, and 18 in algebra, biology, English composition/reading (the Benchmarks). These minimum scores indicate that the student is only 25% ready in the Benchmark subjects. But the US education system chose this to be good enough. Unfortunately it is too low, but we graduate even those who are not ACT Ready. 25% Readiness is the same as 25 correct answers in a 100 question test. It is equal to what a huge F used to be. The “F” score meant that one had 60% or less correct answers on a test. The Benchmarks show that ACT Readiness is not enough. It is not good performance. It means that the student has a 50-75% chance to pass THE SAME FOUR Subjects ONLY on the lowest freshman level in college. That is all that ACT readiness is. It is not enough knowledge to be prepared for the future. The schools tell the parent that ACT calls this "College and Career Readiness (to have a 50-75% chance ONLY to pass ONLY those four specific freshman courses ONLY). But we hand out high school diplomas to not only ACT Ready children but to FOUR TIMES AS MANY CHILDREN WHO ARE NOT EVEN ACT READY! We see that if anyone only sees the words "ACT College and Career Readiness", and does not read the ACT explanation for it, then they will have the wrong idea about what ACT Readiness is. We had to call ACT to verify all this. ACT is in a tough spot. They get paid for their services for and by THE SCHOOLS. BUT the great majority of schools do a very poor job. The schools have a lot of money, and the legal expenses of the schools are not shown in the schools' budget or expenses. For example, the Knox County, Tennessee school district annual spending is over HALF BILLION DOLLARS. That's more than $500,000,000, and it does not include the legal expenses, or the mortgage expenses. The mortgage liability is another half billion dollars, and the mortgage interest could be close to $25,000,000 additional expense. And what do we get for that? 85-90% of the students graduate. Of those who graduated, 17% are ACT Ready, which is the same as the old F-level performance. 83% of those F students getting a diploma are not even ACT Ready. THAT IS NOT WHAT WE NEED FOR A GOOD FUTURE IN OUR COUNTRY.

Most of our public schools performed poorly for several decades. If the public schools cannot provide the right level of readiness for our children, then provide the exact prorated expense per student to another school of the parents' or guardian's choice, be it another public school or charter or private school. Public schools are monopolies. In other words, they do not have significant competition and for that reason they do not have to improve. The law and legislators protect public education to continue to do a poor job that will make most, if not all, of our children unable to qualify for a job. Such inferior education at one of the highest prices in the world for each our children, will paralyze our nation's workforces in all industries. When we damage the work force, they are not able to provide products or services globally as they did before, and income drops. That makes them less competitive. That in turn reduces the nation's tax income as well, destroying the nation's government programs. And that can turn our nation into a third world country. It is very important for everyone to understand that our nation's future existence depends on the education of our children today, who are educated well enough to raise the quality of our workforces.

THE IMPORTANCE OF TEACHERS,
THEIR SELECTION FOR TEACHING AND
THEIR CONTINUING EDUCATION

The school results depend the most on how good and well educated the teachers are and remain through continuing education. If someone wants to become a teacher, the potential teacher cannot ensure that he is the right type of person for teaching. Such qualification needs to be done before the student enters any teaching program in the high performing countries, or when the student becomes 18 years of age, whichever is later. We start pushing children in public schools about deciding what they want to become as soon as they start high schools. The brain of a child is not going to be well developed in the vocation-related areas until twenty years of age.

Teaching is a vitally important job. The excellent teachers have some unique characteristics. Matching a potential teacher to the teaching profession through tests that existed for many years but not used for potential teachers, would be of great help to determine a candidate's fit to teaching (e.g., Strong Interest Inventory and Myers-Briggs Intelligence Inventory correlated, Can be downloaded from the Internet for about $100 total for both tests). We have too many children who could not do well enough in college or did not want to work hard enough in their originally selected major. They switch to teaching, because it is well known among college students as the easiest major. Those are not the best choices for teaching. High performing countries in education, test teacher candidates' suitability for the teaching profession.

Beyond 4th grade, in the higher performing countries, a successful teacher requires:

  • A high I.Q. and high energy,


  • In the high performing countries teachers come from the top 10-30% of university graduates, who have a Master's degree in the subject they will teach after the 4th - grade. Teachers are never transferred to teaching a different subject. US teachers come from the bottom 30% in performance.


  • A personality matching to the teaching profession is very important: the candidate needs to be very open, friendly, but firm,


  • Loves the subject he/she teaches so that he is aware of technical developments and the job possibilities within it.


  • He/she teaches with infectious enthusiasm because that teacher loves the subject they teach.


  • Keeps learning on his/her own about new teaching methods, AND IMPROVES HIS/HER RESULTS EVERY SINGLE YEAR.


  • He/she wants to be the best at whatever he/she does,


  • Very interested in knowing first-hand how his job is done in countries that are very successful in education. All because of his/her drive to become better.


  • Uses on his/her own the new, better tools available on the Internet to improve his/her results.


Unfortunately, we found after years of investigating that all the above areas have to be satisfied to create a good teacher, for which the teacher trainee cannot be responsible. To make things worse, the working conditions for many teachers are also not good enough, making a teacher's job unpleasant, because they are not treated well.



THIS IS NOT MAGIC! LOOK AT MORE THAN A DOZEN YEARS OF ACT SCORES FOR TENNESSEE AS AN EXAMPLE. THE STATE TEST HAS BEEN DUMBED DOWN. OUR RESULTS ARE VERY POOR. THE ACT HAS NEVER BEEN DUMBED DOWN. THAT IS WHY IN SOME STATES THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION MAKES IT MORE AND MORE DIFFICULT TO FIND THEIR ACT SCORES!

The population assumes to date that the state ACT goal is high enough. It is very low. For more than 15 years, the state goal was at an average ACT score of only 21 that shows that the student KNOWS ONLY 20% of the four ACT Benchmark subjects individually or as a group. And the tennessee school system graduates such students with a diploma! In other words children are graduated if they know only the average of 17-20% of the four benchmark courses only! We graduated children not too long ago who had to pass every single one of 20 courses with knowing more than 60% of all of those 20 courses. Not having that is a huge drop in graduation requirements than more than 30 countries who graduate above 95% children who are all prepared to a much higher standard than the ACT 21 goal that tennessee had so far.

An ACT 21 average means that approximately 75-85% of all children who graduated are not ready/prepared well enough to be employable. Read what "ACT Readiness" means again if needed. Other countries' goals are in a 26-31 average ACT Score equivalent range, and they graduate more than 95% who meet those goals.

Our standards are too low and not competitive. We purposefully set standards too low based on the fact that we graduate children with such a poor minimum education level that it guarantees homelessness for most of them. It would be less costly if we cannot educate them properly, to keep them in high school 1-4 years longer until they test above 90% ACT Ready.

THIS IS NOT MAGIC! LOOK AT MORE THAN A DOZEN YEARS OF ACT SCORES FOR TENNESSEE AS AN EXAMPLE. THE STATE TEST HAS BEEN DUMBED DOWN. OUR RESULTS ARE VERY POOR. THE ACT HAS NEVER BEEN DUMBED DOWN. THAT IS WHY IN SOME STATES THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION MAKES IT MORE AND MORE DIFFICULT TO FIND THEIR ACT SCORES! AND FINDING THE A.CV.T. READINESS PERCENTAGES IS EVEN MORE DIFFICULT. Click here for more information about teacher preparation.










HOW TO DUMB DOWN THE POPULATION AND KEEP IT A SECRET?


More than 60 years ago you had to get a C or higher grade to pass. That meant 70% correct answers minimum on your tests to get a diploma. Then we changed to D being the passing grade. That meant at least 60% correct answers on tests to get a diploma. Then in the last fifteen years we started to devalue the high school diploma even more by reaching for ACT 21 as a goal, that equals ONLY 23% of the graduating students being ready or prepared, and dumbed down the state test to get there. And now we don't even call the grading F for FAILING (means that the student had 60% or less correct answers average on all tests) and above passing D, C, B and A (means that the student had 60-69%, 70-79%, 80-89% and 90%-100% correct answers in the test). Pretty simple, we had it for many decades. No confusion.

The state purchases new tests periodically from one of five companies that create them in accordance with the curriculum. They run the tests once in all state schools, but do not release the results. If the results look bad, and they always did so far, the state delays running the tests officially until they change the grades such that the results don't look so bad. That took two years the last time around 2015. They dumb down the tests with a method called "Cut Scores". The last "dumbing down" the state tests took two years, and they changed the grade names "A" - "F" to the following. "BELOW". Below what?! "Below" means failing. "Failing" is too harsh. Self-esteem and all that. Not long ago, failing was 60% or less good answers on a test. "BELOW" goes as low as 28% or less good answers. Let us say it again. If the pass/fail point is moved from 60% good answers in a test to only 28% good answers, we will graduate with passing grades many children who would have failed before, the child will not feel like a failure. The mostly single parent, who is living in poverty, who never graduated, will feel good, because her child graduated. He can read and write only block letters, he cannot do basic math. He cannot read and write script. He doesn’t have to remember all the useless stuff the school forced you to learn before, but people hate him more and do not want to give him a job.

WE ARE GRADUATING MANY CHILDREN WE DID NOT EVEN CONSIDER FOR GRADUATION BEFORE, BECAUSE THEY DID NOT KNOW ENOUGH. WE ARE DROPPING THE KNOWLEDGE OF HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATES. WE ARE LOWERING AN IMPORTANT STANDARD: ONE THAT FEEDS THE WORKFORCE OF ALL INDUSTRIES ON WHOM THE COST AND QUALITY OF OUR INDUSTRIES' COMPETITIVENESS DEPENDS, BECAUSE ON THAT COMPETITIVENESS DEPENDS OUR DECLINING NATIONAL INCOME. THE ACT CHART SHOWS VERY POOR PERFORMANCE WHERE WE GRADUATE ABOUT 80% OF THE CHILDREN WHO ARE NOT READY AT ALL. GET READY FOR EVEN WORSE ACT RESULTS WITH THE NEW SYSTEM WE ARE DESCRIBING. The state can change this new system for any high school subject or all subjects every year. The next grade, the schools call "APPROACHING". And the next grade after "APPROACHING" is called "ON TRACK"! Whose track are we on? If I was a parent today, I would worry about my little Johnny and what track he is on. Both APPROACHING and ON TRACK are made up of very large percentage blocks. And finally "MASTERED"! ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT! THANK GOD WE HAVE SUCH BRILLIANT PEOPLE IN THE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT! I was worried that with A, B, C, D grades my child will be homeless. THANK YOU LORD FOR THE BRILLIANT PEOPLE WHO CHANGED IT TO "APPROACHING" and "ON TRACK" that leads to "MASTERED"!!!! Now my child has a chance to become a millionaire after he becomes governor.

What all this means is that the school system wants to reduce its failures, without them having to do a better job. They graduate in Tennessee a lot of children who would otherwise fail because they are not prepared well enough for the future.

IS THIS HOW THE SCHOOLS WANT TO IMPROVE?!

WITHOUT THEM IMPROVING, THE RESULT IS GRADUATING CHILDREN WHO KNOW LESS AND LESS. THEY WILL BE UNEMPLOYED MOST OF THEIR LIFE.

IN PARALLEL, THE STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT'S MANAGEMENT CONFUSES THE PUBLIC WITH THE NEW SCORE NAMES AND BY CHANGING THE PASS/FAIL POINT ANNUALLY.

