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OUR PUBLIC EDUCATION HAS BEEN DECLINING FOR DECADES.
WHY DIDN'T WE TURN IT AROUND?

Updated on October 10, 2018

“People do what you inspect, not what you expect.”

Louis V. Gerstner Jr., Chairman, IBM


When an organization's results are bad: 1. Money is being spent for the wrong things. 2. People do what THEY think is right for them, NOT what the organization needs to be successful. 3. There is no written operating plan about what the organization's annual objective is and what the monthly objectives are for each manager, supervisor, principal and assistant principal in order to achieve the annual objective for the organization (or school).


Why do our children have to learn HOW TO LEARN? We go to school to learn so that we can have a job that we enjoy, a job that will provide us with a good life. Learning as much as our children have to learn to succeed can be hard. But they could learn how to learn more easily. There are different methods of learning and there is an easier way to learn than what we have been doing. Some countries teach how to learn in grades 3-4. We do not teach it in school, but anybody could learn it. That means that we could learn a lot more and much easier. That means that there is a way to get into a really good job that we could not reach otherwise. THE FIRST THING WE MUST DO IS TO REMOVE A MAJOR OBSTACLE TO LEARNING: THE INABILITY TO READ WELL. ALL SCHOOLS TEACH IT IN THE FIRST 3-4 GRADES. MOST DO IT SUCCESSFULLY, AND SOME SCHOOL DISTRICTS AND EVEN STATES CANNOT EVEN SOLVE THE READING PROBLEM IN MORE THAN TWO DECADES. Our schools in Knox County, Tennessee, have not done a good job to date in grades 1-4 teaching our children how to read and how to do basic math. This problem existed as far back as 20 years ago. The problem went unsolved to date. More than 80% of students (and more than 95% of African American students) who entered high school here, graduated from high school not ACT Ready, meaning that they are unprepared to learn ANY JOB beyond minimum wage employment. We need much better academic results. No one can learn without reading and that is one of the reasons for poor learning that results in being unprepared after graduating. Are the teachers and school district management so bad that they could not overcome such a basic requirement in reading and basic math? It appears that way. We would like to offer right here a website listing ten most effective on-line tools for academic classes at any level. Let us show you further down in this website what we found after several years of investigating what is happening in education in every state, and the top three countries in education in the world. There are many practices in US states that are actually hindering the good results from emerging. Very puzzling.

 

Steve Jobs, founder and president of Apple was a fantastic person who could see what the future needs. He dropped out of college, went to India to learn some practices from Hindu monks, like meditation, to be able to learn things very fast, to relax at will, to comprehend very clearly what is happening, to become very creative, and to concentrate on doing anything well. Both Hinduism and Buddhism are very old religions, 3,000-5,000 years old with knowledge flourishing there past and present, knowledge about how to control your mind to be more effective and do things better and faster, in anything that you do. He recommended to his friends the following:

1."Think while you walk."
Walking can increase creative output/learning by 60% according to our own medical research.

2."Meditate."
It takes practice, but learn it. It does wonders for your intuition, problem solving and ability to learn.

3."Pursue different interests also and become good with them".
Learn about things that interest you - seriously. You will be surprised by how much they will contribute to your success.

"And the dots will somehow connect in your future about what you should be doing, and where you will be the happiest" - he said.
Steve Jobs, Founder and President, Apple, Inc.

 

 

Unfortunately, we have a problem in Tennessee and many other states. More than 80% of those children who entered high school and graduated, are not prepared to learn a job that will survive robots, and they have problems with reading and basic math. Children who do not do well, are not enthusiastic about being in school. That's at least 80% of the students. The result depends mostly on how well teachers love teaching, how enthusiastic they are about their subject, how well they know their subject and its role in jobs and how much the teachers themselves like to learn and like and understand the children, and in the high performing countries in education they come from the top 25% of their university classes with some countries taking only top 10% performers. If the teachers are not like that, or if they went into teaching because teaching was easier than their chosen major, they are not the right type for teaching. If psychological vocation matching tests indicate that they are not the right type for teaching, they are definitely not right. Any one of the qualifiers indicating that they are not the right type, they are not. The high performing nations in education test for such things. That is why their results are great. Most of our children appear to feel that classes are boring. They would rather do something else. Anything. Because they are bored. It is up to the teachers from preschool onward that the children enjoy what the teachers are presenting. BUT THERE IS MORE.



Most public schools, in addition to being boring, are pushing children to graduate fast with shortcuts galore. It appears that the state education departments dumb down the state tests with a method called Cut Scores (lower the passing grade for students who would have failed otherwise) so that the students produce higher grades with the school system telling the public with a straight face how great the children are doing. But more than 80% of the graduating children from high school WITH A DIPLOMA cannot communicate properly, cannot read, cannot do basic math, have a bad attitude, can write only block letters, and cost the public in taxes $200,000 or more per student for twelve years, and will be replaced by robots by 2022 the latest. THE ROBOTS already started to replace workers at fast food companies. Supermarkets and others are planning the same. IT APPEARS THAT WE HAVE WASTED 80% OF THE EDUCATION EXPENSE SPENT PER STUDENT OVER 12 YEARS, OR $160,000 PER STUDENT AVERAGE, WITH ENORMOUS SOCIAL EXPENSES TO BE PAID DURING THEIR LIVES IN ADDITION BECAUSE THEY WILL BE JOBLESS. Among African American students not 80% but 97% are unprepared after graduation, and POVERTY is being blamed for the outrageously poor results. POVERTY??? How could that happen I wondered. Let me tell you how. Since 1970 education spending skyrocketed, the curriculum became weaker and education results went nowhere or down while many countries passed us BECAUSE THEY IMPROVED EVERYTHING IN EDUCATION TO HAVE BETTER RESULTS. We dropped to 40th place in mathematics internationally in 2016. Did that make the public smarter? Or did we become dumber? We were dumbed down by our public schools AND WE DID NOT EVEN NOTICE IT. Our earning power decreased for those less educated. That is why our poverty level is so unusually high. Our education system and those running it had a lot to do with it, all the way to the top. Such things do not happen accidentally. They have not been doing a good job so that most students become normal wage earners. They increased poverty instead with the bad results. We can at minimum say that our education system contributed to poverty very significantly by degrading the education system itself. Not only such a thing does not happen accidentally, but it has to be directed to do so. AND IT WAS DONE AT PUBLIC EXPENSE! IT IS HUGE DOLLARS, BECAUSE WE ARE THE BIGGEST SPENDER IN THE WORLD PER STUDENT. FOR THAT INVESTMENT, OUR SCHOOLS SHOULD BE THE BEST, AND NOT 40TH AND EVEN LOWER LIKE IN TENNESSEE AND SOME OTHER STATES!

 



Perhaps education became a very difficult or impossible thing to manage in the US. So, I found a school chain with 41 schools in New York City (Success Academy Schools) that started in 2006 in Harlem. They take only poor, inner city, mostly black children. Within three years they were 5th or BETTER in New York State math and reading tests, and today their schools score 94% or higher in all schools, in all subjects, PASSING EVEN PRIVATE SCHOOLS, and all children firmly believe what year they will be graduating from a university! I was wondering why, and I visited them. I saw a fantastic school system that any of our schools could learn a lot from. But no one wants to visit from our schools although we are failing to educate 97% of African American children, BUT WE GIVE THEM A DIPLOMA. You know, some people can be fooled with a diploma, saying that it is proof that your child is ready for the world. But the truth will come out with a vengeance when your mothers and fathers discover that their children are unable to learn even a simple job. That will happen by 2020, two years away. And our schools use POVERTY as the reason for poor performance?! WHAT IS HAPPENING TO US FOR THIS TO HAVE HAPPENED? By not getting educated well, we become poor. And by getting educated well, we leave poverty behind.

 

 

WHY is it that smart people could not solve the reading problem in more than 22 years? It is because they are NOT SMART. Or ... because someone with higher authority issued decisions that prevented the correction of this problem...OR THE TEACHERS WHEN THEY WERE TRAINED IN COLLEGE NEVER LEARNED HOW TO TEACH A GOOD TECHNIQUE TO TEACH CHILDREN HOW TO READ... OR BOARDS AND SUPERINTENDENTS EXPECT TEACHERS TO DO IT, BUT DO NOT MAKE SURE PERSONALY THAT IT IS DONE. Now THAT sounds like willful ignorance of an obligation that schools must have by the very nature of their work for which tax dollars are paid. Any other answer is impossible. Do we have laws to ensure mandating penalties in case of such violation THAT DUMBS DOWN CHILDREN? Why don't we investigate such events? Our children's education has been declining since 1970. More than 80% of our children who enter high school and graduate with a diploma, are not prepared to learn a job that would survive robotics. Among African American students, it is 97% of the children who are not ready. 97%!! WE THINK THAT THIS IS OUTRAGEOUS! ESPECIALY WHEN THE PRINCIPAL WITH THE WORST RESULTS IS PROMOTED TO HEAD ALL OF 89 SCHOOLS! Let me tell you that with such poor education we are facing an increasing emergency, and the education districts are taking it easy and cannot figure out how to teach our children to read well enough to survive? What do we have to do to wake up all people in public education management? We think that it is time to hold education management people in public education responsible for the poor performance as all of us are in any business organization.


So how could we learn faster? We searched the Internet for a solution. There were many tools available to teach reading. We looked them over and picked one. There are many. Click here and find out about it. Repeat the first video only until you understand it totally. At first, stop the video every time it presents something, make sure that you understand it, then continue. In fact our schools may be doing the wrong thing to learn accidentally. But their material is useful also. So watch how fast you can learn, and get much better grades if you stick with these methods exactly. This can be the most important thing you ever learned. If you do, you will WIN big time! And the school will win also.

 



"Learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change. And the most pressing task is TO TEACH PEOPLE HOW TO LEARN"

Peter Drucker, 1909-2005,
Father of 21st Century "Management By Objectives"

 

 

Imagine the education of any person from birth to end of life. We learn every hour of every day when awake through actions, observations, doing things, making things, thinking about things and figuring things out. We learn not just in schools where learning is directed, and not very well "directed" in public education. In the US, poverty is unusually high. US public schools are perhaps the biggest money-wasting machines per dollar. Most public schools appear to be wasteful, poorly managed organizations with their boring classrooms, and too many teachers who went into teaching because they found their originally selected majors too difficult. School districts are managed by an elected school board who have no idea about anything related to education as a voting majority. As a result, they just cost money and accomplish nothing to raise academic performance. Public schools solve a problem by throwing more money at it. What they do does not work. Just look at the ACT scores. They are bad. Money-solutions to problems did not and do not work. The public schools are competing for "education-time" against TV, Movies, Drugs, Entertainment, Sex and the "Friends" in the street, who are a lot more interesting and fun according to the children than the boring public school classrooms. Our public education system does not even recognize that. That has to change. CHILDREN ARE VERY CURIOUS. All these non-academic things compete with the public schools for the child's time to learn. Our political leadership does not even recognize this fact.

 

Income is generally based on the level of education. Our education declined since 1970 as many other nations passed us, although we have been one of the highest spenders per student in the world every single year. How can something be expensive and produce bad results? By not having a clue about how to do a better job and not having enough interest in doing a better job every year. Poor education is what contributed the most to poverty. We are about to become the country with the highest percentage of poverty, that was created by our poor public education. Not the other way around. Success with education is only possible with teachers who were top 25% performers at the university, who continued learning because they were interested in the subject, who get excited in the class room when they teach their subject, who are so enthusiastic about their job, that their students get excited and want to become experts in a field that they love, and have the full authority to administer zero tolerance for discipline issues to guard all children's right to a much better education than what they receive from the majority of public schools. A school is not a baby sitting service.

 

 

Unfortunately, we have a problem in Tennessee and many other states. More than 80% of those children who entered high school and graduated, are not prepared to learn a job that will survive robots and nanotechnology. WHY ARE WE GRADUATING THEM WHEN THEY ARE NOT PREPARED WELL ENOUGH BY THE SCHOOLS? Let's face it. Children who do not do well, are not enthusiastic about being in school. That's at least 80%. They would rather do something else. Because they are BORED. BUT THERE IS MORE.

 

 

Public schools, in addition to being boring, are pushing children to graduate fast with shortcuts galore. The state education departments dumb down the state tests with a method called Cut Scores so that the students produce higher grades with the school system telling the public with a straight face how great the children are doing. But more than 80% of the graduating children cannot communicate properly, cannot read, cannot do basic math graduating from high school WITH A DIPLOMA, have a bad attitude, can write only block letters, and cost the public in taxes about $200,000 per student for twelve years, 80% of whom will be replaced by robots - and THE ROBOTS already started. IT APPEARS THAT WE HAVE WASTED 80% OR $160,000 PER STUDENT AVERAGE, WITH ENORMOUS SOCIAL EXPENSES TO BE PAID DURING THEIR LIVES BECAUSE THEY WILL BE JOBLESS. High school graduates are feeding the workforce. Dumbed down graduates dumb down the work force, who then cannot do a high quality job, creating problems for industries, who then make less money and pay less taxes. So how on earth can we help those who will not be able to get a job, because of our poorly performing schools? WE HAVE A BIGGER PROBLEM. Among African American students not 80% but 97% are unprepared after graduation, and POVERTY is being blamed for the outrageously poor results. POVERTY!!! How could that happen I wondered. Let me tell you how. Since 1970 education spending skyrocketed, but education results went nowhere while many countries passed us. We dropped to 40th internationally. With that going on for about 50 years, did the public become smarter? Or were we dumbed down? We were dumbed down. Our earning power decreased among those less educated. That is why our poverty level is so unusually high. Our education system and those running it had something to do with it, all the way to the top. Such things do not happen accidentally. They have not been doing a good job so that most students become self supporting. They increase poverty instead with the bad results. We can at minimum say that our education system contributed to poverty by degrading the education system itself. Not only such a thing does not happen accidentally, but it has to be directed to do so. Perhaps education became a very difficult or impossible thing to manage in the US. We found a school chain with 41 schools in New York City (Success Academy Schools) that started in 2006 in Harlem. They take only poor, inner city, mostly black children. Within three years they were 5th or BETTER in New York State math and reading tests, and today their schools score 94% or higher in all schools, in all subjects, PASSING EVEN PRIVATE SCHOOLS, and all children firmly believe what year they will be graduating from a university. I was wondering why, and I visited them, and saw a fantastic school system that any of our schools could learn a lot from. But no one wants to visit from our schools although we are failing to educate 97% of African American children, BUT WE GIVE THEM A DIPLOMA. And we use POVERTY as one of several reasons for poor performance. WHAT IS HAPPENING TO US FOR THIS TO HAVE HAPPENED?

 

Why have schools? Because we need to educate our children to be successful. We need the schools' certification/diploma to get jobs in every single country. IN EVERY COUNTRY THE GOVERNMENT TAXES PAY FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION. A LOT OF MONEY, BECAUSE WE ARE ONE OF THE HIGHEST SPENDERS IN EDUCATION, BUT OUR RESULTS ARE ON THE BOTTOM OF THE INDUSTRIALIZED COUNTRIES. EMPLOYERS PAY THOSE TAXES, SO THAT EMPLOYERS DO NOT HAVE TO RAISE PRICES ON THEIR PRODUCTS IN ORDER TO TAKE OVER EDUCATION OF FUTURE EMPLOYEES. IF PUBLIC EDUCATION DECLINES ANY MORE, EMPLOYERS CANNOT HAVE A GOOD, WELL TRAINED WORK FORCE. IF THE POORLY PERFORMING PUBLIC EDUCATION DECLINES, SINCE THEY HAVE NOT BEEN ABLE TO SOLVE THEIR FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS, WE WOULD HAVE TO CREATE SOMETHING BETTER. IT WILL NOT BE ROCKET SCIENCE. WHAT WE HAVE NOW IS A FORMULA FOR TOTAL DESTRUCTION OF EMPLOYERS, JOBS, EVEN A NATION, BECAUSE LACK OF A COMPETITIVE WORK FORCE CAN DESTROY COMPANIES, INDUSTRIES, TAXES PAID, AND NATIONAL INCOME. That makes education as an entity an excellent control mechanism to control people OR ENTIRE NATIONS. It can make them or break them. This could result in good or bad outcomes. It can do many things for the entity that controls it. For example it can be used to dumb down the population so that they can be influenced - who will then vote very easily for the candidate that was sold to the public by the media to help the controlling entity with anything, most often enormous amounts of money made for the controlling entity. Or they could make sure that education produces employees who can match the best in knowledge in the top ten countries. In which situation are we? Not the good one. Welcome to a new very efficient method that can reduce any enemy nation to dust or just to a low enough power that the controlling entity wants. It would take several decades to accomplish such a thing. The only thing they need is the control of the money supply. Is there such an entity? How can one defeat such an enemy? It is possible to defeat them, but only by raising education of the public to the level of the ten best nations in education in the world. In other words, by reversing the cause of the damage. We dropped to 40th place as a nation in high school education. Did you notice that on children and adults? No party has done anything about it. Neither the republicans, nor the democrats. No governor or even president has done anything about it. We wonder why?

 



The major contributor to increasing poverty is declining knowledge delivered by a huge money-spending machine called Education System that does a terrible job. Who else will educate those children to survive in a tougher world? Not the schools we have in Tennessee and other states with very few exceptions. I fear the day when the population finds out that their money was taken, they were told that their children are doing well, and they cannot get a job because they cannot communicate well in English, cannot read and do basic math and had no help by the education system that ruined their future.

  • US Education is supported AND ENFORCED by law, BUT ITS QUALITY IS NOT ENSURED IN ANY STATE OR THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT BY LAW. WHY DIDN'T WE SOLVE THIS BIG PROBLEM IN MORE THAN FIVE DECADES?!

  • It is mandatory to run it by teachers with weakening university education, and certified by each state. WHY DON'T WE CERTIFY A COMMON QUALITY LEVEL BY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT? THE OLD SYSTEM IS NOT WORKING WELL ENOUGH.

  • Managers who have no idea about how TO MANAGE TO GOOD RESULTS are hired by elected school boards, whose majority also has no idea how to educate our children better, AND DOES NOT EVEN DISCUSS AT BOARD MEETINGS THE BAD EDUCATION THEY ARE PROVIDING WITH A DESIRE TO IMPROVE IT. But they are experts at driving our schools into the ground in almost all public schools, spending the most money per student in the world, but 80% who "graduate" are not prepared to do any job after they earn a diploma.

  • THE SCHOOLS GET PAID REGARDLESS OF THE RESULTS THEY CREATE. THEY DO A VERY BAD JOB, AND THEY GET PAID THE SAME.

  • There is a teacher certification system by any state that enforces exactly what we said, by people who are purposefully not educated completely to understand what needs to be done to increase test results. PERHAPS not purposefully. They need a job like anyone else to survive, and they believe that they are doing the right thing for the public. They are paid well, and are ensured every year that they are doing a good job. Would they tell anyone if they believed that they are doing a bad job? Of course not. But more than 80% of children who graduated cannot satisfy what employers need, and have a bad attitude about their entitlements to boot. THAT, I am afraid, goes back to teachers and parents. Schools do exist even for poor, inner city black kids, who turn them into winners. For example the Success Academy Schools in New York City do better than even private schools and do it with such poor children to boot. That, I believe, puts the blame on schools more than parents.

  • The money has been increasing rapidly for education and the knowledge the schools delivered is less and less judging from ACT and SAT scores and has been decreasing for fifty years now compared to 39 other countries.

  • But not a single governor, over 50 years since 1970 or about 500 of them in all states, stopped the spending increases, demanding a fix to and increasing of education results such that the ACT or SAT tests would show an increase, confirming the knowledge-increase in children. But that's not enough. If we think of education as all things that educate our children, then consider the effect of TV, Movies, Drugs, Entertainment and sex occupying a huge part of the day for children or adults, some of these delivering the wrong values, the wrong ambitions to children, and again, the classes are boring, most teachers are boring, the school is an unfriendly place in most cases for those children who are not doing well. Try it. We did sit in on 16 classes in science and mathematics. Political leadership does nothing about it in any of the states. There is not enough time left in the day for these poor children.