This is not the teacher's doing. This is done by the state's department of education with the governor's approval, and they can change the pass/fail point of students in one or more courses every year.

OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS graduate as many as 83% of our children in Tennessee who are NOT EVEN ACT READY, cannot read, write, fill out a job application, do not know basic mathematics, and have a bad attitude on the job.

The schools fib to the parents by saying that "Not all children are made for college, and little Johnny will be doing fine with a trade-related job." Yes, they are lying. Why? Because Even ACT Readiness means ONLY that the child has a 50-75% chance of passing only four freshman courses that are the same introductory courses as the four ACT Benchmarks are, THAT IS ALL. The reason for this is simple.

Our public school education is so poor that if ACT set its Readiness benchmarks at a level that employers want, and that is what counts, then we would see less than 5% of public school graduates passing ACT Readiness, instead of 26% nationally. Less than 20% of our high school graduates in Tennessee are ACT Ready. We are already graduating children whose average Readiness can be lower than 5%!! We do this at a time when major new technological developments will be unfolding in three years in 2023. We are already far behind in 2020. The bad attitude of the child at work is the result of the school not informing the parent and the child truthfully. With that as a background, any parent or child would find the child's work environment awful, because they want the child to do things that he or she cannot do.

Cognitive robotics (that can learn) will replace many vocations very soon. Nanotechnology will change the design and manufacturing on practically everything. Materials science for almost everything together with nanotechnology will lower cost significantly. And space science will bring huge positive changes, much bigger than the change from the horse and buggy to the automobile.



We have a critical job to do in many areas to improve our public education. Do not blame the front-line troops, the teachers, for the bad results. They have enough bullets aimed at them unfairly. We treat them almost like laborers. But we better put the magnifying glass on the state departments of education to clean up "low expectation" attitudes, not being truthful with the public. They are so used to poor performance that without a governor pressing them with specific requests, they consider everything going along as they have for decades. The problem is with them AND THE GOVERNORS, who don't ensure the kind of experience that is required to run education in a competitive world and hire all too often the wrong people for the task. THIS IS A HUGE PROBLEM. The voting public assumes that if someone wins by popular vote and has the title, such a person would know what to do. Look at the ACT results chart for two decades to see how poorly we educate our children. Do you think that it can be improved without the recommended changes within school operations statewide? Unfortunately, the majority of such candidates, don't know what the job will need, but we like their smile. Click here if you are interested in learning more now.





We went from the horse and buggy to the moon in less than a hundred years. Think of all the rapid changes since the horse and buggy, like cars, airplanes, movies, television, computers, the way we manufacture things, enormous technological changes everywhere, enormous changes in life and in jobs. Such huge changes altered the way we worked and lived to date. It changed the knowledge required for jobs as well. The big question is how much did our children's education increase with the enormous change we experienced in technology? We know that our children's education became one of the most expensive in the world per child. We know that we fell to the 40th place internationally in high school mathematics in 2016 from the top around 1970. Our elementary and high school education went down, when many other countries increased. To better gauge how far we fell behind in public education please look at two 8th grade final exams more than 100 years ago: one is from 1895, and the other is from 1912. Are we doing well enough in public education by 8th grade to pass such tests? These tests are for children who finished only eight grades about 100+ years ago, not high schools. What do you think? Are we going forward or backward? 19 years of ACT scores and the ACT readiness tells us where we were for 19 years. We have fallen significantly behind other countries. They went up, and they are business competitors of ours. Take a look at our 19 years of ACT performance in the chart below. It is time to recognize what we have done - a bad job in almost all schools in public education.





The ACT tests 59% of the graduating American students. Since 1970 spending per student skyrocketed, but the ACT scores that show what a child learned from grade one to twelve, did not change from the poor performance area. Not a single governor stood up to stop the spending increases, identify why this is happening and correct the problems in the schools SUCH THAT THE ACT SCORES INCREASED. We use the ACT score as the most reliable indicator of academic progress. Since several excellent national public school systems exist internationally, our high school results and lack of improvement are a sad situation to put it mildly.



WHAT IS HAPPENING TO US AS HUMAN BEINGS?

SOME NATIONS TEACH ETHICS IN HIGH SCHOOL AS A COURSE, A VERY GOOD IDEA. SOME TEACH ART AND MUSIC. THEY HAPPEN TO BE VERY IMPORTANT SUBJECT FOR RIGHT BRAIN HALF DEVELOPMENT, AND TO INTERCONNECT THE TWO BRAIN HEMISPHERES. VERY IMPORTANT FOR LEARNING AND DECISION MAKING. INCREDIBLE! HIGH LEVEL DECISION MAKERS IN EDUCATION ARE NOT INTERESTED IN LEARNING FROM OTHER SUCCESSFUL SCHOOL SYSTEMS OR FROM OTHER PROFESSIONS WHO ARE EXPERTS ABOUT HUMAN DEVELOPMENT, LIKE CLINICAL PSYCHIATRISTS AND NEUROLOGISTS. AS A RESULT, VERY BAD MISTAKES HAVE BEEN MADE IN OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS THAT UNFORTUNATELY IMPACTED MANY CHILDREN’S LEARNING ABILITY NEGATIVELY.

The education departments and schools and all individuals within them are part of a low performing education system. It used to be one of the best and in 50 years dropped to the bottom of the industrialized countries. The children graduating from high school become part of the workforce within our industries, whose needs our public schools have not considered for decades. It is fair to say that our school districts need to satisfy the needs of our industries, who have been complaining to governors since about 2000. When an entire industry like education is poorly performing like ours, they do because their leaders in the departments of state education are not interested in becoming better, doing a better job and be competitive - they get paid even for the poor job that they do. The elected school boards cannot be expected to know what to do. Their voting majority is neither schooled nor experienced in management on a scale that is needed. Teachers are blamed by the public and they have nothing to do with the school systems producing bad results. Why? Because they went to a teacher’s college not knowing how good their curriculum is, or how good the teacher certification is, or how good their management is above the principals. And these three are far from being as good as in the countries with which we compete. For these reasons, the teachers and principals jobs are very difficult and awful. The result is a very high turnover rate, that costs the education system 12-18 months of salary AND the school gets a new inexperienced teacher for the experienced one that left. So in all our wisdom we would rather hire a new superintendent for a medium to large school district than a retired vice president from a good company who understands what the work forces need and who has been using good management know-how for decades, exactly what a superintendent should know but does not. Furthermore, the governors themselves hire for state superintendent people from the poorly performing teacher training or school district environment, who having come from the poorly performing education industry, cannot improve anything, and pay them an enormous salary. Just maybe, we better give this some serious thought because things are getting worse.

A different but important trend: Dec. 27, 2019. Man Beaten to Death for $1 - and No One Stops to Help! Multiple people, cars and even a bus drove by his body, and not one stopped to check on the man lying in the street.

Sept. 19, 2019. I bought something. The total came to $23.00. I paid with a $50 bill as the power went out at the store. Three cash register operators could not figure out what change they should pay me. Quiet conversations among them. I told them that my change would be $27. Later I asked them where they graduated from high school. All three named one local school, later I verified one name. That one told me that "We are not math majors. And besides we will not need to know math in the future." A fourth grader should do better. We graduate today too many who cannot communicate properly, cannot read or write except for block letters, . Just ask employers and college professors. We need much better out of high schools for our workforce!

People recognize the big problem we have with education. 50 years ago many would jump up and speak up to those in leadership. Today the most common response is: "It is very bad. but it is beyond my pay grade." Today people do not want to get involved. But they know what's happening. That's very bad because the day will come when all those feelings will explode. We see such situations more and more. What is happening to us? Something is very wrong. Not caring about each other as human beings shows more and more. Both of the above leads to end of life: one is violent, the other is slow and can end life in extreme poverty and misery. We do not want to get involved and help when something bad happens to someone we don't know. We don't even care about what happens to our children, except for our own. And even there we trust the schools self-evaluation of their performance, and we will show what we found. Please give this some thought.


Situation Report

The goal of high school education must be to satisfy employer needs (be employable) AND university or vocational training school requirements in order for the high school graduate to be able to minimally support a family of four. WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO YOUR CHILD IF WE DO NOT DO THIS WELL?



In the chart below, the black numbers are the actual ACT scores. The red percentages below the black ACT scores are the average ACT Readiness percentage/year of graduates. The third group, red percentages again, represents THE AVERAGE PERCENTAGE OF GRADUATES who are NOT ACT READY. Their numbers are shocking. These are students for minimum wage jobs after graduation, who will be jobless in less than five years, replaced by robotics. However, robotics has started already replacing a tiny number of degreed graduate positions before 2019, and will also advance further as cognitive robotics appears by 2022. To verify, search for annual report cards under Tennessee Department of Education and under act.com just google for them.





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Let's look at Knox County, Tennessee high schools' ACT results. The best performing high school's ACT Readiness is only 53%. The worst performer is close to zero percent ACT Readiness. THIS IS NOT GOOD PERFORMANCE. This school district spent two and a half times as much per student than the better high schools, for more than 19 years in the two worst-performing high schools with African American students. There was no improvement to date. OBVIOUSLY THE HUGE AMOUNT OF ADDITIONAL MONEY WENT TO THE WRONG POCKETS FOR DECADES. THEY HAVE NOT BEEN USING MONTHLY GPA OBJECTIVES TO TRACK PROGRESS, NO ANNUAL PLANNING IN EVERY GRADE WITH SPECIFIC MONTHLY ACTIONS TO MEET MEASURABLE MONTHLY GPA OBJECTIVES IN THE FAILING HIGH SCHOOLS AND THEIR FEEDER SCHOOLS. THAT MEANS THAT EVERY SINGLE EMPLOYEE KEPT WORKING THE SAME WAY AS IN PRIOR YEARS. WHEN YOU KEEP WORKING THE SAME WAY EVERY YEAR, YOU GET THE SAME RESULTS. TO GET BETTER RESULTS, THE PEOPLE IN EDUCATION DISTRICTS NEED TO LEARN MORE AND CHANGE THE WAY THEY WORK FOR THE BETTER.

Teachers must love and know their subject on an advanced level, way beyond what they teach, how what they teach is used in jobs, must be very enthusiastic about their subject because they love it, and the schools must conduct remedial courses to bring students up-to-date with subjects such as reading, mathematics and sciences as the highest priority. We do a poor job teaching reading and even basic math and we keep the poor teachers who could not teach these subjects and do this damage every year. Most children are bored in the classes. I know i set in on many. We graduate our children who were forced to finish high school with such a handicap decade after decade. So most school board menbers and superintendents have no clue how to do it. The state superintendents don't know how to monitor performance against the right monthly objectives, set poor standards of performance because they don't know how to do better. And governors do nothing about correcting this disaster, on which our future depends directly. As one former president suggested incorrectly, "Hope" is far from enough. You actually have to get people to learn to be better, and do an honest day's work. "Hope" has nothing to do with it. Knowing how to manage has everything to do with doing a job well. If you live on "hope", nothing will happen. But if you divide the needed work by the work days needed for its completion, and you do an honest day's work every workday, what you want will happen.

The truth may hurt, but one cannot go anywhere without facing it.





WHY IS IT THAT THE TENNESSEE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION DID NOT TAKE ACTION TO RAISE THE ACT SCORES?



I asked many questions about this situation, I was upset about how such an extremely poor school performance could happen, and decided to find a school with black children producing good results. Found a school called the Harlem Success Academy in NYC that was formed in 2006. Today in 2019 they have 47 schools, taking in POOR, BLACK, INNER CITY CHILDREN, AND DELIVERING FABULOUS RESULTS BEATING EVEN PRIVATE SCHOOLS! Visiting them was a pleasure. We could not get anyone to visit them from close to 50 school districts. It became clear that throwing a lot of money at a big problem is done only by people who have no idea how to solve it. For that to go on for 19 years is unforgivable.




WHY IS IT THAT THE TENNESSEE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION DID NOT TAKE ACTION TO FIX THE PROBLEMS?



In 1988 we found out from college professors that we cannot teach children how to read properly and we graduate them that way from high school. Employers were telling us that they cannot communicate properly, cannot fill out a job application cannot do basic math and have a bad attitude when having to do something. Employers have met with the governors telling them that they cannot find well-educated high school graduates one after the other to get this problem solved. It is not solved to date. The fast food industry decided to go with robotics. The supermarket industry is planning the same. The trucking industry is doing the same. And public schools and teachers' unions do not want to change and complain about needing more money. WHEN YOU ARE ONE OF THE HIGHEST SPENDERS PER STUDENT IN THE WORLD AND YOU DELIVER POOR RESULTS, THE MONEY IS NOT BEING SPENT ON THE RIGHT THINGS.



There are excellent management tools and management training programs that could help within the Tennessee Department of Education and the Governor's office who failed to identify such enormous failures within. We should be catching extreme underperformance any single month so that we can correct them. Clearly, just spending more money did not and does not work. Especially when we are among the world's highest spenders per student. Clearly, to keep spending such a huge increase for decades without any improvement indicates by the third year that the money is not being spent in the right places, and management neither had nor does have any idea how to solve the problem. They made no effort to learn what to do, AND the state management system had no capability to detect the unreasonable overspending and wasting of money. They hire consultants to solve a problem, when most people in consulting are doing it because they were not good enough to do the job. Education has too many people who don’t know what to do AND have no idea how to do something. How can such people tell if they met the consultant who knows how to do the job? They cannot. This kind of extreme spending is common in public school districts: management and elected boards think that money will solve the problems, because they don't know how to solve it. But they keep wasting the money for decades, because the money does not solve most problems. There are many other wasteful spending examples. For example school district central management groups are four to ten times normal size. Positions have been created to solve problems that management knowhow could solve without staff additions. As the years went by, they just kept adding staff and the poor performance got worse. In one case a superintendent befriended the principal of a poorly performing high school. The principal's high school performance just kept getting worse. Clearly neither the principal nor the superintendent knew what to do. So the superintendent promoted his friend, the principal to head all schools and improve ALL SCHOOLS' PERFORMANCE. That's 89 schools. That was many years ago and nothing improved.




WHY IS IT THAT THE TENNESSEE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION DOES NOT MONITOR SPENDING VS. BUDGET PER MONTH, AND TEST RESULTS (GPA) VS. MONTHLY OBJECTIVE YEAR-TO-DATE TO CATCH PROBLEMS EARLY TO FIX IT IN ORDER TO DELIVER GOOD RESULTS BY YEAR END?



The only thing the existing level of expertise accomplishes is wasting many millions of dollars EVERY SINGLE YEAR. And no one stood up on the state level to this date to fix such extremely expensive problems because no one knows how to fix them. This kind of spending and delivery of poor results has to stop. For that, we need excellent superintendents with solid management training and experience, ones with an excellent track record for at least five years, ones who turned around a poorly performing school organization before. The big problem is that more than 13,500 school districts in the USA may have only a handful of such superintendents, and a superintendent development program does not exist. But the country has many retired vice presidents, who managed much more very successfully. They could be of great help. They could do a superior job in improving education.



We also have to change our thinking about college vs. high school training. We have to think in terms of knowledge having to increase in employees year-by-year in order to be able to make a living and for employers to survive. Elementary schools must deliver more. It is already unacceptable that our children fall behind in reading and basic math by grade 4. How can they do well without reading and basic math from then on? They cannot. The responsibility falls back on teacher training and certification, and keeping people employed or not who cannot educate our children. THAT IS UNACCEPTABLE IF ONE WANTS NOT JUST GOOD RESULTS BUT TO SURVIVE. Why do you want to keep schools open that are Failure Factories that cannot produce better than 80% ACT Readiness in high school graduates? Having low standards while we lie about "Excellence for all children" and we use the people's money to employ people who do a poor job, is an incredibly dishonest thing to do.



U.S. universities require a 26 or higher score in ACT math to be admitted to a mathematics, any science or engineering or economics degree program. Most have an ACT 26-31 ADMISSION REQUIREMENT, as well. THESE SUBJECTS, AS A GRADUATE DEGREE, REPRESENT THOSE FUTURE JOBS THAT WILL BE ABLE TO SURVIVE COGNITIVE ROBOTICS THE LONGEST. The benchmarks are ACT scores that represent the minimum benchmark value in each of the four benchmark subjects. The minimum ACT benchmark target-scores represent a percentage of "ACT Readiness" or prepared students in a high school's graduating class in a specific year. But the minimum benchmark scores also represent the minimum ACT Readiness of an individual student. An ACT score of 22 or 23 represents only that the student is only about 25% prepared in the subject. But in English Composition, the minimum readiness score is only 18, which represents ONLY 10-12% ACT Readiness. To the best of our knowledge, we are not in African Uganda with 43 tribal languages, we are in the USA and our official language is English and not Swahili or Bantu or 41 others. In our most important subject, English Composition, any student who is ONLY 10% prepared is ACT Ready in that subject. That is far from the kind of preparedness our children needed in the past ten years and will need in the fast moving future years much more. IMAGINE NOW THAT WE GRADUATE IN TENNESSEE WITH A DIPLOMA MORE THAN 80% OF THE STUDENTS, YEAR AFTER YEAR FOR DECADES, WHO WERE AND ARE NOT ACT READY. THERE ARE A FEW STATES THAT ARE WORSE AND A FEW THAT ARE BETTER. But the most dangerous thing is that WE GRADUATE STUDENTS FROM HIGH SCHOOL WHO CANNOT READ, CAN WRITE ONLY BLOCK LETTERS, and even if ACT Ready, such a child MAY NOT BE PREPARED WELL ENOUGH FOR HIGHER EDUCATION UNLESS THAT CHILD IS HIGHER THAN 80% ACT READY.



ALL THIS MEANS IS THAT THE STATE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION DOES NOT SUPERVISE SCHOOL PERFORMANCE LEVELS MONTHLY IN ORDER TO TAKE CORRECTIVE ACTION, AND SUCH POOR MANAGEMENT CREATES EVEN MORE DAMAGE. FOR EXAMPLE, A STUDENT SHOULD READ AT A CERTAIN LEVEL BY THE END OF GRADE 4. AS LONG AS THE STUDENT'S READING IS NOT UP TO PAR, IT WILL REMAIN AS A LEARNING HANDICAP. AND WE GRADUATE THEM FROM HIGH SCHOOL WITH IT!! WE FIRST NOTICED THE READING PROBLEM AMONG HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATES 22 YEARS AGO. IT STILL GOES ON UNSOLVED IN 2019!



WHY IS IT THAT THE TENNESSEE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION DID NOT TAKE ACTION TO FIX THE ABOVE PROBLEMS?





Our schools blame poverty that is rapidly increasing, and parents for the bad results. The truth is that OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS ARE CREATING POVERTY BY DUMBING DOWN OUR CHILDREN, AND THEN THE CHILDREN WITH LESS KNOWLEDGE CAN GET ONLY A LESS PAYING JOB. The truth is that most inner city parents lack education, and work their fingers to the bone to just survive as single parents. The truth really is that our schools are not as good as they claim and must improve. The truth is that there are education systems, that create outstanding results uniformly, minorities and all, but they select and educate teachers differently and better than we do, and teach children differently (e.g., Finland) but our leaders from the governor on down have zero interest in finding out how they do it. THE SAD TRUTH IS THAT WE ARE DUMBING DOWN THE POPULATION, AND OUR LEADERS ARE DOING NOTHING ABOUT IT.



WHY IS IT THAT THE TENNESSEE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION DID NOT TAKE ACTION TO FIX THE ABOVE PROBLEMS?





I investigated our education system in every state and went to the best countries in education to investigate their standards, methodologies, training for both teachers and students, education laws and they were very open with me. I wrote to the previous Tennessee governor seven times. No reply from anyone. I wrote to the current governor of Tennessee four times about our challenges in education. Again no answer from anyone. Most high schools have only 15-25% ACT Ready students of those graduating. BUT THEY ALL ARE GRADUATED WITH A DIPLOMA! The lack of response is a strange result, because "THOSE NOT ACT READY" are 75-85% of graduates (95-97% OF AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDENTS!) who can only get minimum wage jobs for a handful of years at best before robots replace them. WHAT WILL HAPPEN THEN?



The parents are under the impression that getting a diploma means that their child is ready to learn a "GOOD" job FOR LIFE. It used to be the policy within US states until about 40 years ago, and in other countries to date, that a diploma is not awarded to a high school student unless that person is prepared to continue his/her studies at college level toward a four-year degree program. The high school graduates may decide to get further education or not. If the child graduates but is not ACT Ready, the schools tell the parent that all children are not made for college by God, but they will do well by learning a profession - falsely reassuring the parent. Note that Success Academy Schools of N.Y.C. achieves 90%+ results beating even several private schools, and do it with poor, inner-city black students! No one visits them to see how they do it from our public education management. I did. We could learn a lot about how we could improve at a fast rate. Don't blame your schools and teachers. The problem is with the state's education management and the governors. This very successful school system even makes its private very successful elementary and middle school curriculum AND TEACHING METHODOLOGY available FREE on the Internet, but low performing management people at our public schools are too afraid to try new things, and feel comfortable only with their old methods that failed us at every level of education management up to the governors.



ACT offers a much better test instrument for future readiness for the long term, called "S.T.E.M. ACT READINESS" THAT REQUIRES AN AVERAGE ACT SCORE OF 26, PLUS HIGHER SCORES IN THEIR BENCHMARK SUBJECTS. THAT IS WHERE A HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATE NEEDS TO BE TODAY TO BE ABLE TO LEARN A JOB THAT WILL PROVIDE AN INCOME TO SUPPORT A FAMILY OF FOUR. THE POORLY-PERFORMING PUBLIC EDUCATION SYSTEM WILL NEVER TELL YOU THAT. THE EXISTING LEVEL OF HIGH SCHOOL AVERAGE IN THE TOP 20 COUNTRIES IN EDUCATION IS APPROXIMATELY THE SAME AS AN ENGINEERING STUDENT AT AN AMERICAN UNIVERSITY AFTER COMPLETING THE SECOND YEAR OF ENGINEERING OR SCIENCE CURRICULUM WITHOUT REMEDIAL COURSES. PLEASE CONSIDER NOW THE FACT THAT 84% OF THOSE STUDENTS WE GRADUATE FROM HIGH SCHOOL IN TENNESSEE OR 76% OF THOSE WE GRADUATE NATIONALLY, ARE NOT EVEN ACT READY! AMONG BLACK STUDENTS 94-97% WHO GRADUATE ARE NOT ACT READY! Everyone should be ashamed who have anything to do with such an enormous failure when there are good examples and great tools are available to turn such situations around, but people at all levels in a poorly managed organization do not even have the courage to try proven methods and tools of success. No one can succeed with such people in leadership positions.