DO YOU THINK THAT ALL THIS IS ACCIDENTAL OR NOT TRUE? YES? INVESTIGATE IT THEN! BECAUSE IF IT IS TRUE, WE ARE GETTING DESTROYED SLOWLY BUT PURPOSEFULLY BY SOME UNIDENTIFIED GROUP. IF WE ARE INCORRECT, PROVE THAT WHAT WE FOUND BELOW IS NOT TRUE. AND SHOW THAT WE HAVE BEEN EDUCATING OUR CHILDREN AS WELL AS COUNTRIES LIKE FINLAND, SINGAPORE, JAPAN, THE TOP TEN IN THE WORLD! PLEASE!

EDUCATION HAS TO BE FOR: purposefully coordinated courses in the curriculum nationwide, decided by the best brains in the country, to provide an excellent foundation in our children for their future growth. Mathematics, the sciences, English communications and reinstatement of music and art on a higher level than before are vital for a fast changing world. Art and music are vital to the development and connection of both brain hemispheres for good decision making. The decision making majority of elected boards of 13,500 different school districts, with guaranteed funding and the local population's opinion controlling each of 13,500 school districts does not and cannot provide the best quality graduating students. JUST LOOK AT THE LAST 50 YEARS' RESULTS! The last 50 years show a deteriorating public education, same with teacher education. We dropped to the bottom of the industrialized countries by 2016, and we are not solving even the elementary problem of high school graduates having reading problems today. We wasted millions on consultants. We noticed that this problem has not changed since 1995. We cannot have successful education with reading problems, basic math problems, and many serious additional education issues we cover below that create more difficult lives today for the new generation. Teacher training also deteriorated during the last 50 years. We cannot remain as a good baby sitting service, without zero tolerance for discipline problems. Unfortunately this is where we are today with the exception of very few schools. Our schools cannot be all things to all people. Strategically this is the greatest vulnerability for the USA. High school graduates create the workforce for all industries, creating and servicing their products. They compete with international suppliers whose high schools deliver much better educated graduates. We are not acting on this problem such, that the ACT and SAT test results show improvement. And that is the proof of the poor quality of our children's public education.

 

THE PERFORMANCE OF AN EDUCATION DISTRICT CANNOT EXCEED THE QUALITY AND TRAINING OF THE TEACHERS IN THAT EDUCATION DISTRICT. That automatically means that a few students may get to learn the subject as well as the teacher knows it, but the great majority will not. So the average knowledge of a subject by a class of students will always be significantly below the teachers knowledge of the subject. We found many sources that indicate that teacher knowledge of subjects, especially in science and math has declined, and very significantly declined compared to the teachers of several dozen nations. It is a fact that with such a trend the population's knowledge has declined over fifty years, but the spending per student increased aggressively. This is confirmed in a CATO INSTITUDE study that we are referencing further down. Education is managed in all areas by each of 13,500 school districts independently, by an elected board who are not well informed about the competitiveness of education, without the management and financial knowhow that would be required and without a uniform, internationally competitive curriculum, with standards and coverage of each subject specified, and verified.

Each of the 13,500 school districts solicit opinions and ideas from the local people for what they should accomplish during the coming school year, instead of from the best experts on the subjects and understanding of what competing international school systems are accomplishing. Such decisions produce bad results if each school district is doing its own thing, and creates significant duplication in manpower at high expense. We have kept arguing very foolishly that the best planning will come from the local public. Even after 50 years of failing results, we still keep doing the same thing. As the public is getting dumbed down, very obviously the education system also get's dumbed down. Dumbing down the immediately following generation makes our education system self-destructive, because with such a method it can only go down. That is why we have poor results.

Superintendents who don't know what to do, get $150,000-400,000 PER YEAR and elected boards also get paid, whose voting majority has no idea about where their school district stands in performance relative the top ten percent of countries in education. The leading education systems in the world also know that teaching is a complex profession that requires specific skills and a specific personality in making everything interesting for the students so that they want to learn more about the subject. It requires a Master's degree in the subject they teach, and the teacher candidate has to be very intelligent, not lower than being in the top ten percent of his/her Master's program. A teacher candidate needs to have genuine interest in the well being of the students, caring about the future of all students, but he/she must be excellent at handling discipline issues well. Unfortunately, our teacher training programs at universities are very weak, with few exceptions. Sadly, an Education Major at universities is a favorite choice of those who cannot handle or are unwilling to work hard for their originally selected major. For this reason we are not getting the best students into teaching. We are not correcting the performance issues and we just keep dropping lower and lower each year. And that supports the first statement in this paragraph. The high performance of other countries compared to us on education, is a clear indicator of the fact that they are producing better educated children because their teachers have a master's degree in the subject that they teach, and their teachers come from the top ten percent of the master's programs. Our teachers come from the bottom 30% of their General Education programs, with very few exceptions, without enough education about the specific subject that they teach.



We are using Tennessee as an example. A few US states are worse. Many are a little better but not competitive enough internationally. Why? Because new technologies appear more and more frequently. As a result low level jobs also disappear. More new jobs appear but they require more education/knowledge from the workers. The international high performers keep increasing the knowledge from pre-school to end of high school, so that all their students enter the work force much better educated than our children, along with continuing education, such that the knowledge gap resulting from technological changes can be closed much faster. There are high schools like that in the US, but they are rare and they are charter or magnet schools, which are also public schools. Our national tax income depends on the sales of all US corporations, in all industries worldwide. That in turn depends on the knowledge of our work force, which depends on how well our high schools prepared their graduates.

 

 

The reliable key indicators of what our children learned from grade one to twelve are the ACT or SAT scores at the end of high school. As of 2018 there has been no improvement of any significance in ACT and SAT scores but 39 nations did a better job than we did and passed us. Job requirements have been increasing and will continue to increase. Unless we improve public education significantly, our children will be unemployable.

 

 

Teachers' knowledge created by their personal interests and the training received at a university is the limit in what students may be able to learn. It appears from the enclosed references that the teacher training programs became very weak in the USA. By being one of the easiest courses of study, when a chosen major for college students becomes too hard, they switch to teaching. A Teaching Major has become a course of study that attracts mostly low performing students in every state. This in turn contributes to producing worse students than our international competitors. We are using old books in the high school classrooms that are very expensive. We are also one of the highest spenders per student in the world, delivering the worst results in the industrialized countries. The Internet has been full of far superior educational materials for more than a decade, like the presentations of the best teachers and professors in the USA about any subject, and fantastic tutorials also about any subject, all at a very low price or free. But teachers are not interested in that either. These tools along with robotics could replace them. I saw assistant teacher robots in Japanese classrooms during the past three years, the children really liked them. We are still struggling with poorly trained teachers, very expensive education, superintendents who know only how to decrease performance as if we were participating in a Race To The Bottom. We have no objectives in our schools so that our children's education improves. We do not seem to have smart people in education management who could modernize K-12 education with much better results at a lower expense. USA Public education fell to 40th place in the world in mathematics of 15 year olds in 2016 (OECD PISA Test). This was a devastating drop.

 



Having researched public education in every US state and several of the leading nations, the problems we are describing are very similar in all US states, a few worse than Tennessee, and others a little better. Having sat in on sixteen different high school classes in mathematics and science, we are sorry to say that all sixteen teachers had no enthusiasm for the subject, some had to look in the textbook to answer student questions. We were surprised to find that virtually all teaching majors at the university level are learning only a small amount of material in 5-6 subjects, whereas those internationals who perform well and passed us, are hiring teacher-candidates who are in the top ten percent of Master's programs in the single subject for which the schools need a teacher. Only after the candidate is tested for and is a good psychological match for teaching, do they get job offers. In the US we use a couple of "test" presentations per candidate, whose results are not suitable to be predictive of success in teaching. Also in the US, too many university students change their major to teaching if their originally selected major is too hard. To our surprise we found many articles that confirmed our feelings in this area: if we want our schools to improve, teacher training must improve significantly and teacher candidates need to be matched psychologically to the profession, because of its importance.

 



 

 

Look at the percentage of those students who are NOT A.C.T. READY in the graduating classes of Knox County, Tennessee and the state itself. Of those who entered high school, MORE THAN 80% GRADUATE NOT READY! If you ask the schools about what these high percentages mean, they will tell you as if it was perfectly all right that "not all children are college material" as justification for bad performance. We will explain here where the truth lies. Then if we look at a school in NYC called Success Academy Schools, who take in only poor, inner city African American children, who score between 94% and 99%, AND OUR BOTTOM TWO HIGH SCHOOLS ARE SCORING ONLY 4% TO 6%, THEN THE CHILDREN ARE NOT THE PROBLEM, BUT THE SCHOOL DISTRICT MANAGEMENT AND THE STATE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION ARE. WHY DO WE KEEP PEOPLE WHO ARE SO INCOMPETENT? Our schools are not doing well, because the elected board, the superintendent, the principals and teachers ARE NOT DOING WELL. You have seen their students at cash registers as long as 30 years ago. They could not make change. Also 25 years ago there were many complains about our students not being able to read. We responded by spending millions on consultants. We eliminated learning script from the curriculum, although script is much faster than writing block letters. They still cannot read 25+ years later. In 25 years the problem was not solved, but a lot of money was spent on "experts". Let us explain something. Whose problem is it that they cannot read? The parents? The students? No, it is the school's responsibility, and therefore it is the school's fault. This is a basic problem-solving method that is used even in very sophisticated large companies. To find out how anything is done very well, visit the organization that can do it very well. To improve reading, find out what the very best schools are, visit the best, and watch how they teach reading. The teachers there engage the student's imagination by reading and they teach them gradually how they, the student, could read and "experience" a good book through imagination. Do the same in a second excellent school, and you will know more than any consultant.

Note: fonokalatt JR/17.8-16.9 c 93% NR

 

 

"NOT ALL CHILDREN ARE COLLEGE MATERIAL!" Or so teachers and education management people will tell you from your school district. This statement is incorrect. "We could not do a good enough job to get our students interested and teach them well enough" is much closer to the truth. Most parents work today to make ends meet. Schools blame parents as the most important reason for the child's poor performance. I heard the same opinion from professional people who make more than $150K/year. They are both wrong. About 110 years ago, we had people who made buggies in the horse and buggy days and most worked jobs in agriculture. If you Google "8th grade test from 1895", you would find that today's high school graduates could have trouble with it and most could not pass it. If you researched it, you might find that the education children received was more than today's eight graders, but the demand for math, science and communications knowledge required for the jobs was much lower than for today's jobs. The knowledge required for job performance has been growing much faster today than in 1895. Today 80-85% of students in a graduating class get a diploma, but only 25% of the 80%, OR 20% would know enough to be hired for the low end jobs. Less than one percent of the American high schools do as good a job as all students are doing in the high schools of the ten countries with the best education systems in the world. Today's high school graduates must know much more than those 100+ years ago, BUT THEY KNOW FAR LESS THAN WHAT IS NEEDED BY EMPLOYERS INSTEAD. WE TEACH THEM LESS, WHEN EMPLOYERS NEED MORE. Therefore the comment to parents that "Not all children are college material" is a pitiful self-serving excuse for the public schools themselves, that we can clearly see from what we already presented about teacher training being far below what is needed and the poor student performance shown in the above chart. The training that teachers get in the countries that academically passed us is far better than ours. In addition, US teachers are not treated as well and have much more teaching and non-teaching demand on their time than the teachers of the high performing countries. The state education departments in the US appear to dumb down the state tests significantly to generate higher test scores to look better, when the test-creating organization prepared such tests to agree with the state curriculum's requirements. The state education departments do this with something called CUT SCORES, where they drop the passing grade of a subject test from the usual 60%, to 30% or lower, which will raise the test scores, but will also lower the students' knowledge significantly. Unfortunately the student getting a B or Master grade in high school means nothing when trying to get a job. Employers already know how bad our K-12 education is, so they will test the candidate's knowledge. Today the high school graduates are not at a level that employers need. More about this below.

 

The cardinal rule in managing any task to success is "IF YOU FAIL TO PLAN PROPERLY, YOU ARE PLANNING TO FAIL."

Click here for a brief introduction to management, and what operating plans must include.

 

 

WHAT IS (A.C.T.) READINESS?

 


80-90% OF THOSE CHILDREN WHO ENTERED HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATE WITH A DIPLOMA. BUT ONLY 20-25% OF THOSE GRADUATING ARE PREPARED TO LEARN THE SIMPLEST JOBS AFTER HIGH SCHOOL. THIS IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH. READINESS FOR THE SIMPLEST JOBS NEEDS TO RISE TO 80% MINIMUM FROM THE 20-25% WE HAVE CURRENTLY.

 





"WHAT DOES IT MEAN IF A CHILD GRADUATES FROM HIGH SCHOOL NOT ACT READY?" That is what we show in the chart. A lot of schools will explain to you what ACT Readiness means, and how it compares to actual PREPARATION required of a high school graduate considering future developments. Most opinions one hears from the school system are PARTIALLY correct. No one could give us a consistent definition within the school district from board members to teachers and management. We decided to have ACT explain it. ACT defines college and career readiness as "The acquisition of the knowledge and skills a student needs to enroll in and succeed in credit bearing first-year courses at a postsecondary institution (such as an accredited two or four-year college, vocational school, or technical school) without the need for remediation." ACT bases the Readiness on four benchmark subject scores. It is based on surveys ACT did a few years before. But the high school graduate has to be Ready for the future, and that makes ACT Readiness too low.

  • How can we expect our children to learn if their reading skills are poor? It would make learning very difficult. How is it possible that we knew about the reading problem's existence 22 years ago, spent a lot of money on consultants to solve the problem, and today, 22 years later the reading problem is unsolved.

  • How could such a lasting problem be tolerated by the state Education Departments and 3-6 governors? I can tell you how. By having policies/goals that places emphasis on 90% graduating every year, instead of having an ACT score objective that is 10% higher than the last one and no emphasis on 90% graduating. Elected boards and superintendents are not well enough trained to monitor and ensure that we do not fall behind on any subject. There is no law or policy to enforce such a thing. The state education department must do that, with serious impact on the school district management if any subject slips.


  • We need to compare in public our record to the best in the world, and not to one of the worst in our state and country. We must have much better quality control comparing ourselves to the top ten countries in education. If we want to improve, we must compare ourselves in public, to the best in the world.


  • We need to prepare our students much better. Consider the new things that will impact our children's FUTURE employability. By the way, that is what strategic planning is. We would like to add to ACT's definition that many engineering and science programs at our colleges and universities require 26-27 ACT score in mathematics as a prerequisite, and that is a higher requirement than what the ACT Readiness benchmark requires in mathematics. As a result, some of those who are ACT Ready may not qualify to train for many better paying jobs unless their ACT mathematics score is high enough.


  • Coming new technologies, such as nanotechnology, will require a lot more math, science, reading, writing, communication knowledge in high school graduates, and the increase in robotics taking low end jobs like those offered in the fast food and supermarket industries today will remove the low end jobs that required less knowledge from high school graduates. Those high school graduates who will not be ACT Ready will be replaced by robotics by 2023 the latest. By that time robotics have also started replacing a significant portion of those who have a two or four-year college degree that represents a vocation that has been targeted by robotics. In future years it will be vitally important for children to study hard and will have to study for the rest of their lives. What kind of jobs will be the most immune to robotics? Graduate level upper mathematics, science, and economics.


  • The chart above shows less than the truth. ITS ESTIMATE OF READINESS OF A STUDENT FOR THE FUTURE UPON GRADUATION DOES NOT CONSIDER SEVERAL OTHER FACTORS THAT WILL IMPACT THE EMPLOYMENT OF NOT JUST THOSE NOT ACT READY, BUT MANY OTHER ADDITIONAL STUDENTS WHOSE ACADEMIC KNOWLEDGE IS MUCH LOWER THAN THE INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION, AND THAT WILL MAKE ANY EFFORT TO UPGRADE THEIR KNOWLEDGE FOR A JOB IN NANOTECHNOLOGY IMPOSSIBLE AS THEY ARE TODAY. When 80% of our graduating children are not educated well enough to be employable for more than minimum wage or to go on to more schooling for a better job, that's four out of five people who will be replaced by robots by 2022-2025 THE LATEST! Yet I heard from a mayoral candidate recently, that we have a great school system that does a good job for all, but ACT, as a company is awful, they care only about profits and do not care about our children! And he has children. I ASK YOU, LOOKING AT THE RESULTS, DO YOU BELIEVE THAT OUR EDUCATION SYSTEM CARES ABOUT OUR CHILDREN?! Unfortunately some people just do not understand the importance of education well enough to tell the difference between fact and fiction. In a politically managed system like public education is, you get ahead not because one actually did an excellent job. You get ahead if you have a friend or two among higher ups. Ultimately the governor of a state is responsible for tolerating such a poor system, instead of hiring the right people to fix it. It is costing a fortune to tax payers, and it will cost even more when not only 4 out of 5 children become a social problem for life, but practically ALL OF OUR CHILDREN.

 

 

Let's look at the last five years' ACT Readiness or the percentage of the graduating classes who are not ACT Ready in the individual high schools in Knox County, Tennessee below. NOTE THE VERY HIGH PERCENTAGE, 80% OR HIGHER, REPRESENTING GRADUATING STUDENTS WHO EARNED A DIPLOMA, BUT ARE NOT PREPARED TO LEARN A JOB FROM NOW ON. WE SPEND IN THIS SCHOOL DISTRICT MORE THAN HALF BILLION DOLLARS PER YEAR, AND WE GET NOTHING FOR 80% OF THE HALF BILLION WE SPEND IN THE KNOX COUNTY SCHOOL DISTRICT IN TENNESSEE. POLITICAL MANAGEMENT DOES NOT ACCOMPLISH ANYTHING IMPORTANT. AND WE ARE STUPID ENOUGH TO PAY FOR IT. HOW COULD ANY GOVERNOR ALLOW SUCH A THING? THEY ARE POLITICIANS. MOST POLITICIANS PROMISE A LOT AND DO NOT DELIVER. THEY TELL THE PUBLIC HOW GREAT OUR EDUCATION SYSTEM IS. NOT TRUE. SOME PEOPLE TALK A LOT, PROMISE AND SPEND AN ENORMOUS AMOUNT OF THE PEOPLE'S MONEY WITHOUT GOOD RESULTS. OTHERS LEARN A LOT THROUGH ALL LIFE AND ACCOMLISH THINGS AND DO NOT RUIN THE LIFE OF 80% OF THE NEW GENERATION, TELL THE TRUTH, AND IF THINGS ARE NOT GOING WELL, THEY FIX IT. THEY ARE VERY DIFFERENT THAN MOST POLITICIANS. The two lowest performing high schools in the example county in Tennessee are funded with more than twice as much money per student than the higher performing schools. Did the more than double spending help those two high schools? It did not, for more than ten years now. This was a common problem with African American and Hispanic children. Our schools' performance was and is poor. Our best high school's graduating class is only 50% ACT Ready. I was wondering if a school existed with African American inner city children that could perform as well OR BETTER. We found one in New York, Success Academy Schools (41 of them) who produce TOP 95-99% results with poor inner city children. They pass even most private schools. They figured out how to do an exceptional job. We have not found any political leader or school district manager who visited them to learn. We did. SO WE KNOW THAT EXCELLENCE AND SUCCESS IS POSSIBLE FOR ANY STUDENT OF ANY COLOR! BUT OUR POLITICAL AND EDUCATION LEADERS PREFER TO DO NOTHING TO IMPROVE. SO, WITH THE OLD, NOTHING WILL IMPROVE. WE HAVE TO FIND A DIFFERENT SOLUTION OR PERISH AS A NATION.

 

 

 

 

The ACT Readiness percentage tracks the ACT score. The higher the average consolidated ACT score, the higher the percentage of students who are ACT Ready. Let's see how the ACT scores have been progressing over a fourteen-year period per high school in the chart below. The maximum ACT score is 36. The score at ACT 15 means that the child finished high school with insufficient knowledge to get a job. At an average ACT score of 22 in a group of students indicates that only about a quarter of them will be ready to learn a job. At an average ACT score of 26 in a group of students, 80% of them will be prepared to be trained for a job. The top international performers are scoring the equivalent above ACT 30 average. In 2017, the traditionally best Farragut high school in Knox County, Tennessee, graduated with a diploma 56% of its students not ACT Ready or prepared to learn a job. The worst high school, Austin East graduated with a diploma 95% of its students not prepared to learn any job.

 

 

The performance just kept sinking down slowly, like a large leaking balloon, while positive news is fed to the public through the media - as if it was professionally managed to do exactly that. This is significant because it is well known as a technique to make sure that a purposeful decline performed this way, is not noticed by the public. A very important part of such a decline management is to ensure that the governors do announce programs to enhance public education, but such programs must have an ACT or SAT score objective that is ten percent higher than the last score actually achieved, and it must be supported by an operating plan with monthly objectives for all supervisory personnel with all such objectives supporting the annual ACT or SAT objective.

 

 



The Cato Institute did a study about how American education progressed since 1970. Spending skyrocketed. So did hiring, but less so. The test results went nowhere. There wasn't a single state, whose governor stood up, stopped the spending increases, halting them until his/her department of education made changes in the school districts such that their SAT or ACT scores started increasing and kept on increasing. Many other countries changed their education system for the better and started passing us since 1970.

 




Click here to read the article.

 

We graduate only 26% (ACT Readiness) of 3.6 million high school graduates nationally who are prepared to learn a job. But with African American students, the readiness upon graduation is only 3-6%. We did find a charter school system in New York, Success Academy Schools (read about them here), that produces TOP ONE-TO-SIX PERCENT RESULTS WITH POOR, INNER CITY, AFRICAN AMERICAN CHILDREN. They are passing even most private schools! They made their successful curriculum and teaching methodologies available free on all subjects to anyone from their website. On the Internet one can find negative satisfaction surveys from parents and employees who are no longer associated with this school system. Some of these surveys are not the best because this school system has zero tolerance for discipline problems and demands excellence in performance as well as continuing education from teachers. Some teachers are not comfortable with that. It is their performance, it is what they achieve with poor inner city minorities that would make them an outstanding role model. Poorly performing, politically managed organizations like public school districts, do not appear to be interested in improving teacher performance and student discipline. Our African American children have been performing in the bottom 3-6% which is absolutely shameful. That is what we appear to have in the great majority of school districts in Tennessee and in many other states in the USA. However, the Success Academy Schools example shows that far better results are possible for ALL CHILDREN, and not what we have been experiencing for decades.

 

 

We are creating a huge "powder keg" because our political leaders are too afraid to change our education system and modernize it in order to bring about far better results from all children. IN OTHER WORDS, THEY DO NOT HAVE ANY IDEA ABOUT WHAT TO DO TO INCREASE ACT OR SAT PERFORMANCE. Without changing for the better, the "powder keg" we created will explode.

 

 

As we ponder this situation, are the results that we see in the charts what our leaders want? They know that things are not working well. They know that these are bad results. But they do not seem to have good advisors about education and management. They have not solved the problem FOR MANY DECADES, such, that education's key indicators would increase (the ACT or SAT scores representing the level of student knowledge). Sadly, you can write to governors six times about specific issues that are kept from the public. You are trying to help them, and no one answers. That is what happened to us also. But they "paint" a situation to the public that is good, but not true. And it is the public that pays for it all twice, because when their poorly educated children cannot get a job any more, the burden will be on the public to PAY AGAIN. THIS IS NOT RIGHT. WE HAVE TO STAND UP AND DO SOMETHING ABOUT FIXING TEACHING PROGRAMS IN OUR UNIVERSITIES, AND ENSURE THE PROPER WAY OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS ARE MANAGED.

 

 

Robots (see examples) already started taking over the fast food industry in 2017. Supermarkets are next. Those alone represent millions of jobs. It is only a start. The US military is making huge investments in its Air Force, Space Force (started in 1983), Army, Navy and Navy Space Force (started in 1983) to replace thousands of human soldiers in most positions with robotic soldiers. Artificial Intelligence passed average human levels in 2015 and it is improving faster than human intelligence in large part because of the decline in our public high schools' performance. Robotics will replace our high school graduates who are not ACT Ready by 2023 and will continue replacing higher educated people unless we, people, get better educated than the robots.

 




"But DAD!!! High school is too much work! I want to become a dentist, like Bill's father. Or at least a dental technician!"



"OK Johnny! I have an idea. You could become a dental student in Mosul, Afghanistan. It will cost you only five goats per year!"

Although the great majority of USA high schools declined compared to the top 40 nations in the world, there are some outstanding high schools in the USA, whose graduates will be successful. School districts that are not doing well could learn the most valuable lessons by visiting them, learning from them, to find out how they are accomplishing their fabulous results. Low performers are low performers because they are generally too busy focusing on the wrong objective, like getting 90% of students to graduate, but without focusing on good academic performance that happens to be more important. They will not visit top performers domestically or internationally to learn. To read about them, "click here for the top 20 high schools in the USA". They have been achieving top 5% results with poor, inner city, African American children, who generally perform in the bottom 5%. This is a fabulous result, and we would certainly recommend them for a visit.


 


HOW FAST IS TECHNOLOGY PROGRESSING?

 

Let us get an idea about how fast technology is developing because that will have a big impact on the changes we will experience in education. Technology changes always eliminate low end jobs, and create new, better paying jobs that require more education. Nanotechnology, that we will start seeing in 2021 will have a much brother impact. It will eliminate a much broader range of jobs. The only way to survive that is by ensuring that children learn much more in both mathematics and the various sciences in order to reduce the amount of time that would be needed to get the additional education needed for the new jobs. Parents could assist by getting directly from the Learning Company lectures from the best professors so that the child will learn more than what the high schools offer in mathematics and the sciences. How fast is hardware technology moving? Today's $1000 notebook computer can do about the same number of computations as a mouse brain (about 10 to the 10th power calculations per second). By 2025-2030, the $1000 computer will be much smaller with as much power as the average human brain (has about 100 billion neurons, doing 10 to the 15th power calculations per second). By 2045-2055 the $1000 computer system will be very tiny, less than one cubic inch with all input and output devices, and will be able to do as many computations as ALL HUMAN BRAINS COMBINED IN THE WORLD. It will do about 10 to the 25th power calculations per second. Hardware does nothing by itself. There are two huge software modules going along with the hardware. Artificial Intelligence (AI) passed average human intelligence in 2015 and it is growing faster. Second software module is the application software that actually does a specific job. Reference: Ray Kurtzweil PhD, Director of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Development, Google.

 

Nanotechnology is a new science and manufacturing technology that can create things with 1 to 100 nanometer precision. This is atomic and molecular precision. One nanometer is one billionth of a meter (one meter is about 3 feet). The diameter of a hair is about 75,000 nanometer or nm. Starting in 2021 the latest, with nanotechnology we will be able to create anything, with 1 to 100 nanometer thick atomic layers at a time, eliminating assembly expenses, and reduce manufacturing expenses as much as 80%. Nanotechnology will have a very broad impact on virtually everything, it will revolutionize robotics and computer technology, it will change the manufacturing and service industries, it will eliminate more jobs than any other prior technology has done, but as usual it will require more education. We will be able to build robots that are self replicating, can fly, can be inhaled to do great things or bad things, or much more powerful computers or machines. By 2021, robotics already replaced almost all low end jobs. This development does not leave us with much time to improve our K-12 education. What that means in terms of ACT measurement is that if we are not producing high school graduates with an average consolidated ACT score of 24 by 2021, 80-90% of our high school graduates will be unemployable.

 

 


PLEASE LOOK AT THE ABOVE CHART. WE ARE WRITING THIS IN 2017. THERE IS NO POSSIBILITY OF MORE THAN ONE PERCENT OF HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATES WHO CAN HOPE FOR ANY JOB TRAINING AND EMPLOYMENT BEYOND 2025 UNLESS OUR PRIMARY AND SECONDARY SCHOOLS CHANGE AND UPGRADE TO A MUCH HIGHER CURRICULUM AND PERFORMANCE, DELIVERING 80% ACT READINESS (ACT 26), FROM THE CURRENT 17-30% ACT READINESS.



Looking at the above chart, the two major components that define robotics are computational power in the above graph, and the quality and speed of artificial intelligence, that already passed average human intelligence in 2015. It is also improving faster than human intelligence. The processors' solid state circuits also diminish in size about 50% every three years. But the largest increase in speed and size reduction we will see through nanotechnology within less than ten years, around 2025. Nanotechnology will be able to build anything with very thin layers that are one atom or molecule wide. For robotics that means that some robots are so small that one will not even see them with the human eye. Nanotechnology will bring many new very interesting jobs because it will influence what all industries are doing, but the education required for creating and working with them will have to be a PhD in most cases, and a Master's degree in a related field plus robotics. EDUCATION FOR OUR CHILDREN WOULD HAVE TO BE CHANGED SIGNIFICANTLY FOR THEM TO BE EMPLOYABLE. THE HIGH PERFORMING INTERNATIONALS IN EDUCATION HAVE ALREADY STARTED MAKING THE NECESSARY CHANGES IN ANTICIPATION OF FUTURE NEEDS.

 



WHY IS PUBLIC SCHOOL PERFORMANCE BAD?
CONCLUSIONS:



 

 

We live in a world where we need to understand that competition is very important and competition decides what and who survives, and what and who fails. Two concept are important to consider here. One is that our schools produce a product, called the student. All schools in the world produce a product called the student. The student-product is completed when he/she graduates from high school. Who are the customers for such products? Those who would accept them for further learning, but the most important customers for them are the employers who pay them for the knowledge that the customers need. Some schools in the world produce excellent student-products who know what most potential employer-customers need, and there are those schools that mostly produce student-products who do not know enough of what the customer-employers need. That is the exact situation that we have in the USA. That is why our high school graduates dropped to 40th place in the world.

Our employers in companies and industries compete with their products and services against similar products and services everywhere in the world. We see many products in the USA that were designed and made by foreign companies. There was a time about 40 years ago and before, when you saw people buying mostly USA products everywhere, in every country. I travelled every year to more than 65 countries then, and personally saw this everywhere. The quality and competitive pricing of products depend on the work force of a company in all industries, and they design, make, and test all products and produce all services in every country. The quality of the work force depends on the quality of high school graduates everywhere. THE DECLINING QUALITY OF AMERICAN HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATES WERE THE CAUSE OF US LOSING ENTIRE INDUSTRIES TO FOREIGN COMPETITORS, WEAKENING OUR NATION. IT IS FOR THIS REASON THAT WE MUST CORRECT OUR WEAK PRIMARY AND SECONDARY SCHOOLS URGENTLY. NEITHER REPUBLICAN NOR DEMOCRATE LEADERSHIP DID SO TO DATE.



  • Control of education is delegated to 13,500 school district elected boards who do not understand what needs to be done to be effective. They do not understand where we should be vs. where we are, do not know how to set the required objectives for growth, do not have a school district operating plan to achieve the objective if one existed. There is too much variation in decisions from school district to school district. That makes it impossible for education to succeed. In fact, such a structure results in progressive failure year after year, and the dumbing down of the population. BRILLIANT method to kill the education of 80-90% of the US public slowly so that the public does not notice it, with excellent application of public psychology manipulation and dumbing down the public about 40% over 50 years, but dumbing down the future generations at twice that rate. Unfortunately, this will destroy the USA unless we change our schools.


  • State Education Departments do not provide appropriate guide lines for the objectives, operating plans, management guidelines, thereby actively contributing to failure. They dumb down the state test by lowering the failure points in tests to pass and graduate children with less knowledge who otherwise would be failures. They also misinform the public about how the children are doing using the dumbed down state test results. "BRILLIANT" contributing factor to kill the education of 80-90% of the US public slowly so that the public does not notice it, with excellent application of public psychology manipulation.


  • US teachers are one of the most poorly trained in the world, and education management did not have management training that was good enough to teach them about how to elevate the students to improve year-to-year. Most teachers subject knowledge is weak and that is the maximum boundary that limits how much the children will learn maximum.


  • School district central management organizations are generally 8-10 times normal size, "eating up many millions of dollars" that could be better used by principals to improve the poor results. BRILLIANT contributing factor to kill the education of 80-90% of the US public slowly so that the public does not notice it, with excellent application of public psychology manipulation and dumbing down the public about 40% over 50 years, but dumbing down the future generations at twice that rate. Absolutely brilliant. Unfortunately, this rate is excessive by a factor of 3 and will destroy the USA.


  • There is no interest in visiting higher performing schools and school systems, although we are far behind them. There is no interest in continuing education in the subjects teachers teach, in teaching methodologies, and in learning techniques, yet they all improve every year. BRILLIANT contributing factor to kill the education of 80-90% of the US public slowly so that the public does not notice it, with excellent application of public psychology manipulation and dumbing down the public about 40% over 50 years, but dumbing down the future generations at twice that rate. Absolutely brilliant. Unfortunately, this rate is excessive by a factor of 3 and will destroy the USA.


  • Student discipline issues are handled very weakly, which cuts significantly into the teachers' work. BRILLIANT contributing factor to kill the education of 80-90% of the US public slowly so that the public does not notice it, with excellent application of public psychology manipulation and dumbing down the public about 40% over 50 years, but dumbing down the future generations at twice that rate. Absolutely brilliant. Unfortunately, this rate is excessive by a factor of 3 and will destroy the USA.


  • Superior teaching tools, tutorials by the best people, and the subject presentations by the best teachers and professors are available on the Internet, but not used. BRILLIANT contributing factor to kill the education of 80-90% of the US public slowly so that the public does not notice it, with excellent application of public psychology manipulation and dumbing down the public about 40% over 50 years, but dumbing down the future generations at twice that rate. Absolutely brilliant. Unfortunately, this rate is excessive by a factor of 3 and will destroy the USA.


  • A first class major $35+ billion business owner and two sons interviewed a superintendent candidate who presented himself well, but has only minor management experience for the job of managing a troubled school district with 86 schools and about 8,500 employees, a huge management task. This candidate was teaching three different subject for a total of one year in an elementary school, managed food service for some years, managed school security, managed accounting for the Boston school district but his resume stated that he was "Operations Manager" at the Boston school district, implying in his resume that he was responsible for the performance of the schools which was not the case. The job this candidate had in Boston was "eliminated" by the lady who was the Boston superintendent at the time. All such employees in Boston who managed multiple schools had the title of "Assistant Superintendent" His maximum management span was 100 employees. The job pattern he had is not an indicator of successful career direction or acceptable management training and experience for the opportunity with our school system. A candidate with his experience cannot do well jumping to a job managing 86 schools with 8,500 employees and he will fail and did fail. It is not possible that this highly experienced business family did not know in advance that this candidate lacked the experience necessary to succeed. Yet they sent a letter to the school board recommending this candidate to be well qualified for managing the large school district. The board hired the candidate with one of the top 10 highest salaries for about 13,500 superintendents in the USA. It is not possible that the business owner and sons believed that this candidate can succeed. It is high probability that they were "leveraged" or "convinced" to recommend such a candidate by some major group with substantial influence to convince even the president of a country to make decisions that will progressively destroy the quality of education.


    •
  • This has been going on for many decades. A purposeful deterioration of our education since 1970, although we were the biggest spender per student in the world, and dropped to 40th place as a country by 2016, was cleverly covered by an education PR program nationwide that has been feeding the people a false story saying the "We are doing well, but there is room to grow". During the last 50 years we dumbed the public down significantly, by weakening the state tests, the curriculum, lack of guidance for elected school boards, mismanaging education by handing decision making to the inexperienced elected school boards, at the highest expense per student in the world to the public whose money has been paying for it all. And all this has been done by the state education departments.

    The above points in total represent brilliant strategy to destroy the us economy and the country from within by weakening the workforce, thereby weakening the products and services of all industries against foreign products, as well as population reduction by dumbing down the new generations more and more. Nanotechnology will be instrumental in this entire area, and it started already with high altitude distribution of boron/aluminum products to reduce "global warming" but the effect on people's health is problematic. Injection of an oblong microchip has started in our military on a large scale. It can serve as a locator to find individuals, it shows vitals of individuals, and it can be directed selectively to change the vitals of the person, whereever they are located.

    Those objectives fit only one group that we shall leave nameless. The current result is approximately 85% graduating of those who entered high schools, and only 20-26% of those who get a diploma are minimally prepared after graduation for job training or further learning. The above findings are common in all states. There are more supporting data for the same conclusion, but the above are sufficient.

    Please look at the picture above, then look at the sequence of pictures following it. It should mean something to you.

    ACTIONS TO IMPROVE PUBLIC EDUCATION

    "The truth shall make you free"
    But first, it may make you very angry.

    Very important areas require changes to increase our schools' performance.


    Mathematics in art: Vasarely geometric design.

    If a paragraph below starts with the word "IMPORTANT: means that it is important for implementation.***EXTREMELY IMPORTANT: MEANS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT FOR ANY DEGREE OF SUCCESS. Execution of such paragraphs is vital for turning around the education system and saving a very large percentage of children and grandchildren.


    WHAT COULD BE DONE TO IMPROVE OUR A.C.T. SCORES TO ACHIEVE AN AVERAGE CONSOLIDATED SCORE OF 26, IN ORDER TO MOVE THE A.C.T. READINESS PERCENTAGE OF OUR CHILDREN TO 80% FROM THE CURRENT 15-35% PER SCHOOL DISTRICT?

    ***EXTREMELY IMPORTANT: If a school district produced poor results for a prolonged period, such as five years or more, they do not have the skill set and the knowhow to improve without a formal management method in each of their schools and in their central management.

    • We all have to BELIEVE and enforce that schools are NOT for baby sitting, but they are for serious learning. That means not tolerating any behavior that interferes with the schools' work and/or damages school property, with a penalty that will discourage anyone from even thinking about such offensive deeds.


    • Reading is very poor, all the way through high school graduation, and has been for two decades in Tennessee and other states. Reading is so important for learning that after ignoring it for 20 years, it must be corrected with excellent results, and tough penalties if not not achieved. If this is not achieved in one year, then the superintendent's, and teachers' who teach reading and board members' salary must be reduced 10% per each year until it becomes excellent by grade 4.

    • There must be zero tolerance for discipline violators, and punishments must be harsh enough to discourage even potential offenders.


    • Teachers must have the authority to punish violators immediately to ensure that students recognize the teachers' authority without exception. Today most believe that the teacher has no authority.


    • Principals must have the right to make personnel decisions, under guidelines from the state.


    • Teachers need to be provided with more time by reducing paperwork and other tasks that today decrease the teachers' time to prepare for teaching more effectively.


    • We also need to ensure continuing education for teachers in subject knowledge and teaching methodologies, and increase their compensation to competitive levels once they have increased qualifications in subject knowledge and teaching methodologies as evidenced by the grade achievement (e.g., GPA increase) of their classes.


    • These are facts that are not open to negotiation, because they have to learn to achieve much better results in the classroom. In order to change the results of any group for the better, they have to do many things differently and much better than in the past. Such a change does not come naturally. A formal management method is needed to FOCUS EVERYONE in the group on what needs to be accomplished every month, BECAUSE TO CHANGE THE RESULTS FOR THE BETTER, THEY HAVE TO CHANGE A LARGE PART OF HOW THEY DID THINGS IN THE PAST.