According to college professors today, two years of remedial training is required before a new college student is prepared to take the first-year courses for any science or engineering-related program. It is not just for engineering and science jobs, as the schools tell you. THIS PROBLEM IS PROGRESSIVE, AND IT WILL DESTROY US UNLESS WE ACT TO FIX IT WITH A SENSE OF URGENCY. DEFENSIVE BEHAVIOR BY ANYONE HAS NO PLACE HERE. ACT Readiness is far from College Completion readiness, as many schools will NOT tell you. "ACT Readiness" ONLY means that the student has a 50-75% CHANCE to pass the four first-year college courses in Mathematics, Biology, Reading/Social Science and English Composition if the student passed the admission and required prerequisite requirements for these courses. The passing benchmark scores represent only a 25% ACT Readiness in three benchmark courses, and the English benchmark score represents only an approximate 10% Readiness. For a graduate to make enough money to be self-supporting, the ACT Readiness would need to be much higher. THINK ABOUT WHAT IT MEANS IF THE HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATE IS NOT ACT READY! THINK ABOUT THE FACT THAT AMONG TENNESSEE GRADUATES WITH A DIPLOMA MORE THAN 80% ARE NOT READY (nationally 76%). LOOK AT THE CHART TO SEE HOW LONG THIS HAS BEEN GOING ON! INVESTIGATE WHAT I AM WRITING HERE, AND IF YOU ARE SATISFIED THAT I AM TELLING YOU THE TRUTH, ASK YOUR GOVERNOR WHY HE/SHE LET THIS HAPPEN! AFTER ALL, WE THE PUBLIC ARE PAYING FOR IT THE HIGHEST RATE PER STUDENT IN THE WORLD, AND OUR CHILDREN NEED MUCH BETTER. WHEN WE PAY FOR SOMETHING, WE ALL EXPECT IT TO FUNCTION VERY WELL. LET HIM TELL US WHY PUBLIC EDUCATION IS DIFFERENT.





WE ARE 2ND-5TH HIGHEST SPENDERS IN THE WORLD PER STUDENT. The mathematics results dropped to the bottom of the industrialized countries. WE SPENT AND SPEND ENOUGH MONEY PER STUDENT, BUT THE MONEY IS NOT GOING TO THE RIGHT PLACES OR THE RIGHT PEOPLE.





CAN U.S. PUBLIC SCHOOLS KEEP UP IN THE FUTURE?
ONLY WITH MAJOR CHANGES.

***** We went from the horse and buggy to the moon in a hundred years. *****

Think about this because many new technologies are coming into play.





Our public education did not keep pace with technological advances like the high performing countries' education systems did. It starts with the fact that our teacher training programs have not changed enough with the times at our colleges and universities, the teacher training curriculum is the weakest and easiest, attracting under-performing students. American teachers are coming from the bottom third of their university performance. Other nations take them from the top third, and even from the top 10% ONLY like Finland. The university training must be A FULL BS/MS PROGRAM IN THE SUBJECT THEY WILL TEACH above 4th grade, and are matched to the teaching profession before they are hired. This is a huge difference between us and the nations with medium-to-high quality high school education. They are prepared well to be excellent teachers, their teaching performance brings excellent results, and such results create the highest respect from the public. We can see how good our school performance is in the ACT and SAT results and the international tests. Our state tests are weak because the curriculum is weak, and the Tennessee STATE TESTS HAVE BEEN DUMBED DOWN SEVERAL TIMES TO PASS MANY STUDENTS WHO WOULD OTHERWISE FAIL. Teachers are not to be blamed for this. It is the state education departments and governors who created and allow this bad situation.





No one can produce excellent results, unless one is totally truthful with all concerned about the work they do, both good and bad, and specifies in a written plan, those who have to achieve what every month in the organization to achieve the objective. Objectives must be measurable, and they must be the key indicator of success or failure, with every single important action to be achieved.





New technologies increase employer requirements and that change is not reflected in today's high school education, such as making Algebra II, Geometry, Solid Geometry, and Trigonometry in mathematics, and adding Chemistry and Physics as well at MINIMUM to the Curriculum. Those we compete within an international environment complete a year of Calculus as well as part of high school education. The choice is not complex. Our results are poor because our teacher training became poor, and management training does not exist for principals and superintendents. Management know-how in the state departments of education is lacking and in some governors it is also absent. WE NEED PROFESSIONAL MANAGEMENT KNOW-HOW IN EDUCATION INSTEAD OF POLITICAL BEHAVIOR AND POLITICAL METHODS THAT ARE CREATING POOR PERFORMANCE.





ACTIONS NEEDED





Good results depend on well qualified workers doing excellent work. One cannot change results if one keeps working the same way as before with the same people. One needs a single objective, that is the key indicator of success or failure, like an ACT score, that is 10% higher than the prior year's actual ACT score. This must be backed up by monthly objectives on all supervisors and managers, principals and teachers to support the annual ACT objective, so that we catch any performance problem in any month, instead of getting a surprise at year end. It is the schools that achieve the result in any school district. Yet we never had them operate under specific objectives and operating plans. The focus must be on them. All support must be focused on them and they must operate under specific measurable academic objectives in order for the school system's results to improve. Poorly performing organizations cannot recover without using "Management by Objectives (MBO)." The biggest challenge is that employees who have been in a poorly performing system keep working the same way for several years in the past. They are afraid of any change, especially a change that measures their performance. However, it is not possible for a poorly performing organization to recover without monthly performance measurement, e.g., with GPA per class, teacher, school and school district. The ACT is available only annually for high school and school district. For growth the monthly performance check is important. The ACT is more accurate THAN THE GPA and it is the best tool for calibrating the GPA results. Most people who were part of a poorly performing organization cannot change easily to a much healthier thought of "what do I need to learn to get better results" and view that as a healthy challenge. That is why "MBO" is vitally important.





ACADEMIC FOCUS: VERY IMPORTANT: ELIMINATE "90% graduation objective" and use instead "last year's ACT score plus 10% minimum for the objective, coupled with monthly individual school academic objectives (e.g., G.P.A.) for all supervisory employees that drive ACT achievement. The push for 90% graduation rate with an average A.C.T, 21 goal, as for many years, simply cannot work. In Tennessee a 21 ACT score means that the goal is an unacceptable 25% ACT Readiness, with 75% OF THE GRADUATES NOT BEING READY FOR ANY JOB FOR LIFE! In addition the "90% of students graduating" goal, for almost 20 years now, created pressures during the last month of the school year to dumb down the state test ("Cut Scores"), and to make superintendents and principals push for promoting children who would otherwise fail, by changing the pass/fail point (60% good answers normally) down, below 30% in some courses to pass and graduate many children who are very poorly prepared. That is why we have an extremely high percentage of graduates who are not ACT Ready. Isn't it obvious to all that what we need is an educational objective, an ACT score that is 10% higher than the prior year's score? If that goes up, so will the graduation rate.





Very important for teacher success: a test for a psychological match to the teaching profession, raising subject training (what they will teach) to Master's level, using Intern-based teaching tools, learning new teaching methodologies, and learning to use the best lectures by the best professors nationally in the subject they teach. Good teachers love the subject enough to keep up with future developments. It would be ideal if they could alternate their jobs between teaching and business where they actually use their subject knowledge.





The American public's money via taxes is paying one of the highest rates in the world per student for the education of the public's children. but only 26% of the graduates with a high school diploma are ACT Ready nationally. Even for those few who are ACT Ready, the readiness benchmark score is equal to only 24-25% knowledge of three subjects and the 4th subject, English, passes at ACT score 18 that only 10-12% knowledge level of the subject defined by the curriculum. even ACT Readiness is not good enough preparation of our children to survive. Is that a good result? We just kept spending more money per child, but we did not teach our children well enough.



Political leadership above education hires staffing for the schools and management who are unprepared at all levels to do an acceptable job. Why? Because the hiring manager thinks that he/she does not have to know what and how the new employee has to accomplish what needs to be done - a huge mistake. More than 80% of high school graduates are not ACT Ready. They will be able to get only short-term employment at minimum wage followed by nothing after five years. Nothing! The automation plans of several industries for 2019 - 2022 will ensure that exactly, because they cannot find qualified high school graduates. Such children will not be earning enough to support themselves with legal jobs, let alone a wife and family, but will learn to make money illegally and will make a lot of babies. Our governors are not likely to know better.



WHAT SHOULD OUR HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATES ACT READINESS BE? NOT 17% LIKE IN TENNESSEE. NOT 24% LIKE THE USA AVERAGE. IN THE TOP TEN COUNTRIES IN EDUCATION IT IS MORE THAN THE EQUIVALENT OF 90%. THE ANSWER TO THAT FROM THE EDUCATION ORGANIZATIONS FREQUENTLY IS: "BUT WE ARE SO MUCH BIGGER! AND THEY DO NOT HAVE MINORITIES!" WELCOME TO THE RESULT OF BEING DUMBED DOWN BY OUR EDUCATION SYSTEM FOR MORE THAN 50 YEARS. THEY DON'T EVEN CHECK THE FACTS BEFORE GIVING AN ANSWER. VERY SAD SITUATION. IN MORE THAN 50 YEARS NOT A SINGLE GOVERNOR, NOT A SINGLE EDUCATION SECRETARY OR STATE SUPERINTENDENT TOOK ACTION THAT RAISED THE ACT READINESS AND THE S.A.T. EQUIVALENT. WHEN



WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR DESTROYING THE LIFE OF THE PUBLIC'S CHILDREN? WHOSE EDUCATION AT ONE OF THE HIGHEST EXPENSES PER CHILD IN THE WORLD WAS PAID BY THE PUBLIC, BUT THE STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT WITH A GOVERNOR PICKED LEADER, WHO COULD NOT OR WAS NOT ALLOWED TO DO A GOOD ENOUGH JOB FOR 80-90% OF SUCH CHILDREN, SO THAT THEY COULD GET A LEGAL JOB TO SUPPORT MINIMALLY A FAMILY OF FOUR, OR JUST THEMSELVES. THE GOVERNOR, HAD NO IDEA WHAT TO DO, COULD NOT FIND A PERSON IN THIS HUGE COUNTRY WHO DID. OR WAS THE GOVERNOR RESTRICTED IN DOING A BETTER JOB? WE HAVE WASTED MANY BILLIONS OF DOLLARS AND DECADES, AND WE CERTAINLY SPENT ENOUGH. WE WOULD APPRECIATE GETTING A TRUTHFUL EXPLANATION FROM THE GOVERNOR ABOUT WHY THIS IS HAPPENING AND WHY WE ARE TELLING THE PUBLIC A FALSE STORY ABOUT PUBLIC EDUCATION. WE WOULD LIKE TO SEE THE GOVERNOR'S WRITTEN PLAN TO TURN THIS SAD SITUATION AROUND OR EXPLAIN IN WRITING TO US IF WE ARE INCORRECT.



ELECTED SCHOOL DISTRICT BOARDS', SUPERINTENDENTS' AND PRINCIPALS' TRAINING: Management-by-Objectives, Annual Operating Plans, Zero-based Budging training, focus on ACT' "Core Plus 2" plus honors courses, s goal at average 27 ACT for 80% ACT Readiness in five years. If you achieved results with the poor, very old training and with the enormous inefficiency we had to date, the far better results will come with actually less effort if we do things properly.