    • For high schools we need greater precision to manage them to specific ACT results. High Schools would need to achieve an annual ACT score that is 10% above what was last achieved by the school, with an operating plan that is described further down to ensure that progress is tracked by every manager or supervisor for each and every school and central management monthly. The ACT is an annual test, and it must be used to calibrate the monthly GPA tracking better each year in each school.


    There will not be improvement unless a school district does exactly what we are describing here. If anyone objects, just look at what was achieved during the last two decades. An organization cannot produce better results unless they do very specific things differently than in the past. It must also be recognized that employees who are to be measured for education achievement cannot have the authority to select not to be measured. There cannot be improvement without measurement of achievement, and with the poor results for decades to date without measuring achievement, we cannot have any improvement.

     

    ***EXTREMELY IMPORTANT: Eliminate the practice of targeting 90% graduation rate from high schools as an objective formally or informally. Instead target an ACT score performance objective that is 10% higher than the previously achieved actual ACT score. Targeting 90% graduating alone without having an ACT score as an objective resulted in very unhealthy practices to push children who were not qualified, as evidenced by the big gap between the graduation percentage and the ACT readiness percentage. In fact performance went down. The "90% graduates" targeting is done indirectly by not naming such action as an objective, but it is focused on and pushed by superintendents and principals exactly like any named/published objective. Graduation targeting encourages and supports marginal students' grades to be changed so that they can graduate, but their poor ACT Readiness shows their poor knowledge that will make them unemployable. Only 17-25% are graduating ACT Ready, a very poor result. ACT Readiness means that they have only a 50-75% chance to pass the first year only of a college or vocational program. However any program related to science or engineering requires a 26 or 27 ACT score to enter the program, and that requirement is higher that the ACT mathematics benchmark to define readiness. ACT Readiness is a very minimal requirement. Again, it excludes any engineering or science related program, because they have a much higher mathematics requirement than the ACT Readiness benchmark for mathematics. 90% graduation targeting did not and will not raise ACT scores and the students' knowledge to be employable. But an ACT objective that is 10% higher than the previously achieved ACT score, coupled with a monthly GPA objective in each and every school will do wonders. The ACT score increase will obviously raise graduation rates and ACT Readiness rates improving the employability of high school graduates. THE STATE'S EDUCATION DEPARTMENT IS DOING SOME THINGS, HOWEVER, THAT REDUCES THE STUDENTS' ACT READINESS AND THEREFORE THEIR EMPLOYABILITY. Click here to read about it.



    ***EXTREMELY IMPORTANT: SCHOOL TESTS

    As of January 2018, Tennessee or any other state's K-12 school tests are designed for a specific subject or group of subjects in accordance with the curriculum, by one of four or five multi-billion dollar corporations who do such work IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CLIENT'S STATE CURRICULUM. THE TOTAL COST OF THIS CHANGE FROM THE OLD TEST WAS $200 MILLION OR MORE, and it would be wonderful to know what the state of Tennessee wanted to accomplish with this expensive venture having to be made. The subjects under the curriculum have not changed in content based on our observation such that it is subject change that would require such an investment. In other words, these tests are designed such that a 90-100% score would merit an "A" and anything under 60% would be an "F", a failing grade for the subject and grade for which the test was designed. So the state education departments lower the old 60% passing boundary to 25-35% new passing boundary, allowing many poorly educated students who would fail with the normal 60% passing boundary. They call this process Cut Scores.

    With Cut Scores, the failing child will get a respectable score like a "B" or some other grade that means the same, and the parents of such children believe that the child is doing fine. But the child's knowledge is too low and he/she will be unemployable, but the school system looks good. THIS IS NOTHING LESS THAN A BIG LIE. The public has understood the A, B, C, D and F grading system for more than five decades.

    To confuse the public more, the departments of education decided not to use the familiar grading system of A, B, C, D and F. They call the Cut Scored grades Below, Approaching, On Track and Mastered. We spoke to many people and no one understood, including the children, what these new grades mean. Just imagine the superintendent saying this to the public:

    “I am happy to tell you fantastic news about the performance of our children! They are approaching and are on track to have mastered almost all subjects! We have never had such a huge percentage of our students accomplish that!”

    With the Cut Scores applied, we are reducing the knowledge of the children but we keep the higher grade-name REQUIRED BY THE STATE CURRICULUM FOR A PASSING GRADE. That in itself made a bad situation worse, because our curriculum was and is weaker than the top 20 or more countries' curricula. Second, all these top countries performance-grade not only requires the answer to be correct, but they also grade equally how a student arrived at the correct answer. They use less testing that we do, and virtually all test with an all courses covering single matriculation test at the end of high school, requiring students to know all subjects when completing high school. That is why we dropped to 40 place in the world, and will drop further. I am sorry to conclude this comment by saying that this new development with Cut Scores and a different scoring using different grade names, has been purposefully created to dumb down the students, making almost all unable to financially survive, and to confuse the public with the new grading system making it much more complex than the well-known old grading system, leaving absolutely no requirement for the education system to improve its unsatisfactory past performance. In fact, this is an incentive for the education system to dumb down our children and grandchildren at a much higher rate than we did before this development. We request that if we wish to be an economically competitive nation, we stop these practices that dumb down our children, and instead make the curriculum and its tests tougher, and improve our teachers' subject knowledge so that our performance returns to the top ten nations internationally.


    No state can really afford different standards for its school districts for its various metropolitan areas. But we do just that AND we take it even further. We change the old names for the scores that the public recognizes (A, B, C, D, and F), and we use new names for the new performance categories (Below Basic, Basic, Proficient and Advanced), that the public does not recognize and understand. The highest and lowest (failure point) percentage of correct answers defines each grade. They vary a lot and that makes them confusing. When we see the percentage point required for passing/failure, and they are different per subject, and it could be changed any year, you can bet your life that the change will be for showing better results to the public, and hiding the fact that the state reduced the knowledge needed to pass each subject. That means that they are dumbing down the state test, making the valuation of how each child is doing confusing, so that the school system remains the only one who can tell how any child is doing. I did ask many children and parents about how the child is doing, and there wasn't a single person who could name how they were doing.

    WHY DO WE DUMB DOWN THE TEST THAT WAS SUPPLIED IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CURRICULUM, AND WHY DO WE PURPOSEFULLY COVER THE SCORING SYSTEM WITH NAMES THAT PEOPLE DO NOT UNDERSTAND?! Do the education departments realize that they are using a classic cover up game to make the results look good on paper but our children learned less so that they will be unemployed for life?! And while hoodwinking the public like that, large amounts of dollars are taken out of their pockets, spending more money per student than those countries that graduate children with excellent results?! What this new method does is it enables the state education department to increase the rate at which they dumb down the students. The ACT test cannot be dumbed down. But the difference between ACT Readiness and the state's average passing point on on the state test would provide an approximation with plus or minus 15% accuracy whether or not the state is increasing the dumbing down effort. We would not be surprised if the state eliminated the use of the ACT test, in order to keep the public totally in the dark. WE BELIEVE THAT THIS DEVELOPMENT IS NOT ACCIDENTAL BUT PURPOSEFUL. AND WE TELL THE PUBLIC THAT WE ARE DOING ALL RIGHT OR WELL?! DO WE HAVE ANY OBLIGATION TO TELL THE PUBLIC THE TRUTH THAT MOST OF THEIR CHILDREN WILL GRADUATE FROM HIGH SCHOOL UNEMPLOYABLE?!

    When you play with the standards of education, every school will be performing below the level that firm standards would produce. The result is always destructive for our children because they will learn less. Test designer companies are professional people generally with a master's degree in the subject for which the test is to be created. Unfortunately, many states including Tennessee are changing test scores, using a method called "CUT SCORES" in the state test, where a low score like 45% correct answers USED TO BE CALLED a "B" to make the school system's performance look better. The student and our work forces lose when we reward failing performance. But the school districts' board members and superintendent celebrate the "B" openly in the newspapers! The "B" would graduate the student. The "F" would not. Unfortunately the "F" represents the student's knowledge and his/her future prospects for a job. The "B" makes the school district appear to the public as if the school system did a great job. But they really did not. So what is the result? It is for Cut Scores to make public education performance look good, when it is not. The result is damaging our children's ability to survive economically, because their ACT score and ACT Readiness percentage will be too low, reflecting their lower knowledge level achieved with Cut Scores. Who is changing the grading system with Cut Scores? The State Department of Education does. There are other less important contributing factors to poor education, but the biggest ones are poor teacher training, oppressive management of teachers and principals by superintendents, insufficient teacher authority to control discipline problems, and bloated central management dreaming up things of questionable value to justify their position. These are smart people making a lot of money protecting their own survival. Some or many may be a lot smarter than the superintendent or the elected boards of education. They create and identify conflicts that they created. Or come up with very stupid ideas that sound good but cost a lot of money. THIS IS A CLEVER METHOD THAT DUMBS DOWN OUR CHILDREN: MAKING POOR KNOWLEDGE "LOOK GOOD" TO THE PUBLIC, WHILE ENDING HIGH SCHOOL UNPREPARED, UNEMPLOYABLE. WHY ARE WE DOING SUCH A STUPID THING? IS THIS "EXCELLENCE FOR ALL CHILDREN" AS SOME SCHOOL DISTRICTS CLAIM ON THEIR LETTERHEAD? THIS IS NOT EXCELLENCE. IT IS NOTHING LESS THAN THE PURPOSEFUL DESTRUCTION OF MOST CHILDREN'S FUTURE. WHO DO WE THANK FOR THIS INCREDIBLE KINDNESS? PLEASE THANK YOUR GOVERNORS, AND THE ELECTED SCHOOL BOARDS AND APPOINTED SUPERINTENDENTS WHO HAVE NO IDEA HOW TO CREATE GOOD RESULTS.

     

     



     

    ***ACTION: The increase in power will not stop there. So expect and prepare for BIG changes! Stop thinking that some children are not college material. He or she will be able to learn much more than what we think today. We just have to learn how to do that. Low expectation objectives are always a big management problem, such as the ACT 21 objective in 2020 Tennessee. Look at the bad results as far back as you want. Totally wrong in our opinion, because the objective should be the ACT score within the current or next fiscal year, and not 4-5 years away. So the ACT 21 would be technically a "goal" for 2020, the ACT READINESS would be at 24% of graduating students at best. That's too low, because by that time robotics will take too many jobs away. We need to increase the education of all teachers who teach above grade four. Subject knowledge must be much better than what it is today in mathematics and sciences.

    ***ACTION: Past boards have acted as if they operated without objectives exactly for the same reason. That is why past boards, and so far the current 2018 board will not be able to improve EDUCATION FOR OUR CHILDREN, until they go to the measurable key indicator of success or failure, the ACT score for the annual school district objective, AND a monthly GPA objective for each school that is 10% higher annualized than the previous year's actual GPA achieved.

    ***ACTION: That means that the list of "objectives" that the board of education set need to be replaced with an ACT score that is 10% higher than the previous year's ACT score achievement. Establishing the right objectives within each school enables a principal to deliver better GPA results, because they are the tools for a principal to focus practically all people on what needs to be achieved. Today we do not have such objectives and operating plans to achieve them.



     

    If a school system produces 80% ACT Readiness, they are well managed and we do not need to bother with the setting of objectives. We may not have such school districts, but there are countries where all school districts perform above that equivalent level, plus their courses cover subjects in more depth. Since we are performing at the 20-28% ACT Readiness level, we could not, and we will not improve without an excellent management tool called Management By Objectives.

     

     

     

    Management By Objectives (MBO) is not just a business tool. It applies to any large group of people if they want to move from poor results upward in any activity. That's education in our schools. People rise to expectations when the objective is high but possible to achieve, with a good stretch. On the other hand, people who have no or wrong or low objectives, do not improve. In education districts, the objectives set are not real objectives because they use objectives that are not the key measurement of education achievement such as an ACT score, or they are not measurable. People respond to such objectives as if they had no objectives at all, and revert to doing the job the same way as they did it for eons, and the results do not improve. So the right objective, like an ACT score that is 10% higher than the last one actually achieved, could produce very good results, if an operating plan to achieve it also exists in every single school, with monthly objectives like GPA objectives, to see monthly progress, in order to achieve an annual ACT objective. We already know from past history, that low or inappropriate objectives, like the ones that elected boards of education set in the past, do nothing for us but result in the same, age old poor school performance. WE MUST CHANGE THAT.

     

     

    The following are the current objectives for the Knox County, Tennessee school district per their policy. Did not get response from the board when trying to reconfirm. Finally got an answer to an Open Record request that identified as the valid objective the one in the previous superintendents' Five Year Strategic Plan. One wonders why we have two sets of objectives and why the elected Board did not respond to our request. The reader is welcome to look at both.


    ***ACTION: An objective or objectives are used to FOCUS THE ENTIRE ORGANIZATION. Therefore objectives have to be very few for people to remember them. One is a performance measure like an ACT score that is 10% higher than the last average ACT score achieved. This is a measure of what children have learned in the school district from grade one to twelve. There is no better measure of what the school district accomplished, and a 10% growth is minimal considering poor past performance that is making 75-85% of past and current graduates unemployable beyond minimum wage. Such graduates will be replaced by robots by 2025 the latest. Objectives must relate to the main activity of the organization, such as education achievement and what it cost for a school district. An objective MUST BE:

        • Measurable so that its outcome is not ambiguous,


        • It must be brief and easy to remember for everyone,


        • There must be very few of them, otherwise objectives dilute each other and become ineffective, because one loses focus on the most important things in every job to achieve a group objective.


        • It must be a key indicator of success or lack thereof -- in performance or spending (a second objective) -- and


        • It must be about educational performance when it is about a school district or state education results that has never been dumbed down, such as an ACT score achieved. State tests have been dumbed down, e.g., for showing better results to qualify for federal funds (No Child Left Behind) or to look better to the public.

     

    The second objective is about spending not exceeding the approved budget that was set at the start of the year. When an objective does not meet any of these qualifications, it is like not having any and that is like people doing things aimlessly. There cannot be good results achieved this way. All the money is wasted and almost all children's lives are wasted.


    For objectives to work, there must be a plan, The Operating Plan that covers all actions by all management and supervisory people in the entire organization to deliver excellent quality work to help reach monthly objectives (GPA) in the operating units that produce the results (schools in education), so that one notices problems as they happen. That way one can correct problems in order to meet the annual objective for the total organization or school district.


    It would be similar when managing an entire state organization in that the school districts would have to deliver monthly results (GPA) to spot problems and recover to deliver the state's ANNUAL result (ACT) as planned at year end.


    Unfortunately the objectives set by the boards and the state are not suitable for managing for good results. In a case like this, they are the same as having no objectives at all, and therefore nothing is focused on getting better results. To make it worse, an organization without the right objectives becomes very political internally. Why? Because performance evaluation will still exist but based on personal relationships, and not on actual results. That is the main reason why our results are very poor.

     



    Unfortunately the management styles above, force people to write opinions or policy documents that are enormous and easily confusing. It is possible to write also very complete documents, well researched with a long bibliography of references, but they will be very long like 50-70 pages. Supporting documents from the state education departments to school districts however, need to be brief, easy to read, and still cover the important points. They are not like that. Simplicity is extremely important in communications to field organizations, perhaps more important at this level than the research document that can turn out to be very complex.



    THE OBJECTIVES SET IN THE KNOX COUNTY, TENNESSEE POLICIES ARE:

    1. Read a variety of complex text, both literary and informational, to build knowledge, gain insights, explore possibilities and broaden their perspective;


    2. Communicate complex information in a clear and articulate manner using effective oral, written and media skills;


    3. Develop conceptual understanding, procedural skill and fluency, and application skills in mathematics and science to solve complex real world issues and problems;


    4. Participate effectively in civic life with a solid understanding of world geography, economics, history and finance;


    5. Develop positive habits that support good physical, mental, social and emotional well-being;


    6. Appreciate and participate in the arts;


    7. Pursue the acquisition of world languages;


    8. Effectively use current and emerging technologies to access, manage and create information;


    9. Think creatively and work collaboratively with others;


    10. Demonstrate flexibility, adaptability, initiative and self-direction;


    11. Demonstrate a commitment to lifelong learning and personal excellence; and


    12. Develop the 21st century skills necessary for a successful transition to college and/or career.


     

    COMMENT: THE PURPOSE OF ANY OBJECTIVE IS TO ACHIEVE IT DURING ONE FISCAL YEAR. OTHERWISE, IT IS A GOAL AND NOT AN OBJECTIVE. THE ABOVE OBJECTIVES DESCRIBE THE OUTSTANDING QUALITIES OF ANY PERSON, BUT TO GAUGE HOW MUCH OF THE STATED QUALITIES ARE ACHIEVED IS NOT POSSIBLE. EACH OBJECTIVE HAS TO BE MEASURABLE, AND SOME ABOVE TAKE MANY YEARS. THESE ARE NOT OBJECTIVES AND NOT EVEN GOALS BECAUSE THEY CANNOT BE MEASURED. OBJECTIVES ALSO HAVE TO BE RELATED TO THE BUSINESS OF THE SCHOOL WHICH IS DEFINED BY THE CURRICULUM, WITH ACCEPTABLE GRADE ACHIEVEMENT. ANYTHING ELSE, LIKE THE ABOVE OBJECTIVES THAT THE ELECTED BOARD OF EDUCATION CREATED, IS NOT RELEVANT FOR A SCHOOL OBJECTIVE.

     

     

    ***ACTION: Objective(s) apply to the current fiscal year along with the budget. How does any of these points specify how you measure satisfactory performance in each one against a measurable objective in the current fiscal year? The above board of education objectives are not relevant to student achievement. They are unmeasurable opinions that can easily be subject to argument.

     

     

    Look at your existing and past objectives. Can you actually measure where children are in achieving a measurable target in the above objectives? How do you know if a score is good or bad if there is some measurement that is subject to argument? Was there a plan that addressed how to increase the ACT scores? The answer is "NO". When one does not have THE RIGHT measurable objective, you cannot have a plan of action. WITHOUT A PLAN THAT IDENTIFIES THE MONTHLY OBJECTIVES OF ALL SUPERVISORY EMPLOYEES IN EVERY SINGLE SCHOOL, you are without direction, and you flounder and fail as we are doing in Knox County, Tennessee. Was this arranged purposefully? Why was there no action to correct it? There can be no improvement without the right objectives on the school district, supervisory employees in every school and in central management, and an operating plan that specifies said objectives and dates when they must be achieved.

     




    IT IS THE SCHOOLS THAT PRODUCE THE RESULTS, YET WE DO NOT HAVE OBJECTIVES AND A PLAN WITHIN EACH OF OUR SCHOOLS TO ACHIEVE BETTER PERFORMANCE! WE ARE SORRY BUT THAT IS VERY IRRESPONSIBLE. When the individual schools do not have a measurable academic objective, AND THEY ARE PRODUCING POOR RESULTS, you cannot improve what you did before without a plan. NO CHANCE. WE NEVER PLANNED TO ACHIEVE ACADEMIC INCREASE FOR OUR SCHOOLS IN KNOX COUNTY, TENNESSEE, therefore there was no accountability, with everyone just doing the same thing again and again, year after year. NOTHING IMPROVES UNLESS YOU MAKE CHANGES IN THE WAY YOU DID THINGS! The operating plan is a must if we are to improve our unacceptable results. Now you know why it failed us. With no help from the Department of Education in Tennessee, we did not improve. This is a serious management shortfall, and expecting elected boards to know what to do may be unreasonable. HOWEVER, THAT IS NOT A GOOD EXCUSE FOR ELECTED BOARDS NOT TO DO CORRECTLY WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE.


    For schools, the operating plan must have a monthly, year-to-date objective per school (e.g., at the end of May, you measure September-May averages and compare that result to the operating plan of each school that you planned, using average GPA per school). We assume that GPA averages have been and can be maintained per student, per school and perhaps per subject and per class, and that a plus or minus 10% mathematical relationship has been established between average high school GPA and average ACT scores in high school for the same time period.

     


    Based on GPA averages, establish a GPA objective for each month, for each school that is five percent higher than the previous year's GPA average achieved, that upon conversion equals or exceeds the planned ACT objective for the school district.

     


    Appoint a team of principals to identify materials, excellent teaching practices, ideas from any academic source worldwide that has demonstrated very high primary and secondary school performance far above ours, who are to recommend a prioritized list of them for implementation (Finland, Singapore, Canada, France, Germany, Australia).

     


    Teachers must be better educated in both teaching methodologies and the subject they teach. The high performing internationals changed years ago to selecting teachers from the top ten-thirty percent of Master's programs in the subject they will teach above fourth grade. Establish a continuing education program, 50% teacher paid, for teachers obtaining a master's degree in the subject that they are teaching.

     


    Establish a zero tolerance policy relating to behavior on school property. Pursue this through legislative channels if needed. Teachers must have total authority in the classroom in the mind of the student and the student's parent.

     


    Teachers have much less preparation time in the U.S. than the teachers in the high performing countries. Eliminate as much as possible teacher loads that limit teaching and preparation time, e.g., paperwork, too many tests (preparation, evaluation included).

     


    Student progress needs to be measured as accurately as possible monthly. Can a testing service provide testing per month for curriculum subjects, for each and every grade?

     


    It is also very important that every person in a supervisory position have an objective monthly that supports increased GPA achievement in the organization to which he/she belongs (a specific school), or in Central Management. Supervisory position means all management positions not just those whose title includes the word "manager".

     

     

    "Objectives" did and do exist. The state of Tennessee required for the elected school boards to set them. I looked but did not find any guidance by the state Education Department explaining how to set objectives and create operating plans. They were actually not objectives, because they were not measurable based on the most important indicator of what students learned every single year. But the elected boards not only set them but gave themselves a positive performance review. One could not tell with such objectives if anything was accomplished, and we very consistently delivered poor education, that makes 75-85% of a graduating class not prepared well enough for job training that results in long term-employment. Robotics are replacing the low-end compensated jobs, because the workforce has been degraded so far since 1970 and robotics can do a better quality job today at less cost.


    • Why is this practice SO COMMON WITH SETTING INVALID OBJECTIVES AND NO OPERATING PLAN STILL IN PLACE that is full of conflict of interest, if not one that defrauds the public, instead of setting proper objectives to focus at minimum all people in a school district daily, on their jobs, and working toward the same objective with every single supervisory and management person in the school district about what they will accomplish? Is it because with objectives set every person has to work harder to avoid poor performance reviews?


    • Schools produce the results, not Central Management in a school district. Why is it then that THE SCHOOLS THEMSELVES NEVER HAD AND HAVE ANY ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT OBJECTIVES TO MEET TO THIS DAY, LIKE A GPA OBJECTIVE? Maybe because:


      • STATE OR SCHOOL DISTRICT LEVEL DECISION MAKERS IN EDUCATION do not appear to care about what happens to our children. They say they do, but their actions do not support their claim.


      • It is absolutely unforgivable that we TOLERATE high schools where 90% or more of a graduating class is unprepared year-after-year for anything other than short-lived employment, and we did nothing about it for more than a dozen years now. Just look at the chart showing ACT Readiness per high school above.


      • Bloated Central Management in every school district does not favor measurable academic objectives like an ACT score plus 10% for growth.



    That leaves the ACT for 11th-grade testing, and for GPA-based testing monthly reporting to actually see, how each class is progressing in each school as the year progresses. Anyone who ever managed an organization with more than 100 people knows that you cannot improve poor performance, unless you have the right objectives in every management position and a monthly plan detailing what each of them will accomplish each month to make sure that the right job is done for our children. Why is it that we do not hold anyone accountable in a school district and within the state department of education for a job that is most important for our own economic future? Instead, we are building a powder keg. We would like an explanation from state leadership about why nothing has been done about this huge problem for more than four decades.


    What we know so far is that ten years of ACT scores show in Knox County, Tennessee, that close to 80% of our high school graduates PLUS dropouts are NOT ACT READY. That means that they are prepared only for close to minimum wage jobs. However, all such jobs could be replaced by robots within five years at most. The ACT test shows what children have learned from grade one to twelve. It also shows that close to 80% of them plus dropouts, are far from knowing as much as what the curriculum calls for. It shows that they did not learn enough to survive, but our public schools gave them a high school diploma anyway.

     

     



    "The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything."
    Albert Einstein
    Unfortunately, we are doing nothing of significance to improve our children's education in our public schools.

     

     

    If we want children who will be successful in their life, all the points raised below must be implemented in our opinion as soon as possible. All children want to be loved and want to be helped, we must treat them lovingly.

     

    The presence of personal problems and an environment without love drives children to drugs. But they are not adults yet. And they must pay for any bad behavior such that they or their friends will not dare to repeat it. Most of us think of those kind of teachers in our past with great appreciation.

     

    In today's world the teacher has to be a good friend to help you, or punish you if you do something bad. The children have to learn a lot more from now on. New technology always eliminates some low level jobs, but they also create new jobs. The new jobs require more knowledge.

     

    Our current public high school graduates are not prepared well. We must change that urgently. The children would need to work harder than before. To that end our school districts must assist teachers financially to upgrade their subject knowledge, and give them enough preparation time like all high performing nations have done. Teachers must become better. They have to be great motivators to all children.

     

    In our opinion, if we don't do this and correct the points raised below, our children will not have a chance. Should we stop wasting money on so many students, more than 80%, who graduate without being prepared sufficiently? Should we invest in a baby sitting service? It will cost a lot less. Some parents use our schools as a baby sitting service. Some children hit teachers and go to the bathroom and throw what they produced at the teacher. The next day they bring little Johnny back to school as if nothing happened, and little Johnny becomes a hero to ten more boys. IN CASE IF OUR STATE LEADERSHIP BELIEVES THAT THIS IS THE "EXCELENCE FOR ALL CHILDREN", THE SLOGAN OF OUR SCHOOL DISTRICT IN KNOX COUNTY, TENNESSEE, USES AND SIMILAR ONES ELSEWHERE, THEN WHAT IS THE POINT IN SPENDING EVEN A SINGLE RED CENT ON SUCH A SCHOOL DISTRICT TO CREATE AND MAINTAIN A FAILURE FACTORY WHOSE MANAGEMENT DOESN'T KNOW HOW TO DO A GOOD JOB. THE PUBLIC WHO PAY DEARLY FOR IT ALL, NEEDS SOME LEGAL PROTECTION WITH RECOURSE UPON THOSE WHO ARE CREATING THE PROBLEMS, AND THOSE WHO ARE IN CHARGE ON THE STATE LEVEL. In an organization that is not doing well enough, you do not just keep spending more and more without changing people like teachers and principals, superintendents, board members and hope for the best. You have to change people and the way you do the job in the class room. You have to know a lot more about the subject than what you have to teach. You have to be able to explain how what you are teaching is going to be used. And you have to know how to get children excited about the subject you are teaching. You have to know how to make the public schools excellent schools, without any slogans like "Excellence for all children". Only losers use such slogans. LET THE SCHOOLS' A.C.T. RECORD SHOW HOW EXCELLENT THEY ARE. Not the state test, because the state dumbed them down to show better grades with less knowledge. It would be wonderful if our conclusions were wrong, but we did our homework and believe that they are correct, unfortunately.

     


     

     

     


    AN IMPORTANT QUESTION

     

    "Why do my children and grandchildren need to take the hard math and science courses? They will never use things like Algebra!" We heard such public comments from citizens even at school board meetings. Not one person could answer the question.

     

     

    THE ANSWER IS: ***EXTREMELY IMPORTANT: If we talk to a neurologist (doctor specialized in how the brain and nerves function) and ask that question, the answer will be the following. It is this answer that identifies why the harder subjects are necessary. We are born as a healthy baby with about 100 Billion brain cells called neurons. These neurons will start interconnecting AND COMMUNICATING immediately with other neurons that are specific to the brain function triggered by a stimulation, like in response to what the baby hears, sees and feels, and later what the baby reads and experiences about anything. This is how learning begins. The more the child learns, even if the child does not use what was learned, the more brain cells get interconnected. The fastest rate of interconnections happens before age 6, but will continue as you get older at a declining rate, for example even after 20 years of age. Drugs can SLOW AND EVEN STOP THESE INTERCONNECTIONS. BUT, IF ONE IS EXPERIENCING DIFFICULTIES AND DOES NOT GO TO DRUGS TO FEEL GOOD, THE INTERCONNECTIONS STRENGTHEN. Some brain functions do not complete their interconnections until 17-20 years of age, for example functions that have to do with determining vocational suitability and direction. For this reason it is a big mistake by schools to push students to decide about a vocation they want to pursue before 17 years of age. Instead the K-12 schooling should focus on a very strong foundation, with honors courses in every mathematics and science class to the highest level that the school offers. You cannot skip prerequisites and do a higher level course. Prerequisite courses must be completed first. You build your knowledge just like you build a brick house, laying bricks one layer at a time. You use all the "bricks" or interconnections for making good decisions. One actually needs all courses, especially the hardest ones, with excellent scores, in order to have the ability to make good decisions, which will be very important for all jobs. If the "house of knowledge" is not complete with all the "bricks in place", your decisions will not be good. The more difficult math and science courses create more "bricks" of knowledge, than the easier courses. Using them fully in a job OR NOT, you need them for good decision making. That is why the more difficult courses are needed. If you build a one level house "of knowledge" you will be able to make only a limited level of good decisions. But you can also build a hundred story skyscraper of knowledge, and you will be able to make good decisions at the speed of light.

     

     

    That is why it is very important to learn the difficult courses. Without them you could end up homeless, because you will make bad decisions in life and your jobs will go to robotics. The second good reason for taking Algebra and the more difficult courses, is because if you build a big enough "house of knowledge" with high grades, then you can end up with a fantastic job that you will love, using the math and science that you learned and make enough money for a wonderful life. Why? BECAUSE YOUR DECISION MAKING WILL BE GOOD.

     

     

    WHAT DO OUR SCHOOLS HAVE TO DO TO GIVE OUR CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN SUCH A CHANCE?
    All these needed actions are listed below.

     

    ***EXTREMELY IMPORTANT: GENERAL AND URGENT PREPARATION WITHOUT WHICH NO FURTHER IMPROVEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE WILL TAKE PLACE.
    • Strengthen each school's environment against drug sellers to limit the significant influence of drugs in the school performance of children. The relationship between students and teachers is not good enough today. Understand that many have only a single parent who is very tired and works hard to make ends meet. Such kids need a friendly place other than the druggy crowd. Druggies find good "friends" for drugs in the schools. The schools are their "supermarket" to sell drugs.


    • All children need to belong. All children need a shoulder to cry on in private. The druggies understand that, because that is where they are coming from.


    • Poverty is the great creator of such an environment. We blame the lack of studying enough on poverty. I can tell you that a major part of poverty is created by our public education system with its problems that we need to change into a friendly environment for all students, especially those who are poor.


    • Criminal law can help only a small part of the drug problem in school. It is the schools that must become for poor kids their best friend, helper and advisor.


    • Read about the education system in Finland. The children have no better friend than the teachers there. Look at the Success Academy Schools in New York City who are delivering fabulous results from poor inner city African American kids. You have to be nice but firm. We are not so nice and wishy-washy.


    • For example some parents, a minority use the public school as a baby sitting service. We do not have zero tolerance for discipline problems. But we have kids who can, as an example throw feces at a teacher. Fresh feces. The offender in such a case could return to school the next day. If I may humbly suggest, such a deed or doing anything to a teacher should be good enough for a year's "vacation" from school. The parents will object for a few days, but perhaps in a few weeks or month, their little Johnny will become an angel and a good student. This side of drug defense is not being handled well, and drugs are interfering with our children's education.


    • Today's average teacher comes from the bottom 30% of university classes. The nations with higher performing students get their teachers from the top 30%, some from the top 10% of the Masters program in the subject that they would be teaching. We need to structure teachers jobs such that we eliminate all the time that is required for non-teaching functions, and reward those who deliver excellent grades from each and every class that they teach. It is the good results that need to be appreciated, and not the baby sitting service that some provide.


    • Eliminate grossly overstaffed central management in school districts, down to 2% maximum of the school district's total full time employees; delegate more decisions to high school principals, have feeder schools report to them, increase teacher education in the subject they teach and in teaching methodology, have them attend high level management training programs. They are to meet an ACT objective that is 10% higher than the last average consolidated ACT score achieved by the high school, and budget objectives, as well as monthly academic objectives for the high school. All this to have a better superintendent development program, with a similar feeder school principal training program, to ensure that we develop excellent talent for the next superintendent.


    • Eliminate "cut Scores" (they dumb down the state test and with it our children),


    • Establish zero tolerance of discipline problems,

    • Make use of appropriate best lectures and tutorials from the Internet to reduce teacher load,
      •

    • TEACHING CRITICAL THINKING, THE BUZZWORD OF THE DECADE. Every ten years or so the education districts attempt to "solve" the problem of bad education with a "new" idea to save the children that they did not educate well enough. They push "new" ideas often about what we need to teach, without understanding the subject and its ramifications. For example, vocational education was promoted as a solution to the poor academic results "as backup" fifteen years ago, instead of solving the teaching problem and insufficient control of bad behavior in schools to get better results. They also forget the new impact of robotics with artificial intelligence that passed average human intelligence in 2015 and it is growing faster. The jobs that require less knowledge will be taken over by robots rapidly, and vocational education may have a life, but it will be a short life. To be robot-resistant for as long as possible, multi-disciplinary knowledge on a high level in mathematics, in the various sciences and in economics will be the ones along with continuing education for life. Or without considering how robotics will change the various vocations. Since 2010 many people in education started emphasizing the teaching of CRITICAL THINKING to students, without the most important prerequisite for it: the necessity to know and understand the subjects themselves that are related to the problem to be solved on as high a level as possible, without the process of CRITICAL THINKING. CRITICAL THINKING is so easy and fundamental that most people consider it only before one makes an important decision. That means that children can be good decision makers only if they have a high enough level of understanding of all subjects and competitive situations that make up what is to be decided upon.


    • THE BIGGEST MISTAKE WE SEE TODAY IS PEOPLE BELIEVING OTHER PEOPLE'S OPINIONS TO BE A FACT, because of their titles. Unfortunately, this is very common in education. Most elected school board members assume for example, that their opinion is the golden truth, when they know nothing about the subject or the management problems involved. The process of very basic CRITICAL THINKING is easy, as the chart shows. We would suggest that critical thinking is not the problem with our high school graduates. The big problem is the poor results in reading, basic math, sciences and so on, that the state education departments and school districts are hiding from the public, INSTEAD OF SOLVING THEM BY RAISING THE RIGOR OF TEACHER EDUCATION LIKE THE HIGH PERFORMING COUNTRIES HAVE DONE FOR TWO DECADES NOW. These new ideas such as critical thinking seem to be an effort to mask the real important problem, the poor results of our schools. What we need is more rigorous math with up to a year of Calculus, Physics, Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Materials Science, English Communications with the reading problem solved before grade 3, Art and Music appreciation one year each, since that is the thing that helps interconnection of brain hemispheres that is essential to decision making. There is enough work for high schools to be managed more professionally that in the past. We will not survive without it.


    • Use ACT's recommendation to ensure that everyone takes "base plus 2" courses (two more courses in addition to what the curriculum requires), and


    • Please get rid of the stupid (no better adjective for it) idea of pushing a 90% graduation rate mandate and instead focus on an ACT objective that is 10% higher than the ACT score last achieved, for each high school and the school district. Do not accept verbal suggestions, unless they submit them in writing. IT IS THE SCHOOLS THAT PRODUCE THE RESULTS. Yet no high school principal worked under an ACT or SAT objective and an operating plan as described in this document.


    • Eliminate Cut Scores that appear to be dumbing down the state test, when the company provided the test matching the curriculum. It is the test as provided, that shows the true results about what the schools produced, without the state education department's modifications to show better grades. Why hide the truth?


    • About 25 years ago most of our children graduated from high school as very poor readers, carrying that "skill" to college unresolved in Knox County, Tennessee, one of the better school districts in the state. THIS IS TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE. So, we spent millions of dollars on consultants to solve the problems. In 2018, we still have the same reading problems that we had more than 20 years ago. You don't need expensive consultants. You need to visit a few outstanding schools. We do have them in the US, but not in Tennessee.


    • When we have an elected board, such people are untrained in how to interview and hire a properly qualified superintendent. Interviewing such a person requires advanced management training. It is not the same as interviewing a teacher or a principal. The board members tend to believe that the superintendent they hired knows how to get good results. They keep hiring those who cannot do the job. Look at the record of any school district in your state. Most superintendent and consultant candidates will cost an enormous amount. The state education department could help the boards with guide lines, but such guidelines must come from people who are highly and successfully experienced in the management task ahead.

     

    IS THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION DOING SOME THINGS THAT DEGRADES THE STUDENTS' FUTURE MORE?
    FIND THEM AND ELIMINATE THEM.
    ***EXTREMELY IMPORTANT: IT APPEARS THAT "CUT SCORES" CREATED BY THE STATE EDUCATION DEPT., ARE ACTUALLY REDUCING OUR CHILDREN'S KNOWLEDGE. PLEASE LET US KNOW IF THIS IS INCORRECT. The state's objective is to graduate 90% of the graduating classes with a diploma. There is pressure to get teachers to pass borderline students and to allow them to pass from one grade to the next in order to graduate them as fast as possible; even if they do not qualify with their scores. The objective is not the level of knowledge gained as shown by an ACT or SAT score. There is a very low 21 ACT score that was identified as the academic goal more than 5 years ago for 2020. If a class has an average ACT score of 21, then 75% of that class graduated unprepared. There is no pressure to achieve better grades, other than those who would squeak by to graduate from high school. Is the knowledge level of students not the most important? Isn't it silly and self defeating to focus on graduating 90% of students and not a specific ACT score that represents what they learnt from grade one to twelve? Such direction is wrong and has produced the poor results for decades. It shows the destructive actions of state leadership. My apologies, but given the two choices: 1. 90% graduation rate, and 2. An ACT score objective that is 10% higher than the previous one, which was refused with any percentage growth, clearly indicates that the state and the teachers' majority is interested in the 90% graduation objective, BUT DOES NOT WANT TO BE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE KNOWLEDGE THAT OUR CHILDREN HAVE WHEN THEY GRADUATE FROM HIGH SCHOOL. What is also clear is that with an ACT score objective as described, both the academic side, the ACT score itself would rise, and so would the graduation rate. THE CUT SCORES, ON THE OTHER HAND WORK AGAINST THAT. THEY ENSURE THAT THE STUDENTS DO NOT WORK HARD IN ORDER TO GRADUATE FROM HIGH SCHOOL WITH THE NECESSARY LEVEL OF KNOWLEDGE TO BE EMPLOYABLE OR TRAINABLE TO BE SELF SUPPORTING FOR LIFE. THE TENNESSEE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION (TDE) orders a new state test from one of four large companies that are obligated under the law to meet the requirements of the Tennessee curriculum, all grades. It costs only $150,000,000. First they pass it to all schools and students to take it but the results are seen only by the TDE. If the results are bad, they just cut the the failure point which is normally 60% correct answers down to as much as 25-30% in one or more subjects, to create more children who will receive a "PASSING GRADE" including those who would be normally failures. For example for Algebra 1, the "Proficient raw score" is 28% correct answers only. They are translating such poor performance to a "Proficient quick score" of 82%, which would indicate a nice B GRADE, for an incredible FAILURE of only 28% correct answers. But the test was prepared by a test-creating company covering all grades and all subjects strictly in accordance with the state curriculum. Therefore the test creating company is correct. When they give the test to the state, the state has every school trying it to see how good or bad the average scores are. If the results look bad, they use cut scores to make the test easier to provide higher test results. And our children get dumbed down, and will not be able to pass an interview to get even the lowest job. The school looks good this way. The state Department of Education looks brilliant. The governor is so happy. The parents are elated because little Johnny got a B average. And in a few years little Johnny will be jobless, but the school is smart, they will come up with a few excuses that may work for a few years. Given a few years everyone finds out what the game is, and the pitchforks come out. There are some suggestions that we must reduce the size of the population. Our school systems and their management seem to be doing an excellent job for them.
    If this is true, how can the Tennessee Education Department and the governor think that graduating children as an objective, while short-cutting their knowledge, is more important than an ACT score achieved (their knowledge), which as an objective that would be 10% higher than the preceding actual ACT score to ensure growth?