Poorly performing organizations can't recover without redefining the "EXCELLENCE" they claim constantly. They claim "excellence for all children" when more than 70% of graduates are not ACT Ready. Any statements or communication in any form by a public education system, especially after our poor history, must communicate the truth and nothing but the truth on all communications to ANY recipient.





In a poorly performing environment, mediocre performance is accepted as EXCELLENT. ACT Readiness is NOT excellence even at 100%, but only "meets requirements" at best, because the curriculum is not competitive. 80% Readiness is a must in 5 years.





To that end, we must have ZERO TOLERANCE for discipline problems. Give teachers the power and authority to control their classes. Give them also the responsibility to deliver better results via GPA and ACT results.





Our goal of 80% ACT READINESS requires not spending money on other than an excellent education, technology, and maintenance of improving ACT scores 10% per year. Reduce central management staffing to 2% of total school district full-time employees who do a good job. We must keep only those who do a good job. For that, measurable objectives must exist for all employees. If that cannot be defined, why hire them?





Any school district must communicate only the truth and nothing but the truth. Currently this is totally ignored.





Plan the coming year well, with monthly measurable G.P.A. objectives to deliver much better results by students than in the past.





Provide a financial incentive and recognition plaques to teachers and principals who exceed a 10% higher G.P.A., than last year's, or 3.5 GPA, whichever is lower.





Evaluate together every month which and what teacher-created the best results and how it was done.





Graduate only those who are ACT Ready, keep those who are not, for up to two more years.





Require specific management training for Superintendents.





Keep a voting-public record of all elected school district board members on all votes that would reduce spending or (or except for those that) increase education results. Locally elected school district boards of education do not and cannot contribute to improving our education system. Their voting majority does not have enough knowhow. Appointed boards can be very helpful (e.g. in a form of US Public schools is one called a "charter school").





K-12 Education MUST BE INTERNATIONALLY COMPETITIVE because high school graduates feed the workforce of all American companies from design to manufacturing. The quality and price of our products depend on the training of the workforce. We have to compete internationally with our products, and as our high school education declined compared to other countries, our profit margins decline, and so does our national income. We are one of the top spenders in the world per student, but we dropped to the bottom of the industrialized countries. We decide K-12 curriculum and depth of subjects within it, teacher qualification criteria, teacher training curriculum competitiveness require very well qualified people on the national level. We delegated everything under education to the states, who delegated almost all decision-making to the more than 13,500 school districts' elected school boards. There are several big problems here. One is an enormous duplication of staff and all of them not the best in the country. Most of them would not understand what we are talking about here. A very flat large organization that depends on elected local boards cannot have the right level of management knowhow to be successful with the existing prerequisites and experience. And the explanation in its favor that the best advice for how education needs to be improving comes only from the local population probably worked 150 years ago, but today it can only fail. Just look at the record we have documented here. What is most dangerous for the nation is the fact that no correction has taken place in the last 100 years in everything relating to education: management structure and methodology, standards in every job, performance and spending management, employee competence and level of performance internationally in a competitive world.



Public schools dominate about 90% of the K-12 education in every country. That makes them a "monopoly". A monopoly can control the country to ensure that no other type of school system can enter the country. A monopoly does not have to do an excellent job to stay in control. In fact, they can be doing a poor job in most schools as education is in the USA. They promote themselves to the public as a school that is much better than they really are. Understand ACT or S.A.T. scores so that you can understand how well they are REALLY doing. Do not trust the state test scores because most have been dumbed down. They say bad things about any other school that makes a profit, even if they are much better in educating your child. We will tell you more here. Be very single minded about the school for your child. Care only about how well educated their students are by comparing ACT, S.A.T. or N.A.E.P. (primary school test) scores. Or find out which the best high school is with ACT scores, and ask the principal about which primary school is best.





WHY MUST WE DO ALL THIS?



THE PUBLIC IS PAYING ONE OF THE HIGHEST RATES IN THE WORLD PER CHILD, IN GOOD FAITH, TO EDUCATE ITS CHILDREN, SO THAT THEY CAN, AT MINIMUM, EARN ENOUGH TO SUPPORT A FAMILY OF FOUR. For our future citizens: our children's and grandchildren's economic survival.





High school graduates feed the workforces of all industries.





The training of our industries' workforces affects the quality and profitability of the companies in our industries. We compete today with international competitors at home and in most countries.





Poorly prepared high school graduates, like most U.S. graduates today, lower our industries' income, and also our national income. We do not have enough national income, and our national debt skyrocketed.





Our high schools, therefore, must be competitive with the best countries in education. We are far from them today.





ACT depends on the education community for income. That is likely to influence their test results to show the best possible "picture" with their test results. The purposeful dumbing down of the public unfortunately exists.





We are told told that the U.S. Constitution does not provide any guidelines for education. Individual state constitutions and laws delegate all spending and education-related decisions to locally elected school boards. There are more than 13,500 such school boards in the U.S. The decision-making majority of such boards lack the necessary know-how. The U.S. Constitution not covering public education is not a good reason for no standardization nationally on the most important things in education. For example high school graduation requirements, advancement, student requirements to each grade, minimum curriculum in K-12, teacher and superintendent qualification revised, prerequisites for entry into a teaching program in any college or university, single-subject focus with a BS/BA and MS/MA in the subject that a candidate will teach above grade four, with a plan to achieve such a qualification. If that is not possible, expect cognitive robotics with Artificial Intelligence to replace education as we know it, because what we have is destroying our children's ability to make a living.





Politicians believe that if they suggest changes, the education entity will have them voted out.





OBSERVATION: Jobs are getting more sophisticated. The less demanding jobs are going to robots. It is a tougher world out there. The jobs require more knowledge. When things were easier, both schools and parents were tougher with the children in the school and at home. So, we made everything easier for children, with much less pressure in school and at home, allowing children to misbehave and learn less than before. WE DID THIS FOR OUR CHILDREN, FOR A TOUGHER WORLD THAT REQUIRES MORE KNOWLEDGE IN THE SCIENCES AND MATHEMATICS...

Go figure...Have we been dumbed down this much?!





THE FUTURE DEPENDS ON HOW WELL EDUCATED OUR CHILDREN WILL BE

WHAT IS YOUR GOAL?
WHAT HAVE YOU CHANGED?
WHAT IS YOUR GOAL-ACHIEVEMENT HISTORY?



HOW IS ACT READINESS DETERMINED?



The ACT score range is 1-36. The test is given after 11th Grade, to learn what children learned from grade one to twelve. ACT also offers a test called ASPIRE, for each grade, from grade 3 to grade 10. ASPIRE indicates in each grade what the individual student's ACT score is likely to be in grade 11 if the student keeps progressing the same way. This is an excellent predictive test for parents as well as school management because, at any grade level, ASPIRE indicates what the final school district's or individual student's ACT score is likely to be. Having a tool like ASPIRE, both the parent and the school would see what courses' performance is weak, starting with third grade. If a parent and the school know that a student's performance is too weak at any grade from 3 to 10, they can act to correct the situation. Otherwise, the ACT score may come as a big surprise.





The ACT score is the average of four ACT subject tests: English, Mathematics, Reading, and Science. The student that meets the target scores of all four benchmark tests qualifies as "ACT READY." ACT Readiness only means that if a student passed the four benchmarks (in English, Mathematics, Reading and Science), then that student has a 50% - 75% CHANCE to pass the college FRESHMAN LEVEL of the same four subjects only (that is the FRESHMAN LEVEL English, Mathematics, Reading and Science courses) and NOTHING ELSE. Verify at https://www.act.org/content/act/en/college-and-career-readiness/ benchmarks.html.





Please note that being just "ACT Ready" does not indicate that a child is prepared for the better paying future jobs even on the lowest level, especially jobs that relate to any future science, engineering or economics courses. It must be obvious that those students who are not ACT Ready, are likely to remain unemployed most of their lives.





Let me tell you how fast technologies are moving ahead. Ten years ago a $1,000 computer had the same computing power as a mouse brain. By 2025 a $1,000 computer will be much smaller, but with the same computing power as a human brain. By 2045 the $1,000 computer will be very tiny; it's peripheral devices will change very significantly, brain implants will be used for raising IQ and knowledge levels. By 2045 the $1000 computer computing power will exceed the power of ALL HUMAN BRAINS ON THIS EARTH COMBINED (source is Ray Kurtzweil, PhD, recipient of 21 honorary doctorates, Google's V.P. of technology). His forecasts have been MORE THAN 80% accurate for the past 30 years). Today's children will be alive then, and so will be our grandchildren. Robotics is advancing just as fast as computers, along with many other technologies, and will replace the jobs of those students who are not ACT Ready by 2024 or before. Many college education based careers, such as accounting, nursing, teaching, and many more unless such individuals continued an earnest learning effort to stay ahead of robotics for employment. Our high school education is already seriously behind many nations as of 2019, and there is no sign of any improvement. Japan started this serious continuing education 30 years ago. We do have a couple of dozen high schools with close to 100% ACT Readiness, But some states like Tennessee do not have any, and if one writes to the governors of the low performing states, there will be no answer from anyone. We will see a huge group of new sciences and technologies become very active by 2022: nanotechnology that will change most engineering design and manufacturing activities with major cost-reduction, robotics with nanometer resolution of components in design (nanometer = one millionth of a meter) including invisible and cognitive robotics at a much lower cost, and space science, whose high speed, antigravity engines among other things will create even greater benefits than the automobile industry did - IF WE TURN AROUND OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS SIGNIFICANTLY. OTHERWISE, OTHER NATIONS WILL BENEFIT, THOSE WHO MAINTAINED AN EXCELLENT K-12 EDUCATION SYSTEM.





Technology changes always eliminate low-level jobs with robotics, and bring many jobs with better pay, but requiring much more education. We fell behind in education and that will create a big problem that we are already feeling.





ACT already has a new term for READINESS for jobs that will ensure a proper income for a family of four longer-term.

It is called STEM ACT, it includes Calculus, Chemistry, Biology and Physics and the ACT score must be at or above 26, which will gradually increase. The education systems were teaching all this in the higher-performing international countries and in some Northern US states 40 or more years ago.





Our public education has fallen behind starting more than 50 years ago. We became the highest spending country per student. We dropped to the bottom of the industrialized countries in 2016. Our governors and state departments of education leadership did a terrible job. All governors spent more money on education since 1970, but not on things that would increase learning as measured by the ACT scores. Those sciences that are coming in a couple of years, will need even more, far better prepared high school graduates.



INTERESTING OBSERVATION: SINCE 1970 WE SPENT MORE EVERY YEAR TO THIS DAY AND BECAME THE HIGHEST SPENDER. BUT THE KNOWLEDGE OF HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATES DECLINED. YET QUITE A FEW GOVERNORS WANTED TO BE REMEMBERED AS THE "EDUCATION GOVERNOR". We wrote to our current and prior Tennessee governors specific questions about our poorly performing public education system during the last ten years. We did not receive a single response from them or anyone else for them. Not a single letter. BUT THERE WAS NOT A SINGLE GOVERNOR IN MORE THAN 50 YEARS, WHO SEEING THIS TREND SINCE 1970 STOOD UP TO INITIATE A FORENSIC AUDIT (THIS IS AN INVESTIGATIVE AUDIT) TO EXAMINE WHERE THE MONEY GOES. WHEN PERFORMANCE IS BAD, YOU HAVE TO CORRECT INTERNAL PROBLEMS WITHIN THE ORGANIZATION, INSTEAD OF SPENDING MORE MONEY AFTER THE CHILDREN GRADUATED FOR SOME FORM OF SUPPLEMENTAL TRAINING. REVERSING A POOR 12-YEAR EDUCATION COSTS A FORTUNE, AND IT DOES NOT MAKE MUCH DIFFERENCE IN THE POOR GRADUATION RECORD.