     



    ***EXTREMELY IMPORTANT: Unfortunately, we do not teach children in the public schools as well as we did 100 years ago, but we teach less in math and the sciences, then we taught 50 years ago. We teach less when our children need more to survive. And we the public are paying for it a very high price, one of the highest in the world. I CAN TELL YOU THAT THIS IS NOT A STRATEGY TO WIN. IT IS A STRATEGY TO LOSE. The school districts and the state education departments are to prepare a 3-5 year "strategic" plan. BUT NO ONE TRAINED THEM CORRECTLY ABOUT WHAT MAKES A PLAN STRATEGIC, OR WHAT A PLAN REALLY IS TO ENSURE THAT YOUR OBJECTIVE IS MET. They have no analysis of competitors internationally, a very important thing because we were on top around 1970, but were passed by 39 countries as of 2016 (OECD PISA tests). There are no objectives in the "Strategic" Plan for supervisory/management people to achieve on a monthly basis and that is the most important part of any operating plan. Because the competitiveness of our products has to be high internationally in order to produce enough tax income for the nation. The education decision makers do not consider the future impact of new technologies, and our school systems' impact on their most important "customer", the employers. The employers have been complaining about the poor education of high school graduates for more than ten years. We never addressed the insufficient education that teachers received, which makes the classes very dull and demotivating, and makes the teachers' life on the job awful. We attended many classes. Management training does not exist, and as a result they have too many people problems. They do employee satisfaction surveys, but they are structured surveys. No one is going to provide feedback on management problems. Structured surveys are insufficient because they can steer conclusions to salary dissatisfaction, that is generally not among the top three complaints in satisfaction surveys. And they do not understand and consider the huge robotic impact on our children's future, as a result of automation/robotics that already started in 2017. An elected board cannot do this. The state education department needs to provide it to the school districts with a decision to set an ACT or SAT objective that is higher than the prior year's average consolidated ACT score or a corresponding SAT target if the state uses the SAT. More details below about how this must be done to be effective.

     



    ***EXTREMELY IMPORTANT: Having looked at how elected school boards operate, and how poorly their schools are performing, we never came across a school board meeting where the board members discuss the most important thing: how poorly their schools have been doing for many decades, investigate why, find out what international high performers are doing differently to achieve far better results and implement ways to improve the poor results AS THEIR HIGHEST PRIORITY TASK. Not even school board members who are former teachers can think of doing these steps.
    To make things worse, the state education departments seem to do nothing to ensure better quality performance by the elected school district boards, e.g., how to create the right objectives and annual operating plans that would improve our results. BY NOT DOING SO, THE STATE DEPT. OF EDUCATION IS PURPOSEFULLY NOT DOING SOME THINGS WHERE ONLY SUCH SOUND MANAGEMENT PRACTICE COULD BRING BETTER RESULTS.

     



    ***EXTREMELY IMPORTANT: Example of what should never happen: The ACT performance trend went down for fourteen years, although we have spent more than twice the amount per student in this high school to date than what we spent per student in the other high schools. Every year 94-96% of the children graduating from this high school were not ACT Ready but close to 90% received a diploma anyway. WHAT WILL THAT ACCOMPLISH?! Did the principal of this high school do a good job? ABSOLUTELY NOT. So, what did the superintendent do? He appointed this principal to be responsible for education over ALL 90 SCHOOLS in the school district. And the elected board of education approved it. Evidently, school boards do not care or don't even bother to check the facts about an important candidate's past performance, like the ACT score accomplishments by a candidate who was a principal, before they approve the hiring of such a person. After all, the performance of 90 schools depended on it but the principal who was just promoted with poor results to date.

     

     

    It is an extremely serious mismanagement sin by a superintendent to promote a principal who did not improve, but dropped the poor A.C.T. results significantly in his own high school year after year. In fact the pricipal was the second from the bottom, and for six years he kept going down. He has a great talent. He could sell anything. If he was selling cars, he could make a lot of money. The excuse given for his promotion was that the principal is trying. He is restructuring the school's organization that "will produce fantastic results in the future". But the principal in question did nothing to study high performing schools and did nothing to improve his own school's A.C.T. results. The superintendent (JM) promoted such a poor performer to head all 90 schools to improve the low performance of all 90 schools!!! Such wasting of the people's money deserves removal of both people who so demonstrated their lack of good judgement. The superintendent left. The new superintendent did nothing about this promoted individual who did not improve the school results now for three additional years. This "experiment" after 6 years resulted in billions of dollars of the people's money being wasted because of two people's poor judgement. Not only billions of our hard-earned tax dollars are wasted, but with the results of this school district, over the years thousands of children will end up on the street as a costly social problem. That will cost us, an even larger additional amount of money. How can it happen that poor performance does not result in removal of the persons who cannot do the job right? When you hire someone for a management job based on whom thousands of students' future will depend, but he produced bad results, and you do nothing about it, you deserve to be removed. The problem is that it is a bad attitude under political management without real objectives that allows such poor management decisions. We end up paying twice. First, we pay one of the highest prices in the world for the children's education. But the schools did not teach them enough in 12 years, so that robotics will replace them. Those poor jobless children will cost society more, doubling the education expense. The culture that has been allowed to tolerate such poor management practices must end. Poor management behavior like this needs to be eliminated urgently, and A.C.T. objectives, along with an operating plan must be implemented as described herein to eliminate such a problem. A workable objective for a low performing school district would be a 10-15% higher A.C.T. score than what the school district actually achieved last.

     



    ***EXTREMELY IMPORTANT: How can anyone assume that the voting majority of elected school board members, who represent the local public, have the knowledge to guide a school district to improve our children's education? The truth is that we did not improve for five decades with this arrangement anywhere. As a nation we dropped from the top to 40th place in the world in mathematics of 15-year-olds in 2016. That is the bottom of the industrialized countries. Tennessee is worse. And we depend ON THE ELECTED BOARD OF 13,500 independent school districts in the nation to improve, when they have never been able to improve public school performance before, for at least 50 years? Why? Because the voting majority of 13,500 elected school boards will not have the management skills and knowledge to make the right decisions, when the declining USA K-12 performance dumbed down the population. Why doesn't any state start by centralizing functions that require duplication of staffing in each school district today? Representation of a segment of the population in a school district does not add anything to improve the school results. the number of people on a school board is not as important as it was originally imagined. Having an odd number of them is important. Having management experience in large organizations is the most important experience school board members need. Why doesn't each school district appoint highly educated and experienced business leaders for the school board who would be future employers of the children we teach? Why have we insisted on this unproductive education system instead of studying the best and changing it? Are we lazy or just plain do not care about taking serious actions on the governors' level that raise the act scores? ...Mark my words: the current system WAS NOT designed to create winners. it was designed to dumb down the American population. I would be happy to show the proof that it is so. THE BIG QUESTION IS WHY?

     



    ***EXTREMELY IMPORTANT: In future years there will be more increases in new technology-created jobs. The next big one is nanotechnology, only five years away. Many old jobs will disappear, just like decades ago when manufacturing industries changed to robotics. The new jobs will require significant increase in knowledge to upgrade existing workforce members well beyond what our high schools taught them. AND SUCH UPGRADE CANNOT TAKE FOREVER. SIX MONTHS MAXIMUM, AND THAT MEANS THAT CONTINUING EDUCATION, ESPECIALLY BECAUSE WE HAVE FALLEN BEHIND, IS A NECESSITY. If the high school-created education was more advanced like in some other countries (e.g., in Finland, Canada, France, Germany or Singapore in mathematics and the sciences on the advanced level), then worker-retraining could be achieved within a reasonable time.>

     



    ***EXTREMELY IMPORTANT: Unfortunately, we teach in the public schools as well as we did 50-100 years ago, the subjects we did not change as they were 50-100 years ago, but we teach less in math and the sciences, than what we taught 50 years ago. If one looks at 1850-1920 vintage 8th grade tests and school books for English and mathematics, the great majority of today's high schools could not pass them. This is the result, of dumbing down the students and by not providing training material or procedures to elected school district board members, as well as principals and superintendents. We teach less when our children need more to survive. We create very weak high school graduates for the toughest times that they will have to face. And we the public are paying for it a very high price, the highest in the world. Why? Where is the wisdom of such results from our public schools?! Is there something we the public should know, since we are paying the highest price in the world for education but deliver the poorest knowledge at high school graduation by our education districts that makes our graduates the worst educated among industrialized countries in the world. The school districts and the state education departments are to prepare a 3-5 year "strategic" plan. They have no analysis of competitors internationally, a very important thing because we were on top around were passed by 39 countries as of 2016 (OECD PISA tests). Also because the competitiveness of our products have to be high internationally in order to produce enough tax income for the nation. The education decision makers do not consider the future impact of new technologies, and our school systems' impact on their most important "customer", the employers. The employers have been complaining about the poor education of high school graduates for more than ten years. We never addressed the insufficient education that teachers received, which makes the classes very dull and demotivating, and makes the teachers' life on the job awful. We attended many classes. Management training does not exist, and as a result they have too many people problems. They do employee satisfaction surveys, but they are structured surveys. No one is going to provide feedback on management problems. Structured surveys are insufficient because they can steer conclusions to salary dissatisfaction, that is generally not among the top three complaints in satisfaction surveys. And they do not understand and consider the huge robotic impact on our children's future, as a result of automation/robotics that already started in 2017. An elected board cannot do this. The state education department needs to provide it to the school districts with a decision to set an ACT or SAT objective that is higher than the prior year's average consolidated ACT score or a corresponding SAT target if the state uses the SAT. More details below about how this must be done to be effective.

     



    ***EXTREMELY IMPORTANT: Having looked at how elected school boards operate, and how poorly their schools are performing, we never came across a school board meeting where the board members discussed the most important thing: how poorly their schools have been doing for many decades, investigate why, find out what international high performers are doing differently to achieve far better results and implement ways to improve the poor results AS THEIR HIGHEST PRIORITY TASK. Not even school board members who are former teachers can think of doing these steps.
    To make things worse, the state education departments seem to do nothing to ensure better quality performance by the elected school district boards, e.g., how to create the right objectives and annual operating plans that would improve our results. BY NOT DOING SO, THE STATE DEPT. OF EDUCATION IS PURPOSEFULLY NOT DOING SOME THINGS WHERE ONLY SUCH SOUND MANAGEMENT PRACTICE COULD BRING BETTER RESULTS.

     



    ***EXTREMELY IMPORTANT: Example of what should never happen: The ACT performance trend went down for fourteen years, although we have spent more than twice the amount per student in this high school to date than what we spent per student in the other high schools. Every year 94-96% of the children graduating from this high school were not ACT Ready but close to 90% received a diploma anyway. WHAT WILL THAT ACCOMPLISH?! Did the principal of this high school do a good job? ABSOLUTELY NOT. So what did the superintendent do? He appointed this principal to be responsible for education over ALL 90 SCHOOLS in the school district. And the elected board of education approved it. Evidently, school boards do not care or don't even bother to check the facts about an important candidate's past performance, like the ACT score accomplishments by a candidate who was a principal, before they approve the hiring of such a person. After all, the performance of 90 schools depended on it but the principal who was just promoted with poor results to date.

     

     

    ***EXTREMELY IMPORTANT: It is an extremely serious mismanagement sin by a superintendent to hire a principal who could not improve the poor A.C.T. results in his/her high school. The excuse given was that the principal is "trying". He is restructuring the school's organization that "will produce fantastic results in the future". But the principal in question did nothing to study high performing schools, such as the Success Academy Schools in New York, who are producing excellent results with poor, inner city, African American children, beating even private schools, nor any other high performing schools in the USA. So the superintendent promoted such a poor performer to head all 90 schools to improve the low performance of all 90 schools!!! Such wasting of the people's money deserves removal of both people who so demonstrated their lack of good judgement. This "experiment" resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars of the people's money being wasted because of two people's poor judgement. Not only millions of our hard-earned tax dollars are misused, but with the results of this school, over the years thousands of children will end up on the street as a costly social problem. That will cost us, the public, again, a HUGE additional amount of money. How can it happen that poor performance does not result in removal of the persons who cannot do the job right? When you hire someone for a management job based on whom thousands of students' future will depend, but he produced bad results, and you do nothing about it? Well, you deserve to be removed. The problem is that it is a bad attitude under political management without real objectives that allows such poor management. We end up paying twice. First we pay one of the highest prices in the world for the children's education. But the schools did not teach them enough in 12 years, so that robotics will replace them. so that poor jobless child will cost society more, doubling the education expense. the culture that has been allowed to tolerate such poor management practices must end.

    Poor management behavior like this needs to be eliminated urgently, and ACT objectives, that are NOT low expectation objectives like a 21 ACT score along with an operating plan must be implemented as described herein to eliminate such a problem.

     



    ***EXTREMELY IMPORTANT:     In future years there will be more increases in new technology-created jobs. The next big one is nanotechnology, only five years away. Many old jobs will disappear, just like decades ago when manufacturing industries changed to robotics. The new jobs will require significant increase in knowledge to upgrade existing workforce members well beyond what our high schools taught them. If the high school-created education was more advanced like in some other countries (e.g., in Finland, Canada, France, Germany or Singapore in mathematics and the sciences on the advanced level), then worker-retraining could be achieved within a reasonable time.


     

    ***IMPORTANT: We need much better recognition of what our children must accomplish. Not in football, but in graduation with much higher grades from high school. The schools are pushed to graduate 90% of those who entered high school. BUT academic readiness is not being pursued. Our ACT Readiness is only 13-17% of THOSE WHO GRADUATED IN TENNESSEE. FOR AFRICAN AMERICAN CHILDREN IT IS ONLY 3-6% OF THOSE WITH A DIPLOMA. A school in NYC, called Success Academy Schools is achieving 94-99% in 41 schools with poor, African American, inner city children. It is absolutely outrageous that we measure and push graduation rates instead of ACT readiness, and this practice is contributing to a purposeful dumbing down of our children, along with poor preparation of teachers in college. WE MUST FOCUS ON ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT, AND NOT JUST ON MEETING THE STATES' GRADUATION REQUIREMENT, WHICH IS VERY LOW. OR MAKE THE GRADUATION REQUIREMENT EQUAL TO ACT READINESS OR HIGHER.

     



    ***IMPORTANT:     We graduate with a diploma 80-87% of our children. About 60% of them will be without a job by 2023 replaced by robotics, after accounting for learning disabilities and discipline issues. Because we are doing such a poor job teaching them, compared to the Success Academy Schools in NYC, our failure rate in Knox County is 60% which means that in the last fiscal year, our failure rate is costing us approximately $280,000,000 every year AND GROWING, as if we just burned that money with zero benefit to anyone. This is a repetitive percentage loss of BILLIONS OF DOLLARS for at least 14 years that we charted. The only benefit is to the parents of the poor performers. We are providing a very expensive baby sitting service to them. UNDER WHAT BASIS CAN WE FLUSH DOWN THE TOILET SO MANY BILLIONS OF DOLLARS? WE MUST BECOME MUCH MORE EFFICIENT IN SPENDING THE MONEY SUCH THAT THE CHILDREN WHO WORK HARD BENEFIT MORE, ALTHOUGH THIS HUGE LOSS HAS TO DO WITH THE STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT AND THE KNOX COUNTY SCHOOL DISTRICT OPERATING WITH VERY POOR FINANCIAL AND OPERATING OVERSIGHT. WE MUST CORRECT THIS ISSUE. IT IS "TIME TO FACE THE TIGER" AND TELLING THE PUBLIC THE TRUTH ABOUT HOW PUBLIC EDUCATION IS DOING.

     



    ***IMPORTANT:     We are the only country among medium and high performing nations that does not have uniform national performance standards controlling education and high enough teacher training standards at universities to ensure significant improvement over what we have today. THE TN DEPT OF EDUCATION MUST DO THIS, AND IT HAS TO START WITH ENSURING PROPER ANNUAL ACT OBJECTIVES AND PROPER MONTHLY OBJECTIVES PER SCHOOL WITH AN ANNUAL OPERATING PLAN. THE OBJECTIVE HERE IS: "REDUCE THE HUGE 60-80% FAILURE BELOW 10%".

     



    ***IMPORTANT:     We decided to delegate virtually all education related decisions to the individual states, who in turn delegated all to the elected boards of school districts. A very bad move. We have to duplicate staff to do common functions.

     



    ***IMPORTANT:     About 13,500 school districts are doing their own thing in the USA based on elected boards who have no idea about how good or bad our performance is, where we stand compared to the best in the world, what we must do and why, but they do lie about their own actual performance to the public.

     



    ***IMPORTANT:     Board members elected get $20,000-$25,000 per year with no term limits in Knox County, Tennessee. In other countries, they use the best, highly-educated national talent, with proven high performance for such decisions, because education is viewed as a most important strategic asset for the country. Elected boards never discuss how to improve the poor student performance. But they spend a lot of time blindly approving expenses requested by the superintendent.

     



    ***IMPORTANT:     We are made to believe in the US that it is better to have an elected sample of local people who are in the best position to make important school-related decisions. Just look at the past five decades in school performance to decide if keeping the same would be a wise idea. We could not come up with a worse idea. The results show for many decades now that this method does not produce good results. We saw for the past 50 years that we made the wrong decisions.

     



    ***IMPORTANT:     Courage is lacking to start implementing changes to improve. The reason for this is the fact that those politicians in whose hands public education is, do not fully understand why education needs to be much better. The 13,500 school districts have plenty of money to keep the public satisfied with their stories. The result is that we are getting worse, and we dropped from the top to 40th in the world in high school mathematics.

     



    ***IMPORTANT:     There are goals and objectives that the states require. Rightfully so, because in low performing school districts with more than 100 school district employees, only "management by objectives" could work well. It is a management technique that focuses all employees to create systematic improvement. If one established monthly objective, that are a measurable key indicator of success or failure. When such a monthly objective is not a precisely controlled measurement, such as a GPA, then one could combine the monthly objective at year end with the precise measurement, such as an ACT score, to ensure a high-quality monthly objective management system.

     



    ***IMPORTANT:     The state does not explain what an objective must be in order for the objective to work, and the elected boards do not have any training in how to set the right objectives. In addition to the correct objectives, monthly operating plans need to be used for each school and central management, identifying monthly academic objectives for all supervisory and managerial positions (The Operating Plan).

     



    ***IMPORTANT:     Zero-based budgets are very important in focusing management employees on what needs to be accomplished. Look at actual examples of objectives that do not work that elected school board members use and the state Education Departments do nothing about them.

     



    ***IMPORTANT:     People rise to high expectation objectives that are a stretch but do not rise to low expectation objectives so well. The state education superintendent set a goal in ACT score achievement several years ahead, that represented less than a 5% increase for a three-year period (ACT score of 21).

     



    ***IMPORTANT:     A less than 5% objective-increase in a poorly performing environment on the state level is not motivating anyone, whereas in a high performing environment the right objective would be an average ACT score of 10% minimum when the ACT Readiness is under 50%. An ACT 21 average score results in only 25% of a graduating class being ready to learn a job beyond minimum wage.

     



    ***IMPORTANT:     The last item that is vital for higher achievement, is accurate planning and spending control using a zero-based budget, preferably. Such a budget includes every single planned action, their expenses and the total cost of employees for that action. It also ensures proper planning in detail.

     



    ***IMPORTANT:     But almost all 13,500 school districts nationally use objectives that are unmeasurable and are not a key indicator of what children have learned. Please look at examples here that did not work. They are the same as having no objectives and no operating plans. Under such circumstances, improved performance is NOT POSSIBLE.
    Why? Because they just keep coming to work as before, doing the same work the same way as before. When a group of people do not change the way they work, they will keep producing the same results as before. See explanations of all these terms above in more detail here. For a predictable, relatively smooth progress, an operating plan is essential for every supervisor or manager.
    Elected board members receive $20,000 - $25,000 per year in Knox County, Tennessee without term limits, and to top it off they do not discuss at board meetings how to improve the poor education results. Most elected school board members "think that they know" what to do, but no one is trained and experienced in the subjects in question, and no one on the board knows why the performance is so low and why high performing countries are high performers. All of this includes the state departments of education as well.

     



    ***IMPORTANT:     How can anyone claim that the voting majority of elected school board members, who represent the local public, have the knowledge to guide a school district to improve our children's education? The truth is that we did not improve for decades with this arrangement. IS A GOVERNOR SO OCCUPIED WITH HIGHER PRIORITY ACTIONS THAN FIXING OUR CHILDREN'S EDUCATION AS DECADES PASSED BY SO THAT NOTHING IS DONE TO FIX THE PROBLEM? And we depend on 13,500 independent school districts in the nation to improve, when they have never done it before? WHY DOESN'T ANY STATE START BY CENTRALIZING FUNCTIONS THAT REQUIRE DUPLICATION OF EFFORT IN EACH SCHOOL DISTRICT TODAY?

     



    ***IMPORTANT:     Not many are aware that teacher training in the USA is poor, and there is no testing/evaluation psychologically for the suitability of a candidate for teaching (Read about it here). The ideal choice in the top performing countries in education is a teacher candidate who is in the top ten percent in his/her Master's program in the subject that the candidate is to teach, and psychological tests show the candidate to be an excellent match to the teaching profession. Teaching methodologies and learning-disability diagnoses are covered every year after hiring because these things improve each year if a country wants to be excellent in teaching of its students.

     



    ***IMPORTANT:     The majority of superintendents hired by board members have no idea how to improve education because the elected board members have no training and experience in interviewing and hiring the right people for the job, who know what to do. Board members do not even spend time about learning the facts about the candidates' performance to date before an interview. The reason for the helplessness of elected school boards appears to be that those people who have enough management experience, do not want to be wasting their time at board meetings arguing all the time and losing to a majority who do not understand the problems and have no idea what to do, but they defend their own inexperienced opinion at all cost.



    ---------------------

    ***IMPORTANT:     We need much better recognition of what our children must accomplish. Not in football, but in graduation with much higher grades from high school. The schools are pushed to graduate 90% of those who entered high school. BUT academic readiness is not being pursued. Our ACT Readiness is only 13-17% of THOSE WHO GRADUATED IN TENNESSEE. FOR AFRICAN AMERICAN CHILDREN IT IS ONLY 3-6% OF THOSE WITH A DIPLOMA. A school in NYC, called Success Academy Schools is achieving 94-99% in 41 schools with poor, African American, inner city children. It is absolutely outrageous that we measure and push graduation rates instead of ACT readiness, and this practice is contributing to a purposeful dumbing down of our children, along with poor preparation of teachers in college.
    WE MUST FOCUS ON ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT, AND NOT JUST ON MEETING THE STATES' GRADUATION REQUIREMENT, WHICH IS VERY LOW. OR MAKE THE GRADUATION REQUIREMENT EQUAL TO ACT READINESS OR HIGHER.

     



    ***IMPORTANT:     We graduate with a diploma 80-87% of our children. About 60% of them will be without a job by 2023 replaced by robotics, after accounting for learning disabilities and discipline issues. Because we are doing such a poor job teaching them, compared to the Success Academy Schools in NYC, our failure rate in Knox County is 60% which means that In the last fiscal year, our failure rate is costing us approximately $280,000,000 every year AND GROWING, as if we just burned that money with zero benefit to anyone. This is a repetitive percentage loss of BILLIONS OF DOLLARS for at least 14 years that we charted. The only benefit is to the parents of the poor performers. We are providing a very expensive baby sitting service to them. UNDER WHAT BASIS CAN WE FLUSH DOWN THE TOILET SO MANY BILLIONS OF DOLLARS? WE MUST BECOME MUCH MORE EFFICIENT IN SPENDING THE MONEY SUCH THAT THE CHILDREN WHO WORK HARD BENEFIT MORE, ALTHOUGH THIS HUGE LOSS HAS TO DO WITH THE STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT AND THE KNOX COUNTY SCHOOL DISTRICT OPERATING WITH VERY POOR FINANCIAL AND OPERATING OVERSIGHT. WE MUST CORRECT THIS ISSUE. IT IS "TIME TO FACE THE TIGER" AND TELLING THE PUBLIC THE TRUTH ABOUT HOW PUBLIC EDUCATION IS DOING.

     



    ***IMPORTANT:     We are the only country among medium and high performing nations that does not have uniform national performance standards controlling education and high enough teacher training standards at universities to ensure significant improvement over what we have today. THE TN DEPT OF EDUCATION MUST DO THIS, AND IT HAS TO START WITH ENSURING PROPER ANNUAL ACT OBJECTIVES AND PROPER MONTHLY OBJECTIVES PER SCHOOL WITH AN ANNUAL OPERATING PLAN. THE OBJECTIVE HERE IS: "HOW TO MAKE THE HUGE 60% FAILURE AMOUNT PRODUCTIVE".

     



    ***IMPORTANT:     We decided to delegate virtually all education related decisions to the individual states, who in turn delegated all to the elected boards of 13,500 school districts. A very bad move. We have to duplicate staff to do common functions.

     



    ***IMPORTANT:     About 13,500 school districts are doing their own thing in the USA based on elected boards who have no idea about how good or bad our performance is, where we stand compared to the best in the world, what we must do and why, but they do lie about their own actual performance to the public.

     



    ***IMPORTANT:     Board members elected get $20,000-$25,000 per year with no term limits in Knox County, Tennessee. In other countries, they use the best, highly-educated national talent, with proven high performance for such decisions, because education is viewed as a most important strategic asset for the country. Elected boards never discuss how to improve the poor student performance. But they spend a lot of time blindly approving expenses requested by the superintendent.

     



    ***IMPORTANT:     We are made to believe in the US that it is better to have an elected sample of local people who are in the best position to make important school-related decisions. Just look at the past five decades in school performance to decide if keeping the same would be a wise idea. We could not come up with a worse idea. The results show for many decades now that this method does not produce good results. We saw for the past 50 years that we made the wrong decisions.

     



    ***IMPORTANT:     Courage is lacking to start implementing changes to improve. The reason for this is the fact that those politicians in whose hands public education is, do not fully understand why education needs to be much better. The 13,500 school districts have plenty of money to keep the public satisfied with their stories. The result is that we are getting worse, and we dropped from the top to 40th in the world in high school mathematics.

     



    ***IMPORTANT:     There are goals and objectives that the states require. Rightfully so, because in low performing school districts with more than 100 school district employees, only "management by objectives" could work well. It is a management technique that focuses all employees to create systematic improvement. If one established monthly objectives, that are a measurable key indicator of success or failure. When such a monthly objective is not a precisely controlled measurement, such as a GPA, then one could combine the monthly objective at year end with the precise measurement, such as an ACT score, to ensure a high quality monthly objective management system.

     



    ***IMPORTANT:     The state does not explain what an objective must be in order for the objective to work, and the elected boards do not have any training in how to set the right objectives. In addition to the correct objectives, monthly operating plans need to be used for each school and central management, identifying monthly academic objectives for all supervisory and managerial positions (The Operating Plan).

     



    ***IMPORTANT:     Zero-based budgets are very important in focusing management employees on what needs to be accomplished. Look at actual examples of objectives that do not work that elected school board members use and the state Education Departments do nothing about them.

     



    ***IMPORTANT:     People rise to high expectation objectives that are a stretch but do not rise to low expectation objectives so well. The state education superintendent set a goal in ACT score achievement several years ahead, that represented less than a 5% increase for a three year period (ACT score of 21).

     



    ***IMPORTANT:     A less than 5% objective-increase in a poorly performing environment on the state level is not motivating anyone, whereas in a high performing environment the right objective would be an average ACT score of 10% minimum when the ACT Readiness is under 50%. An ACT 21 average score results in only 25% of a graduating class being ready to learn a job beyond minimum wage.

     



    ***IMPORTANT:     The last item that is vital for higher achievement, is accurate planning and spending control using a zero-based budget, preferably. Such a budget includes every single planned action, their expenses and the total cost of employees for that action. It also ensures proper planning in detail. It is NOT a bucket of money based on past spending, plus some percentage.



    ***IMPORTANT:     But almost all 13,500 school districts nationally use objectives that are unmeasurable and are not a key indicator of what children have learned. Please look at examples here that did not work. They are the same as having no objectives and no operating plans. Under such circumstances, improved performance is NOT POSSIBLE.
    Why? Because they just keep coming to work as before, doing the same work the same way as before. When a group of people do not change the way they work, they will keep producing the same results as before. See explanations of all these terms above in more detail here. For a predictable, relatively smooth progress, an operating plan is essential for every supervisor or manager.
    Elected board members receive $20,000 - $25,000 per year in Knox County, Tennessee without term limits, and to top it off they do not discuss how to improve the education results at board meetings. Most elected school board members "think that they know" what to do, but no one is trained and experienced in the subjects in question, and no one on the board knows why the performance is so low and why high performing countries are high performers. All of this includes the state departments of education as well.




    IMPORTANT Not many are aware that teacher training in the USA is poor, and there is no testing/evaluation psychologically for the suitability of a candidate for teaching (Read about it here). The ideal choice in the top performing countries in education is a teacher candidate who is in the top ten percent in his/her Master's program in the subject that the candidate is to teach, and psychological tests show the candidate to be an excellent match to the teaching profession. Teaching methodologies and learning-disability diagnoses are covered every year after hiring because these things improve each year if a country wants to be excellent in teaching of its students.

     



    IMPORTANT The majority of superintendents hired by board members have no idea how to improve education because the elected board members have no training and experience in interviewing and hiring the right people for the job, who know what to do. Board members do not even spend time about learning the facts about the candidates' performance to date before an interview. The reason for the helplessness of elected school boards appears to be that those people who have enough management experience, do not want to be wasting their time at board meetings arguing all the time and losing to a majority who do not understand the problems and have no idea what to do, but they defend their own inexperienced opinion at all cost.




    Most of our public schools fail to prepare 83-87% of our children today in 2018 to be READY TO LEARN TO BE EMPLOYABLE. Our taxes are paying billions for the poor public education. We would be very angry if 83-87% of the Fords or Toyotas we bought failed to function and we could not even get a refund. Ford or Toyota would have to fix all the problems at their expense, or they would be out of business.

    IS OUR CHILDREN'S FUTURE LESS IMPORTANT THAN THE FORD OR TOYOTA EXAMPLE MENTIONED? IT APPEARS THAT WAY. THERE IS NO OTHER BUSINESS THAT COULD CONTINUE WITH THE HIGH FAILURE RATE THAT OUR PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOLS PRODUCE. THE LAW GUARANTEES THE SAME AMOUNT OF MONEY THAT SCHOOLS RECEIVED THE PREVIOUS YEAR. THIS IS TRUE IN EVERY STATE. IS THIS AN INCENTIVE TO DO AN EXCELLENT JOB, THAT THEY CLAIM THEY ARE DOING?

    The evidence in the attached chart shows that when the school system promises "Excellence for All Children", it actually delivers very poorly educated children. When such a slogan is without an explanation within the slogan itself, it is only a slogan and promise by those who use it. 80% of those high school graduates who earned a high school diploma, who cannot communicate properly in English, cannot do basic mathematics, cannot fill out job applications, and have a bad attitude about life and the job they manage to get. WHY DON'T WE HOLD EDUCATION DISTRICTS TO A "TRUTH IN ADVERTISING" STANDARD, WITH A SIGNIFICANT PENALTY, SINCE THEIR INCOME COULD NOT BE REDUCED IN RESPONSE?

    We propose that the above facts show along with the good PR that is incorporated in any news presented to the public, that not only the Knox County School district is NOT PROVIDING Excellence for ALL Children, but falsely informs the public about how well the schools are training our children, such that 80% of them are likely to be replaced by robots.

    It is fundamental that when school district performance is poor for more than 2-3 years, so is your state education department, elected school district board and central management.

     




    Such a long-term decline in what our children learned since 1970, dumbed down the public, damaged the workforce, the citizenry and progressively the future of our children and our state and country.

     

    WHO ARE THE "CUSTOMERS" FOR THE SCHOOLS' "PRODUCT" (the STUDENT). It is the employers and the universities.

    We cannot afford to keep delivering one of the worst results in the industrialized world, as the 5th highest spenders in the world per student. If superintendents and those in charge of education do not know that much, then replace them. Otherwise, you end up with "failure factories" like we have today in Tennessee.




    Our schools' slogan is "EXCELLENCE FOR ALL CHILDREN". Look at the record of the school district in charts similar to those presented above. 80% of all students and 94% of African American students graduate with a diploma, but without being prepared to learn a job. And we are spending more than HALF BILLION DOLLARS ON THEM EVERY YEAR in our school district alone! Our state Departments of Education are purposefully doing something to dumb down the state tests, that is also dumbing down our children. We suggested during the last ten years for them to have ACT score goals/objectives that are only 10% higher than the previous ACT score achieved. The great majority of jobs have objectives to focus the organization on results. The school districts refuse to be measured against a goal/objective that measures how much their students have learned. WHY DO YOU THINK THEY DO THAT?

    PERFORMANCE IS AVERAGE AT BEST BECAUSE THERE ARE TOO MANY TEACHERS WHO ARE NOT WELL SUITED TO THEIR JOB AND DO NOT KNOW THE SUBJECT THEY TEACH WELL ENOUGH TO BE ABLE TO PRESENT IT WITH ENTHUSIASM. AFTER ALL, MANY HAVE GONE INTO TEACHING BECAUSE IT WAS EASIER THAN THE MAJOR AREA OF STUDY THEY ORIGINALLY SELECTED. THEY DID NOT WANT TO WORK THAT HARD.


    There is a school system with 41 schools in New York called Success Academy Schools. They achieve TOP 1-5% results on tests with poor, inner city African American children!! We achieve BOTTOM 1-5% with African American children. We always throw money at the problem. We suggested to school district management and the board for the last four years to visit this school system to find out how they achieve such high results. They decided not to go and do not think they could benefit from such a trip. We spent twice as much money per student on the two bottom schools, as we spent on the other schools for more than a decade, and the results did not improve. We kept giving diplomas to ALMOST 90% of the graduates who were not prepared for learning any job. Three years ago the superintendent (JM) promoted the long time principal of one of these poorly performing schools, whose ACT Scores and Readiness has always been second from the bottom, to head and improve the education results in all 90+ schools!! So he made sure that the school district did not have any ACT-based objectives. Unbelievable. In our opinion, unfortunately, our public schools are doing exactly what lowers our children's grades, and there is no management focus by the state to turn the poor results around. We do all this to the public's children, and we pay for it one of the highest expenses per student in the world, using the people's hard-earned tax dollars.

    Our school district's slogan is EXCELLENCE FOR ALL CHILDREN. Such a slogan without an explanation as part of the slogan, wants to create the impression that this school system provides excellence for all children. I ask you: Is OUR PERFORMANCE the "EXCELLENCE" that you HAVE IN OUR TEACHERS, PRINCIPALS OR SUPERINTENDENTS TODAY for your children and grandchildren? Why did our school board and previous boards keep such slogans and such people?

     

    WHAT PROBLEMS ARE CREATED BY THE DECLINE OF OUR K-12 EDUCATION SINCE 1970?

     

    The USA public schools have been purposefully dumbing down the population for at least five decades.



    Education is the ONLY cure for poverty. We have been purposefully focusing for decades on 90% graduation rates that are worthless without greater focus on academic achievement we call ACT Readiness, which is minimal (15-25% of graduating students). Robotics guarantee unemployment to those not educated well enough. Artificial Intelligence for robotics is above average human intelligence as of 2016 and growing faster.




    1. THE PUBLIC'S DILEMMA

    Let us describe a big challenge we have. Educating the public's children is the highest priority because it is the public's money via taxes that pays for the public schools and all public services. In addition it is highest priority in our opinion, because our industries compete internationally, and work force competence depends on the quality of high school education that has been deteriorating for five or more decades. Yet none of 50 governors initiated programs that fixed the K-12 problems, and raised the ACT and SAT scores as a result. How can it be that 22 years ago we had major reading problems that carried through high school graduation. We spent millions on consultants. And today, 22 years later the reading problem is the same, we spent millions but learned nothing. Our public is paying one of the highest expenses for public education in the world, and our children's knowledge when graduating is on the bottom of the industrialized countries today. Our children are NOT educated well enough in today's competitive world, the school districts misinform the public about "21st Century Education", "Excellence For All Children", and about their results, with such comments being vague for promotion and are untrue. 74% of the children who graduate from high school nationally and 83% who graduate in Tennessee are not ready according to ACT the testing organization. That means minimum wage jobs that will be replaced by robotics in a few years followed by increasing unemployment. The damage from this is enormous to the public but not fully realized. Our school district in Knoxville, Tennessee, spends $150,000 to $300,000 for one child's K-12 education. The poorly performing schools are allocated 2.5 times as much money per student than the better schools for 12-13 years of education, WITH NO IMPROVEMENT IN RESULTS EVEN AFTER 15 YEARS! After that, more than 80% of children WITH A HIGH SCHOOL DIPLOMA will qualify only for minimum wage jobs for a few years before they become mostly jobless for the rest of their life. Robotics will replace them.




    We used to be one of the best in the world in high school education around 1970. We dropped to 40th in the world in 2016.

     

     

    The welfare and social support expense for decades will far exceed the education expense, most of it a loss. Just consider that they will be making babies who will not grow up Nobel Prize winners. They will get hungry and get into unlawful activities. THEY WILL WANT TO HAVE FUN AND GET INTO MORE BABY MAKING AND MORE ILLEGAL ACTIVITIES. All of which will cause skyrocketing expenses. Our huge $21,000,000,000,000 national debt is one symptom that is going even higher. We pay an enormous interest rate on it. THAT IS WHAT OUR POOR PUBLIC EDUCATION IS CREATING.



    The curriculum of public schools is set for all schools districts and schools nationally in all high performing countries. The curriculum covers the subjects to be taught to every child, and exactly what is to be covered by each subject. In the USA we do not standardize the curriculum country-wide. Each of the 13,500 school districts can modify their own curriculum, duplicating staff to do this work, with input from the state and federal government. We can also have differences in how much of a course is covered from one school to the next in the same school district. Such a structure ensures that the schools can only create dumber and dumber children. The ACT results certainly show that.



    Public education is guaranteed to receive per school district the same amount of money as what they spent the previous year by law, regardless of performance. The spending therefore goes up. The spending has been increasing aggressively since 1970, while the test results went nowhere but down, and many nations with whom we compete in the marketplace to generate our own tax revenue and we are degrading the workforce with poor high school performance. Public school districts are spending the people's money (tax dollars), graduate 76-87% of our children without preparing them well enough to survive, and then lie to the public saying that "We are doing pretty well in education, a solid B average!" (said the superintendent JM who left after 8 years in 2016) The "solid B" was the result of only 46% correct answers on the dumbed down state test, which is actually a big "F" since they really did failing work.