Who is going to "pay" for making such a huge mistake?

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/Users/victorspencer/1Webpages/education100/1flashingarrow.gifLet's look at the high schools' performance also in the Knox County School District in Tennessee. What becomes obvious right away is the fact that performance of the high schools varies between mostly poor and some average, but less than one percent are in a high enough performance area that delivers 90% ACT Readiness. In some countries all public schools are in this high performance area. Ours is the result of teacher and principal skill levels being too low, teacher subject education, selection and how well they fit the teaching profession does not exist and both elected boards and superintendents not being trained well enough. This is not the teachers' and principals' fault. It is the fault of low standards by the state education department, and ultimately the governors. This is a huge problem that is unaddressed to this day.







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/Users/victorspencer/1Webpages/education100/1flashingarrow.gifExcellent high school graduates with 90%+ readiness are very important for any country. We do not have enough of them. But we do have many in high school and even in college graduates who are far from being ready. College professors and employers are complaining about the poor training of high school graduates: they cannot read and write properly, don't know basic math and have a bad attitude. Public high school graduates "feed" our universities and all of our industrial and governmental workforces. We have been paying one of the highest rates per student in the world in elementary and high schools, but our public high school performance fell behind other industrialized nations, with only 25% readiness. That means that your child may have received a diploma but not enough education to be prepared to be self-supporting.









/Users/victorspencer/1Webpages/education100/1flashingarrow.gifPlease look at the graph below. A diploma is a promise by any state or nation that indicates the recipient to be ready to become a productive member of society in terms of future needs of employers. I am very sorry, but this performance in Tennessee or nationally is so bad, that around 75% of those to whom we give a diploma are not ready nationally, and more than 80% of high school graduates with a diploma in Tennessee are not ready. The public pays in taxes one of the highest amounts per student in the world and receive a totally unacceptable job for it. The state education departments do things that make the grades look better than the students' knowledge warrants by far, to keep graduating students in school to graduate them, who know less and less. If such misrepresentations were done with the public's education using the public's money to damage the public's children, THEN WHAT HAVE WE BECOME AS A NATION? CERTAINLY NOT A GOD-FEARING NATION AS WE WERE, BUT A NATION OF SATAN'S PAEDOFILIA WITH THE KILLING OF BABIES WITH FAMOUS NAMES IN POLITICS ENJOYING IT AND NO TRIALS FOR SUCH MURDERS. We showed that the readiness definition of high school graduates is too optimistic for official eyes, but the truth is significantly worse. The public is not informed of this, and is told false stories by the political and education leadership. WHY IS IT THAT WE TOLERATE SUCH PEOPLE IN ANY LEADERSHIP POSITION? ARE WE JUST ACCEPTING AGAIN STATUS QUO BECAUSE IT IS TO HARD TO FIGHT FOR THE RIGHT THING?









 The product, service, and work quality of all industries depend on how good a job a country's public education is doing. Many other countries improved much better their public high school education to have a better workforce then we did. A better educated workforce can create better products and services and increasing profitability that in turn creates more tax income for their country. We compete with foreign companies' products at home and in any other country. We see our and foreign products everywhere. WE HAVE BEEN COMPETING WORLDWIDE FOR MANY DECADES. LET THERE BE NO DOUBT THAT FOR THIS REASON, OUR HIGH SCHOOL EDUCATION MUST BECOME MUCH BETTER TO BE COMPETITIVE WITH THE BEST IN THE WORLD. WE ARE NOWHERE NEAR THAT. PEOPLE WHO DO NOT KNOW AND BELIEVE THAT WE MUST IMPROVE OUR EDUCATION RESULTS, SHOULD NOT BE WORKING WITHIN PUBLIC EDUCATION OR ABOVE IT. We did not improve. Lower high school education hurts our workforce, and our national income cannot be sustained that way. We could not generate enough national income, necessitating borrowing that becomes our high national debt, on which we have to pay interest that "controlling outsider group". More about them later.









 We have a major illiteracy problem in the USA everywhere and we are doing nothing about it. Why? Please click on it to read it. Just answer this: how can your child learn and live if+++++++ the school graduates him, but he cannot read, cannot do basic math and he thinks that the world owes him a much better living?









 New technologies have been increasing more and more rapidly over the years. New technologies replace some old jobs and create some new jobs for which employees need more technically educated workers. Our high school performance must keep pace with technology-related improvements. Unfortunately, we fell behind.





 New technologies are the tools that enable our industries to develop more competitive products and services in a global mark. Any country we visit internationally, we see products and services from many other countries. Several decades ago, I traveled regularly to many countries. American products were the most popular then. We lost that edge.





 For any medium-to-large American corporation of any industry, the sale and service income that comes from other countries is important enough to make or break that corporation's or industry's survival. We lost several industries in the past, that we dominated, such as consumer electronics, heavy machinery, and so on. It also impacts the income of our nation. International income for a US corporation can easily exceed domestic income. When the national income declines, we borrow more money, and the national debt must increase on which we have to pay interest. Internationally competitive education is therefore very important for successful survival.





 Our high school performance declined during the last 50 years by the state education departments, to a lower level than many other nations. Examples of these actions are objectives, and operating plans that do not work, low employee standards were allowed in school districts. As if that was not enough, reduction of pass/fail points in the state tests to show better grades, weak rules to manage discipline problems. We are showing a simple chart above and below that shows the poor performance over a 19-year period. Not a single governor stood up in 50 years to stop the expense increase annually until education results are turned around, which would be the normal thing to do without exception. Not a single governor-initiated action during this long period that increased academic results, meaning no one changed any management or operational mistakes WITHIN THE SCHOOLS that caused the poor results, as many nations’ results passed us. What creates such huge problems? "Political Management", when education requires normal large-scale organizational management to be successful. Why is such a thing happening? Because public education organizations do not understand and train school district superintendents and management people in state education departments in post-MBA management-level subjects. THIS IS A BIG MISTAKE. Such a decline means that this is not an accidental or random activity but one that is directed purposefully by a "controlling outsider group". It is combined with poor teacher training on the university level with other fields remaining on the usual high level, and major operational and financial management decisions are handed over to more than 13,500 locally elected school boards whose voting majority and school district and state management is not trained and experienced enough to solve the low performance problem we have nationally in every state. Our political leadership justifies this with the argument that the best ideas for how to teach our children and improve education come only from the local population of our schools via elected school board members. THAT may have been an acceptable idea 100-150 years ago, but less and less so during the past 75-100 years where increasing technological and scientific developments created increasingly competitive national economies worldwide that required an increase in public education to increase the knowledge of the national workforce. If a nation did not do that, the workforce is fed with less and less educated high school graduates that declines the competitiveness of a nation’s industries. What that creates is an annual decline. It is undeniable that federal high level politicians and political appointees are very smart people who would NORMALLY act in accordance with the US Constitution, and would not allow the systematic deterioration of public high school output that feeds the national workforce. Such action would weaken the competitiveness of our various industries, reducing their income in a competitive world. That in turn would reduce our national tax income and increase our taxes or more likely would increase our national debt. BUT, THE US PUBLIC EDUCATION HAS DECLINED COMPARED TO MANY OTHER NATIONS, THE ACT SCORES HAVE NOT INCREASED IN THE LAST TWO DECADES, POSSIBLY LONGER, AND “ACT READINESS”, A FAIRLY LOW STANDARD COMPARED TO INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION, IS ONLY AROUND 20% OF ALL THOSE WHO GRADUATE FROM PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOLS. THIS IS A TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE RESULT, THAT PUBLIC SCHOOLS MISREPRESENT TO THE PUBLIC AND TELL PARENTS THAT “ALL CHILDREN ARTE NOT CREATED BY GOD TO BE COLLEGE MATERIAL, BUT YOUR CHILD COULD LEARN A PROFESSION AND MAKE A GOOD LIVING!”>





 When people are part of a poorly performing organization for 2-4 years, they get used to it and accept it as normal, or even as a good organization. That is where we are. We know from the ACT graph that poor performance existed for at least 19 years and likely more. That means that a turnaround in performance with the same poorly performing people would be possible only with very firm management, not allowing for any compromise between the old and new practices. That would require new management methods that work in every school district, with retired managers from other industries to get the necessary experience. How much of a problem would that be? No problem at all. The low high school performance appears to be least understood by politicians and people in education at all levels. If they understood the problems in our education, and if they had ACT or S.A.T. score-based standards, with annual objectives, and annual operating plans in each and every school with measurable monthly academic objectives (e.g., GPA based) for each supervisory or management person, then we would have seen increasing ACT and S.A.T. scores.





 Our website, www.education100.org is about how we could fix our failing public education. Public education is the most important national strategic problem that is more destructive than any other external enemy could be. We see a trend emerging among corporations and government to take over high school education initially because Public Education is not improving, does not graduate well-prepared graduates. The Internet is full of excellent tutorials, and also the presentations of the best university professors' presentations, and outstanding tutorials on any primary or secondary school subject, and a growing number of undergraduate university-level subjects that are getting improved with Artificial Intelligence (AI) to increase a child's or adult's interest beyond what a teacher could do with existing teacher training. We present some of these below. Several of our best universities, like M.I.T., Stanford and others already offer a high school diploma for a very low cost through the Internet, including even "laboratory exercises" using simulation and Artificial Intelligence. It appears that our public schools do not want to improve because they have done so poorly for many years and probably cannot change because what must be done they see as an impossibility. We do not need to keep asking them to improve. There are already far superior systems in the works to replace them, and as they lose students, and as the public discovers the poor job most of them are doing, better solutions will take off like wildfire.





 We often hear from Washington politicians speaking in the name of the public. "The American people have been asking for xyz" that the politicians are proposing. However, most of the time, we have not read or heard ever American people asking for what the politicians are proposing. We hear many public comments about our children's poor education, government regulations choking medical services with regulations, but we do not hear legislators proposing anything about those. Although several governors spent millions on education projects, just to be known as the "education governor" after they leave, the ACT or S.A.T. scores did not improve. It could be predicted from the start that such programs will not improve the high percentage of children, like 80% (increasing and not improving) who were graduated unprepared. Our education system declined since 1970 as our spending per student became the highest in the world. Not a single governor, nor any president, nor any Republican or Democrat has done anything to improve the ACT or S.A.T. scores. Not one! The day is not far when large groups of American parents will find out that they have been dumbed down, and so were their children. About 80-90% of their children graduated from high school and received a diploma. However, more than 80% of the 90% that graduated are unprepared with minimum wage jobs that will go to robotics within a few years. One wonders why we are spending the most money per child in the world, wasting many billions of dollars every year for a poor education system.





 It is a basic human characteristic to give priority to short-term problems and the noisiest crowd demanding anything, delaying action to fix much more serious long-term issues. That is a problem. We have already wasted many years to fix public education without any change. That means that there will be a price to pay, but not as high as it will become if we continue to ignore the public education problem.



"There is a plot in this country to enslave every man, women, and child. Before I leave this high and noble office, I intend to expose this plot."

John F. Kennedy
President, United States

Seven days later, he was assassinated. What did he know?


High Schools' Focus:

Vocational Or General Education On A Much Higher Level Than Today?

It is very obvious in the graph that we have done a terrible job of educating our children in public schools, that will hurt them badly when they are trying to g a better job. The education community recognizes the problem, they cannot solve the problem, they have no idea what to do or purposefully DO NOT WANT TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM, AND THEY PURPOSEFULLY MISINFORM THE PUBLIC ABOUT SCHOOL PERFORMANCE. THAT IS CALLED LYING TO THE PUBLIC WHO PAY FOR EVERYTHING THEY HAVE BECAUSE WE PAY PER STUDENT THE HIGHEST RATE PER STUDENT. Our results should be much better, but instead, we dropped to the bottom of the industrialized countries.



I met with the heads of pediatric neurology and pediatric psychiatry at the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio, to discuss brain development issues, and specifically at what age can one determine the specific vocational direction for a child and can that brain development be altered for vocational preference through what the child hears, reads, sees on T.V. The answer is "no". The part of the brain that creates vocational preference does not complete its development until 20 years of age. Public schools stressing vocational choice even before high school and not educating children well enough about reading, writing, mathematics, and sciences, is a big mistake. If anyone disagrees with what I am writing here, speak with a neurologist. If you have a different opinion from a neurologist, please let us know his name and number.



We need to consider two things: improvement of general education for high school students and not pushing vocational decisions in high school or before.



There are many vocations and many of the better universities that require a 30 or higher ACT score to be accepted, to show that the student can complete the degree for such programs.



Our high schools are struggling with low ACT scores in public education. High schools are at an average ACT score of 15-22, with 30-90% of the students not ready or prepared of those graduates for any job above minimum wage. At this ACT range, the primary and high school education of the child is inferior. Most graduates are not prepared well enough, but we give them a diploma. BIG MISTAKE. Having a vocational desire is worthless if the child graduates poorly prepared. That is why more than 80% of the graduates in Tennessee are not ready for more than minimum wage jobs. The highest priority task for public schools SHOULD BE to become as good as the best ten countries in education became. THAT MEANS HAVING AN OBJECTIVE PER SCHOOL DISTRICT OF AN AVERAGE ACT SCORE THAT IS MINIMUM 10% HIGHER THAN THE AVERAGE ACT SCORE ACHIEVED THE YEAR BEFORE. But the Departments of Education in the states is focusing on graduation ONLY, with extremely low graduation requirements, focusing parents on graduation only as if that was a reasonable goal. IF OUR STATE DEPARTMENTS OF EDUCATION IGNORE ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT AS WE HAVE BEEN DOING FOR YEARS, with most schools telling the parents that all is fine, they are lying to the public. MOST OF OUR CHILDREN WILL BE UNEMPLOYED. It is vital to raise math and science scores higher than ACT 26. Schools must focus on getting much better performance and not waste time with more than academic course achievement when their performance is so poor. But the next point is even a better reason.



Teachers believe that vocational suitability depends on what the child sees or reads or movies or parental opinion, the teachers, or any other information source. THAT IS INCORRECT. Brain development is ready between 18-20 years from a vocational perspective. Intelligence appears to be defined by birth (amygdala). Genetics have some influence. The child's image may be distracted by others favoring some profession, but this is a very specialized development in the brain. The objective is for the child to be in a vocation where the child will be happy, enjoying the job because that is where he/she will be most successful. What we are doing is misleading the student. He may complete required education based on the schools' pushing them so that he will discover that he hates that job that the school "sold" him. So, schools could be most helpful if they improve the ACT-measured academic education of the children at a much higher level than they do currently and stop pushing them toward a vocation.



Vocational testing can be very accurate with the right test. We used it in my division with about 700 people we hired, and these two tests were precise. One is called the Strong Interest Inventory, and the other is the Myers-Briggs Intelligence Inventory. Download both from the Internet for about $130 for both. But have the child take it after 19 years of age. And the two tests must be correlated by a vocational psychologist with a PhD.

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Outstanding Learning Aids For Both Teachers And Students From Ten Sources

  1. Khan Academy: Outstanding. The best in this group. Any subject, any grade, most useful.


  2. The Great Courses presentations from the best professors in the USA in any subject. Many of them include an entire semester or year of the subject, and huge discounts are offered on a group of courses periodically.


  3. Brightstorm has an outstanding collection of the best high school teachers for every single lesson period.


  4. Open Culture, great educational resources.


  5. The best math resources for teachers


  6. EDX Courses for K-12 and personal interest from the best universities.


  7. List of study/learning skills


  8. Teaching without lecturing


  9. MIT OpenCourseWare covering high school


  10. SKILLSHARE is loaded with thousands of job-skill tutorials for jobs or pleasure




    11. /Users/victorspencer/1Webpages/education100/rubikscube.gifIt is not possible to turn around bad performance without ALL OF THE ABOVE STEPS. In 2016 we were the highest spenders per student in the world. We dropped to 40th in mathematics internationally that year, among 15-year-old high school children and that is very bad news. We spent and kept spending the people's money for public education, our hard-earned tax dollars. But the poor job we did and do in public education will result in massive joblessness for our children and grandchildren for life. Whose job was it and is it to deliver one of the highest results for the high spending in education? The money was enough, but where did it go? Certainly not for the right people in the right places in education districts. The remedy would be a forensic audit of medium to large school districts, and changing people and projects that have not been productive.

/Users/victorspencer/1Webpages/education100/rubikscube.gifOur employers have been complaining since 2000 about high school graduates not knowing how to read, write, follow instructions, don't know even basic math and have a bad attitude on the job. Our employers cannot find enough potential employees who are trained well enough now for more than ten years. Example: Two different high school graduate cashiers could not figure out recently what change they owe me if I pay a $23.00 item, with a $50.00 bill. When I asked them why, they told me that "We are not math majors, and we will not need math in the future." They said that the teacher told them. No school in the entire country should graduate a single student like that.

/Users/victorspencer/1Webpages/education100/rubikscube.gifHow advanced are we as a country? We already started with very serious space activity with the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Navy, and their subcontractors BEFORE 1970. They reverse-engineered crashed U.F.O.'s during the prior ten years. They developed 65 space vehicles with antigravity engines and two mother ships by 1983 with presence in space. They put a large space station in earth orbit named after Werner von Braun, the brilliant German scientist. We have been traveling at close to the speed of light to other plans for the past few years. This information has been recently declassified. President Trump announced the formation of a sixth branch of the US Military, The USA Space Force in September 2019. This is important because new technological discoveries or releases into our business environment affect what public schools must teach. The ACT performance chart we have here clearly shows that this fact has been ignored by our public education system.

/Users/victorspencer/1Webpages/education100/rubikscube.gifThat part of our world, having operated under THE "black budg", is fifty years ahead of what the general public is aware of in new technology related to interstellar travel. We are about to take a much greater technological step than at any time before, starting in 2021-2022 with cognitive robotics, space technology, and nanotechnology togher. The impact will be enormous worldwide. If we do not catch up with our public schools, most of our children will be jobless for life. We could not depend on our schools to do this. It is possible that our school system will not improve like in the past 50 years. Parents need to learn to ensure a much bter education for their children. DO NOT DEPEND TOTALLY ON THE SCHOOLS THAT THEY WILL IMPROVE, BECAUSE THEY DID NOT IMPROVE IN THE PAST. Remember that no one will volunteer and admit to you that they or their organization is doing a poor job. Especially when the government guarantees their income.

/Users/victorspencer/1Webpages/education100/rubikscube.gifOur space and robotics efforts have been advancing many areas of science. That will also add to the pressure very soon to raise high school graduates' employability standards for public high schools. We have fallen behind during the last few decades. Our high schools were already behind a dozen other nations around 1990-2000, contributing to a weakened workforce. We lost several industries that we used to dominate (e.g., computers, radios, T.V., automobile - partly recovered, heavy machinery, and many more). Why? Because education performance declined. New technologies generally require automation. Automation is expensive. Our compitor countries created a much more liberal tax policy for depreciation of " capital equipment". China, for example, automated on an enormous scale both design and manufacturing, reducing the big expenses of innovating with new products. They also created super excellent high schools to educate many excellent high school graduates. For this reason, the new technologies coming in 2021-2022 will have a much greater technological impact on what our children should be learning in high school. By now in 2019, because the robotic impact on jobs will be massive on high school graduates and much greater than expected on many jobs that required a university degree.

/Users/victorspencer/1Webpages/education100/rubikscube.gifFuture jobs that will be most immune to robotic takeover will be those jobs that require in any combination, advanced degrees in sciences, mathematics, and economics, with excellent communications skills.

/Users/victorspencer/1Webpages/education100/rubikscube.gifSo far, as we see below in the ACT test results chart, we have not been educating our children well enough for the LAST TWO DECADES. However, we started increasing education spending since 1970, possibly earlier, but the results went nowhere. The future new technologies WILL make most of them jobless, as well as creating a big employee-deficiency problem for employers. THAT WILL RAISE THE DEMAND FOR COGNITIVE ROBOTICS HIGHER. This will be the immediate result of our state political leadership being misinformed about major technology advances for lack of interest in state organizations.

/Users/victorspencer/1Webpages/education100/rubikscube.gifA comple change is needed now in the areas recommended in order to minimize the damage to the new generation and to our corporations' business. This will put many jobless young people on the stres creating major social problems IF NOT REMEDIED NOW. Since the decline of public education started damaging the workforce several decades ago, our national income has not been healthy enough. We resorted to a huge increase in the national debt to survive, whose interest rates are costing us many billions. This, in turn, is seriously limiting our success in managing ourselves out of the increase in social problems, with all of this being the result of our political leadership TOTALLY IGNORING PUBLIC EDUCATION. To improve schools, investigate what we are saying here, believe what you find on your own, recognizing that the truth never comes from the organizations that are related to the problem you are investigating.

/Users/victorspencer/1Webpages/education100/rubikscube.gifWe do have some outstanding public schools in the U.S.A., who are not just 25% ready upon graduation like we are, but even 100% ready. Click here to see them. That is why the average ACT scores and ACT Readiness percentages in the chart below show that 75-85% of OUR public high school graduates in Tennessee and in a number of other states ARE NOT PREPARED for what employers needed now for more than a decade. The U.S. average is not much bter. The result is that more than 80% of our children who graduate with a diploma from our public high schools are not prepared to learn any job beyond 2022 because space activities, cognitive robotics togher with nanotechnology will raise the employers' technical requirements for high school graduates.

/Users/victorspencer/1Webpages/education100/rubikscube.gifThe results did, and will depend on the governors and how they improve education, especially in states like Tennessee. If they keep doing things for education that do not raise the ACT scores, as all states did in the past, they will achieve WORSE RESULTS INSTEAD OF IMPROVING PUBLIC EDUCATION. The state education departments do things that lower the knowledge of graduates, making them unacceptable to employers, like changing the state tests with Cut Scores. BUT OUR SCHOOLS WILL GRADUATE THEM WITH HIGHER GRADES AND LESS KNOWLEDGE BY LOWERING THE PASS/FAIL POINTS IN THE TESTS, AS THEY HAVE DONE BEFORE FOR DECADES.

/Users/victorspencer/1Webpages/education100/rubikscube.gifVERY IMPORTANT: The biggest problem that always happens when among poor performers for a number of years, IS THE ACCEPTANCE OF BAD PERFORMANCE AS NORMAL. Very few organizations admit that they are doing a bad job. They accept that this is the best they can do and go out of business. And it is much harder to work under such circumstances than if the organization is doing an excellent job. Public Education is a massive organization, with a massive union, and a lot of money guaranteed by the government, therefore they do not want to improve anything so that they are compitive and our children are employable. They are comfortable. They are virtually a monopoly with a 90% "mark share." A fairly large number of companies are making money out of the fact that education performance is poor, and those organizations make money off of poor educational performance, AND IMPROVE NOTHING. We have been performing poorly with public education for decades. As a result, even governors react rather softly to education problems and change nothing. WE MUST CHANGE.



 /Users/victorspencer/1Webpages/education100/rubikscube.gifIn my experience, the best organization's in the world, and their results would be a very good choice as a five-year goal at an average ACT score of 30. Today on September 2, 2019, I paid a $23 item in a store with a $50 bill. Cash register did not work. The person at the cash register could not figure out how much she needs to pay me back. A second store employee came to help, and he could not figure out the change, so I told them that the change I am to g back is $27. They both told me that " "we are not math majors! We are not going to need math in the future." I asked "Who told you that?" They said "Our teacher, because future automation will take care of subjects we don't like." They graduated from high school two years ago.



 /Users/victorspencer/1Webpages/education100/rubikscube.gifWe need well qualified high school graduates today. All of them! Unfortunately, more than 80% are poorly qualified. The reason is that teacher training quality also dropped ( click here to read about it). And we saw many management people in education, who had no management training and had no idea what to do. A very good teacher is a very special person and harder to find than people in many other professions. Too many went into teaching because they could not handle their originally selected major, heard that teaching was the easiest, so they changed to study teaching. It all adds togher into a huge problem.

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Teacher Training and Selection

/Users/victorspencer/1Webpages/education100/rubikscube.gifOf the top 100 universities in the world, more than 90% are American. There is only one exception to this: very strangely, the teacher training part of American colleges and universities are poor, while the other university departments are good. Our teacher turnover is too high, low morale is common. They, along with the poor ACT results, is the result of poor, untrained management from the very top on down. This will ALWAYS weaken the workforce, and that can destroy any country if not corrected.

/Users/victorspencer/1Webpages/education100/rubikscube.gifMany college students change to a teaching major in college if they think that their originally selected major is too much work. Teaching majors have low entry requirements in US colleges. The teaching profession is very highly respected in many other countries, but only when ALL high schools in that country graduate students in the average ACT equivalent of 28 or higher, that represents higher than what ACT calls 80% "STEM ACT Readiness", not just ACT Readiness.

/Users/victorspencer/1Webpages/education100/rubikscube.gifWhen good people work in a poorly performing organization for 2-3 years, they adjust and they actually start believing that their organization is performing well. In a poorly performing system like ours, low expectation thinking rules, such as Tennessee's objective of 21 average ACT score that represents only 20-25% of graduating classes being ready, but ALL G A DIPLOMA. People rise to high expectation objectives and me them. Why? Because with the help of a good, well-educated manager they create an operating plan that changes the way they work and achieve results. People ignore low expectation objectives and cannot me them.

/Users/victorspencer/1Webpages/education100/rubikscube.gifWe have to learn how to find the good potential teachers (The Strong Interest Inventory correlated with the Myers-Briggs Psychological Inventory does this very well). In the high performing countries in education, they have to be high I.Q., and be in the top third of their university classes (top 10% in a few countries) in a full master's program for the subject they would teach, and they must love the subject they teach and stay on top of new developments in that subject. The classes of such teachers are a pleasure to attend. Their enthusiasm infects the entire class of students, and the students will learn much more with such teachers. Interestingly, with such teachers, the work of both students, teachers as well as principals becomes much easier. Full master's program means a B.S. or B.A. in the subject they will teach plus an M.S. or M.A. in the same subject, and not an abbreviated Master's degree given by the Education Department after a B.A. in Teaching like we do. To identify the right intelligence and such desired personality traits in a potential teacher, a good job matching personality and IQ tests are accurate, and a very inexpensive investment. Just look at what we g without such tools.

/Users/victorspencer/1Webpages/education100/rubikscube.gifIF YOUR CHILD GS INTO TROUBLE WITH A TEACHER, LISTEN TO AND SUPPORT THE TEACHER'S STORY. And for those teachers who would enjoy another vocation more, help them find out what that vocation is. The above two tests will be very helpful to them. Those children who are not ACT Ready have only a chance for short-term minimum wage jobs. Please read here what "ACT Readiness" means.



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The Greek Symbol of Knowledge and Wisdom
Athena, ~ 480 BC

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What Is "ACT Readiness"?

ACT Testing System description

https://www.act.org/content/act/en/college-and-career-readiness/holistic- framework.html

ACT Readiness Standards

https://www.act.org/content/act/en/college-and-career-readiness/standards. html

The ACT College Readiness Benchmarks are scores that represent the level of achievement required for students to have a 50% chance of obtaining a B or higher or about a 75% chance of obtaining a C or higher in corresponding credit-bearing courses.* Benchmarks have been established for the ACT and ACT Aspire subject-area tests and the supplemental STEM and ELA scores.

The ACT Readiness Benchmarks for ACT Aspire are linked to the ACT College Readiness Benchmarks.

The ACT Benchmarks and their interpration.

https://www.act.org/content/act/en/college-and-career-readiness/benchmarks. html

ACT is the largest testing company that tests 59% of U.S.A. students. They established a four-subject benchmark since 2010. The benchmarks were identifying those graduates who could go on with education or be able to learn a job, based on what employers needed. In 2006 ACT concluded that the knowledge needed to learn a job and the knowledge needed to start college, have become the same. ACT named it then as ACT Readiness. In 2010 they started working on meing the rising requirements for public colleges to create a benchmark to indicate a 50-75% probability of passing college freshman courses with the same subject name as the subjects in the benchmark. ACT called this College or Career Readiness (C.C.R.). As of 2019, ACT is working on different categories of C.C.R. or Readiness, e.g., S.T.E.M.C.C.R., because the job requirements are growing as new technologies appear. S.T.E.M.C.C.R. has more than four benchmarks, and it is the benchmark that best indicates where our children need to be now until 2025, and then you will see higher benchmarks because the needs of the employers will keep rising as a result of new technologies. Unfortunately, it appears that our public education will continue to decline because today, they are not willing to learn and elevate U.S. education. We fell behind since 1970. That all means that today's ACT Readiness does not and will not apply to some jobs already and all jobs in the future. Especially with the arrival of cognitive robotics and nanotechnology many other science jobs, engineering and manufacturing jobs will change, producing much bter quality and higher performance products. Any testing company depends financially on the public education system, and under such circumstances, we hope that they show fair results. In such a situation, they will not be aggressive. They will be a little soft. Understand this very well. We fell seriously behind. To recover from our current position is not easy and it requires tough management of education on the state level.

ACT College and Career Readiness (C.C.R.) means that the graduating high school student has a 50-75% chance to pass four freshman courses in college. These courses must be the same subject names as the benchmarks. According to ACT, ACT CCR is not proof of the student being prepared to earn a college degree that provides enough income to survive. IT ALSO DOES NOT MEAN READINESS FOR A CAREER. WHAT IT MEANS IS MINIMAL PROGRESS IN THAT DIRECTION AND A BTER CHANCE TO ENTER COLLEGE THAN THOSE WHO ARE NOT ACT READY. THOSE NOT READY ARE MINIMUM WAGE MATERIAL AND ROBOTS WILL REPLACE THEM. SO WHY DO WE GRADUATE THEM? ONLY FOR ONE PURPOSE. TO MAKE THE EDUCATION SYSTEM LOOK BTER TO THE PUBLIC WHO ARE PAYING FOR IT. BUT THE TRUTH IS THAT IT IS BECOMING WORSE, AND THEY MISINFORM THE PUBLIC. We need to expect and deliver MUCH MORE from high school students than achieving ACT readiness from all high school graduates today. Colleges and universities have a 26-27 ACT score requirement in mathematics if the student wants to study mathematics, any of the sciences or economics. The ACT mathematics benchmark is only 22. That means that if one wants to g bter jobs, just meing ACT readiness itself will not be enough. More and more universities are looking for average ACT scores from 28 - 32 JUST TO BE ACCEPTED. That all means that ACT readiness only has to do with a 50-75% chance to pass only the freshman version of the course with the same subject names as the four ACT benchmarks. C's or D's will no longer work because we expect the colleges to soften because of the poor high school performance. Why? Colleges and universities need tuition income and a large enough number of students to graduate, to be in business. Employers will need more knowledge with the many new technologies that are about to start with major cognitive robotic advances. Also, artificial intelligence incorporation into products already makes them more and more useful. Nanotechnology will make important changes in existing engineering design and production systems in all fields. It will also alter a broad array of different engineering sciences to some degree, and space science will also contribute to our economy with major discoveries.

What does it mean if the student graduated from high school NOT ACT READY? We have more than 89% of high school graduates in TENNESSEE who cannot even me such a modest readiness definition to learn a job. Nationally 74% of those who graduate from high school are NOT ACT READY. In other words, they will not even be prepared to pass one freshman course. Why do we graduate them? Why do we give them a diploma? Dropouts are about 10-15% of a class over a four-year period. Those not ACT ready, are 74-96% of an entire class, school or school district. That makes almost all children who entered high school NOT READY/PREPARED and will be unemployable. With such low performance, our children are unqualified beyond minimum wage jobs when they graduate. We are too easy on children and worry excessively about damaging their self-esteem. It's a tough world out there, and we are very easy on the children in school and at home. The great majority of teachers or people above them have no idea what ACT readiness means and make up a much more optimistic definition for parents. We explained how small the ACT readiness qualification is. The school system may be bad, but many teachers and other people within it are good human beings. If we ask them about why they graduate most students who are poorly prepared, they will defend themselves to protect their income. Many development projects will start coming in 2021-2022 in robotics, nanotechnology, and sciences relating to space work. Cognitive robotics will go after college graduated jobs. High school graduates need to graduate with much more science and math and higher grades than today's graduates. When it comes to public school performance, we must follow President Reagan's advice: " TRUST, BUT VERIFY!"

OBSERVATION: Jobs are gting more sophisticated. The less demanding jobs are going to robots. It is a tougher world out there. The jobs require more knowledge. When things were easier, both schools and parents were tougher with the children in the school and at home. So, we made everything easier for children, with much less pressure in school and at home, allowing children to misbehave and learn less than before. WE DID THIS FOR OUR CHILDREN, FOR A TOUGHER WORLD THAT REQUIRES MORE KNOWLEDGE IN THE SCIENCES AND MATHEMATICS...

Go figure...

https://crushthegrest.com/act-scoring/. How is the ACT test scored by ACT the test provider

Copyright(c) 2008-2019 V. Spencer
This is a work in progress.


> - What are "Cut Scores"? - Major Threats - Urgent Actions needed - Do not push children in a vocational direction in high school - Ignoring New Technologies' Impact in High School Education - Continuing Teacher Education - Critical Thinking - Space Science - Management - Robotic Automation Is Here OECD: What makes school systems perform well? - Con Men Promise, and Nothing Happens -

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