    We dropped from the top in 1970 to a very low 40th place in mathematics in the world among 73 nations in the 2015 OECD-PISA tests according to the Washington Post. "The United States cannot long operate a world-class economy if our workers are, as the OECD statistics show, among the worst-educated in the world."



    Just think about this. Someone uses the public's money, does a terrible job that will make 77-87% of graduates plus dropouts in addition most likely homeless within a few years (read the section on robotics please), and then they lie to the public, WHO PAY FOR IT ALL, about "doing pretty well". What is this kind of behavior called? No one in political leadership did or does anything about this, meaning any action that would raise the ACT scores. It is the ACT score that measures annually what the students learned from grade one to twelve.



    With that poor result, we are one of the highest spenders per student in the world. That in turn means that education has enough money, but enough of it goes to the wrong places to create "Failure Factories" instead of creating at least 80% of high school graduates who are prepared for further higher level schooling or vocational training, instead of graduating only 13-17% of the graduates prepared. It appears that our state education departments and school districts do not understand what they are to accomplish with all the money they spend. Our money. We will show below conclusively why the above statements are correct.

    2. MINORITY, ESPECIALLY AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDENTS' DILEMMA



    Based on what we are showing you on this website: American K-12 education declined since 1970, starting possibly earlier.



    African American families have a very large percentage of "single parent" families, where the mother had the baby very early, and the "father" just left. The mother had to work hard to survive, with limited education, in poverty. The school tells most such mothers that little Johnny is doing well. Granted, the parent in such a case believes the school. If the mostly single parents are not told the truth, they will get very angry and frustrated, because they work long hours and have no idea what to do. Several told me that "when I got pregnant, his father just ran away. I did not want the kid, and I do not want him now. I live one day at a time, and I can barely make it." We need to understand their situation rather than be critical.



    All children have a need to belong. They go home from school in the middle of the afternoon, and the mother is at work. It is impossible to ensure that the young student does not get approached by gang members and some get involved with a gang on the street. The drug culture makes an effort to recruit any young student in our schools, even before the street, and they re-educate the child about what is important in life, why the child should not trust his/her parents, and the drugs initially make that young child feel happy and powerful. The poorer and more unavailable a parent is to the child, the more the young child will be susceptible to listening to the same kind of children who formed a gang.



    Obviously there is a great need within our society to educate all children better, and to resolve also some old historical racial conflicts, but our teachers are not prepared well enough to do well with any demographic group, with the exception of those children, who have both parents with sufficient income, who have no survival problems on the scale of a single parent we described.



    American teachers are not as well educated on the university level as teachers are in the high performing countries, and the teaching environment is not a happy environment for the great majority of USA teachers. They do their best, but that is not enough.



    There is an outstanding charter school system in New York City with 41 schools in 2017, who take only poor, inner-city minority children, and they are scoring in the New York State Common Core tests TOP 1-3% PASSING EVEN MOST PRIVATE SCHOOLS! Obviously, they are doing many things right that could be duplicated by our poorly performing public schools. Obviously, our elected school boards could gain a lot if they visited them, but they told us that they are not interested. THAT PUTS THIS PROBLEM SQUARELY IN THE HANDS OF OUR POORLY PERFORMING STATE EDUCATION MANAGEMENT ORGANIZATIONS. Such attitudes cannot be tolerated on the part of elected school boards, or teachers, and superintendents. Never judge based on what they tell you. Judge them based on WHAT THEY DO.


    There are major errors or plans that are destructive in school district strategic plans in many states: the impact of the latest robotics on employability of high school graduates is totally absent. Although the schools produce the results for each of many school districts in the state, there are no performance objectives or operating plans to reach the performance objectives in any school of any public school district in Tennessee. They are required, but the elected boards cannot do them without specific guidelines. One cannot improve poor results without the appropriate performance objective and a professional operating plan to reach that objective.



    It is simply not possible to create better than poor results, unless we discontinue focusing on 90% graduating, and instead we focus totally on achieving an A.C.T. score objective for the school district that is 10% higher than the previous A.C.T. score achieved. Create also a similar A.C.T. objective for each and every high school, that is also 10% higher than the previous A.C.T. score achieved.

    At the same time, our teachers must significantly improve the way they motivate and educate our children and get all children excited by what they teach. How?

    Teachers must be able to raise specific job examples to show the students how, what they are teaching would be used in jobs the student may be doing later in life.  The best example of teaching methodology would be the one that is used in Finland's education system.

     




    3. THE EMPLOYERS' DILEMMA

    The companies that provide most of our national income, generate about half that national income directly or indirectly by selling products and/or services internationally. That means that we have to be competitive internationally, because we are competing with very successful foreign products both domestically and internationally. For our companies to be competitive with their products, their workforce have to be better, more competitive than the majority of the competition. For the workforce to be competitive, the high school graduates must be competitive with the high school graduates of our international competitors. Having dropped to 40th in mathematics in the world, and achieving only 17-27% average ACT Readiness in Tennessee and the USA respectively, we gradually lost the competitiveness of our high school graduates. The result is the $20 trillion national debt that is costing us a fortune and likely go higher, and loss of more business and tax income, which reduced our national income. To solve this problem we must improve the quality/knowledge of our high school graduates. To achieve THAT, in turn our teachers must be better trained by our universities compared to the top performing nations' teachers in education, like Finland, Singapore, Japan as examples. Our children's education is limited by the teachers education. Unfortunately our research shows that the university education of our teachers is not good enough. Click here for references about US teacher quality.



    The school system develops a student "product". The education burden was already paid by the parents (the public) by paying taxes. Who needs the student "product"? The employers' workforce does. Today more than 80% of graduating classes cannot do the job to employers' satisfaction because of bad attitude, bad behavior or poor knowledge. They left high school with not enough knowledge, a bad attitude and the feeling that the world owes them a living. Some propose a free two-year junior college program for two years after high school. That would be a remedial program to make up for what the high schools would do normally. Such a proposed program will not correct the problem, but ideally it may correct the general education gap only in a few under educated children. What we actually need is to correct the K-12 education system itself with a stronger curriculum, and better educated teachers to the level of the best international performers. One cannot gain enough with such a program without fixing the problem from pre-school to high school graduation. What we need is 80% of students graduating with ACT Readiness plus the free two years of additional education.



    There is no quality control in classrooms to teach an entire curriculum subject in each subject, and never less. We even had an example of a family with two children in different high schools taking the same subject and one school covered much less than the other. We are asking for each school having academic objectives and operating plans to reach the objectives using GPA data to raise education and ACT scores ultimately. The schools produce the results and they are not measured in performance. The answer they gave was that there is too much cheating going on to have the GPA as reliable data, and now we have to wait for a new state test. Not a valid reason to ignore GPA, but it is a surprising admission.



    The employers do not have too many options to stay alive and survive. They spoke to the Governor about this without a good enough result. They are holding cash back, because to survive they need a good, well educated workforce. The high school student "product" is not good enough in both knowledge and attitude and costs a lot in business. Fast food pilot studies showed in the fast food industry that the new robots as of 2016 can do an outstanding job, customers like them better because of that, and cost less. So other major employers of low end jobs like supermarkets and others will do the same thing, and so will many more. Robots with artificial intelligence passed average human intelligence in 2015. That is what we have with faster than human improvement and decreasing cost. You cannot stop technological improvement and more is coming faster and faster. So...our political leaders decided it seems to do nothing about our public schools to get them to perform better and raise the ACT and SAT scores.



    Those are the tests that show realistically how much our children have learned from grade one to twelve. The states' department of education and political leadership know that these two tests are showing bad results, but they do not want to do anything to fix them. So they changed the state test in Tennessee, but they have to wait. If it looks bad, they will just change the result through a translation table called "cut score" that assign alphabetic grades (e.g. A-F) for the percentage scores, like they have done with the old state test, the TCAP. Translating a 45% grade, which would be a big "F" under 60%, to a "B" and celebrate how well we are doing. I can tell you that employers are very upset about this situation.



    Since universities are feeling the effect of the poor quality graduates from high school, we presented our facts to one of them, but found no support of presenting a program to top management. Their responses were political. They hired the previous superintendent from the school district whose ACT performance we charted above, and most likely they want the credit, especially one department, and put that gentleman in charge of improving the performance of surrounding school districts' performance. If he did not do it for the school district locally during his eight years as superintendent, it is very unlikely that he can do it anywhere. The management know-how was missing. It appears that education even in a state university is political, and anything but results oriented based on what its graduates achieve by a fixed number of years after graduation.





    4. THE UNIVERSITIES' DILEMMA

    Our universities produce teachers who are not as good as the high performing countries' teachers are. Students who cannot or will not make the effort to do well in their originally selected major, transfer to an education major because it is easier. In the top performing countries internationally, a master's degree in the single subject is required that they will teach, and the candidates have to be in the top 10-30% of the master's program. After testing the candidate matching to the profession, they are hired and then they teach them the latest teaching methodologies used worldwide. The candidate is an assistant teacher for 6-15 years before they are considered fully qualified as a teacher. Some will argue this from the education department of some universities. We would ask them to explain first why U.S. education dropped to 40th in the last OECD PISA tests in mathematics, AND why a 41 school charter school in New York City called Success Academy Schools is achieving TOP 1-3% results passing even most private schools, with poor, inner-city African American children, when nationally African American children are in the bottom 6%, and some states like Tennessee are producing bottom 3% or less performance for them. Under such conditions, with additional listed references if anyone wishes to improve, it will not happen without recognition of where one stands in a competitive activity.

     

    In the US teacher candidates sign up for a teaching-major four-year degree that covers six subjects and teaching methodologies. The teacher candidates are in the bottom third of the four-year degree programs in a junior college or a university. They are qualified as teachers in less than a year after graduation. Assistant teachers in the USA are typically educated for two years beyond high school.



    Poorly trained teachers in subject knowledge and teaching methodology produce poorly prepared high school graduates, who tend to be poor even in English communications and basic mathematics. Weak teacher curriculum at American universities get students from majors that they cannot handle. In addition, poor student inflow to teacher programs is too common, because teacher reputation in the USA is not good. As in other countries, excellent teacher reputation always follows excellent student performance, as with any product.



    Student results are limited by the training quality of the teachers. Poorly trained teachers in the US create poorly trained high school graduates. It cannot be poverty or minority, because Success Academy Schools of New York perform above most private schools and were made the best charter school in the nation in 2017, with 14,000 poor, inner city black children, and a waiting list of 19,000 families. Consider also as no study on the subject did, that American K-12 education substantially declined during the last 50 years although its expenses skyrocketed. Decreasing education cannot sustain an inflation-compensated income level. It is therefore impossible that the declining U.S. education is not a significant contributor to poverty, especially among minority families. To correct the high school education problem, we must raise significantly the US teacher training programs at our universities toward an approach used by the high performing nations in education first, then let them raise the high school results. To get better students into teaching waiting for an end result will take too much time. Suggest universities to improve their teaching department curriculum and promote it along with the importance of teaching.



    Since universities are feeling the effect of the poor quality graduates from high school, we presented our findings to one of them but found no support about presenting our findings to top management of the university. Their responses were political. They hired the previous superintendent from the school district whose ACT results were poor (chart above on this website), and put that gentleman in charge of improving the performance of surrounding school districts' performance. If he did not do it for the school district locally during his eight years as superintendent, it is very unlikely that he can do it anywhere. It appears that teacher education even at a state university is not results oriented, based on what its graduates achieve by a fixed number of years after graduation.



    As long as we produce poorly prepared teachers, we will get poorly prepared American students into our universities. We further degrade the university graduates, creating a perpetually declining quality in the university output and not just in teaching. The solution presented for this problem is free two-year college education, increasing the cost of education, instead of fixing the problems with K-12 education, because the free two-years become remedial education doing what the K-12 education did not do. It does not solve the bad attitudes that developed during the formative years, and it is doubtful that the two-year education offer will result in enough cost-effective change to improve significantly the poor ACT Readiness that is a very large 83% of a high school graduates in Tennessee. It is K-12 itself that has to be improved. For that to happen, teacher training must be improved significantly. Foreign graduate school students used to stay in the USA, and that made up for the American shortage for highly educated needs in research and development jobs. For the past five years they have increasingly decided to go back home for better opportunities.



    The lower quality student flow into universities increasingly create less educated high school graduates impacting not just teaching, but all majors at the university level, unless the university increases the ACT score requirement for its various majors or puts them into remedial courses as long as two years. They did but teaching is not among those majors anywhere. That trend will not increase the reputation and survival of universities, and will degrade them or even close them given enough time. The revenue pressures will be forcing an increase in student acceptance, also dropping the quality of university output.



    This presents a significant danger to universities, while the damage is still manageable today. If not acted upon, the damage will become as big as it is in our public schools.





    5. TEACHERS' DILEMMA



    So far the way we perform our public education has not changed significantly for close to a hundred years, but the quality of high school graduates has declined. Many nations changed their own systems in every area to become better than others after WWII. We ignored those changes. In fact, we fragmented the system. We made it dependent on the opinion of 13,500 ELECTED school district boards making independent decisions about everything, with the idea that the public's wisdom through the elected school boards will produce the best results. That was a good idea a hundred years ago - perhaps. But today's world is much too complex to leave the quality of education in the hands of an elected sample of the local population.


    We reduced the knowledge with which high school students graduated. When you do that for decades, you are dumbing down the population. Our public schools did that very well. The education system dumbed down the public since 1970 aggressively. We dropped in high school mathematics from the top to 40th place internationally and took no initiative to learn from others to become better. For more than 15 years employers have been complaining about the declining workforce competence, and the fact that our high school graduates cannot communicate properly in English and cannot even do basic math. That is what happens when your funding is guaranteed, there is no management training for managers within school districts and teachers have no interest in becoming excellent by learning from high performing education systems. They would argue with what we just said. How else could the student results be so bad that more than 80% of graduates will become unemployed in a few years?

     


    Good or not, the teachers get the same pay depending on how long they have been working. They do a poor job instead, and those who lose are our children. That is exactly what the charts above show. Teachers do have legitimate complaints about their ability to perform well, and the school districts need to correct these at minimum. Teachers do not have enough authority to handle and assign punishment for discipline problems that disturb the teacher and the class. American teachers have the highest number of class hours IN THE WORLD that the teacher must perform. There are too many tests and paperwork taking time away from teaching. There is no uniform possibility to assign slower students to afternoon hours to catch up as higher performing countries do. Teachers spend their own money for teaching aids and materials to be used in the classroom. There is some unprofessional treatment by central management. There is no expense reimbursement for continuing education to name a few. Management must resolve such issues to teacher satisfaction. Click here for references about US teacher training quality.



    Teacher dissatisfaction with their job is almost three times the national average. This indicator points to insufficient management training in schools or central management of school districts. See the graph below about the Knox County, Tennessee school district.




    Student results cannot exceed teachers' knowledge and ability to teach. School results are limited by the subject knowledge of teachers and their ability to motivate the students. Student scores are the results of our teachers' work. Click here for references about US teacher training quality. US teachers are handicapped somewhat by the largest number of classroom hours in the world, too much testing in especially Knox County, Tennessee beyond what the state requires and too much paperwork that could be automated. Their union is not helpful to resolve such problems. There are excellent teachers and some who would be happier in a different position. Quite a few college students changed to teaching in college because it was an easier major to study. However, teachers need to understand that they, as a group are not as well prepared as the best in the world. That is why we have dropped to 40th in the world by 2016. The superintendent stopped supporting teacher efforts to get a Master's degree: a big mistake. Teacher subject knowledge and teaching methodology needs updating to the top ten internationals' level. They require both the B.S. or B.A. and a Master's degree in the same single subject that they will teach, they must be a good match psychologically to the teaching profession, and have to come from the top ten percent of their Master's class in some countries like Finland. American teachers qualify with a Bachelor's degree in education at most that covers several subjects very lightly. Some obtain a Master's degree and a few even a PhD in Education, but it is rare.

    Why are we wasting our money on public education with an 83-87% failure rate? McDonald's is in the process of replacing 25,000 stores in 2017 with robots that do a better job than our high school graduates. Other fast food companies are doing the same. Our employers feel that they cannot survive using our current high school graduates. As early as 1998 employers complained that high school graduates cannot communicate properly and cannot even do basic math. That is why they are automating with robotics today in 2016 onward. We could safely say that the failure rate of our public school system is higher than 80%. NO OTHER BUSINESS OR ACTIVITY COULD EXIST WITH EVEN ONE TENTH OF SUCH A FAILURE RATE, OR THEY WOULD BE OUT OF BUSINESS. IT IS INCREDIBLY DESTRUCTIVE THAT PUBLIC EDUCATION IS FINANCED WITH THE PEOPLE'S MONEY EVEN FOR A DAY AFTER SUCH A HIGH FAILURE RATE, LET ALONE FOR DECADES.



    SOMETHING IS VERY WRONG WITH EDUCATION ON THE STATE LEVEL TO ALLOW SUCH WASTE OF THE PEOPLE'S MONEY. We, on the other hand, keep financing our dismal public education system, decade after decade, regardless of the result. We do not care about the quality they deliver...that has not improved, with a failure rate above 80%. We have been paying for it with our hard-earned tax dollars, that is the fifth highest amount paid per student in the world. Should we accept such a high failure rate from our high schools, but not from any business or activity? Businesses survive only if their customers are satisfied with the quality of their products and/or services. Schools survive because they get paid regardless of the quality they produce. The same is true with the education department of universities that produce teachers. 80% rotten fruit from the supermarket we would not accept, but we accept this from our public schools FOR OUR CHILDREN?



    There are a very small percentage of American public schools that compare to the average of the top ten countries in education results. The general public simply does not know the truth because public schools present a picture that is better than reality. THEY ARE LYING TO THE PUBLIC. However, you will learn on this website how to find out the facts. Do your homework about the schools for your children, and believe only national test scores for public schools.



    It is time to act and demand much better public education from state leadership. If we do not, our children will pay a terrible price with unemployment.



    A school district OBJECTIVE needs to exist with an annual operating plan to reach that objective, in order to improve our results. We could use an average ACT score for a school district objective, that is 5-10% higher than the previous ACT score achieved, BUT WE DO NOT. Teachers do not want to be measured about the job they have done. School districts do not want to be measured. Elected school boards definitely do not want to be measured. Such objectives do not exist today.



    It is the schools that produce the academic results. Wouldn't it make sense to measure class/school achievement against an academic objective like an average GPA, measured year-to-date every month? Of course it would, but we never measured individual school performance! NEVER! No wonder we have poor performance at any grade level in most schools.



    Let us repeat again. To increase the ACT score, that shows what our children learned, we need to know what is being achieved every single month in each school as a management tool. We have never done such performance measurement monthly or even annually in the individual schools and never created an annual operating plan to reach an objective that is a specific test score achievement. That changes the principals' job. The school principals are the key people to improve education. For that reason, we need to have the biggest incentive compensation for them. Very strange that we do not have that because it is the schools that generate the results. We also never focused management on the individual school's performance. We need to see how each school is progressing every single month and that means that we need to have an objective every month, a GPA objective could be good enough for such objective, that we use to measure on a Year-To-Date (YTD) basis by calculating the ACTUAL average monthly GPA YTD. If we are not reaching the GPA objective in any school in any month, the principal may be able to take action to find out why and raise it to save the year. That is why we need a monthly objective. To set a GPA objective, we need the average GPA for each of the preceding five years per school and per class as tools for the principal's planning.



    As an example, we would suggest a significant incentive award for the high school principals to get them to focus on achieving the ACT and GPA objectives. $10,000, for one or more high school principals who not only meet their objective but deliver the greatest ACT percentage growth during the last fiscal year, and one or more $5,000 award(s) for the non-high school principal(s) who deliver the highest GPA increase beyond the objective that was set. If there is any effort made in any school to cause the school GPA to be higher than by legitimate testing, that school's principal may not be considered for this incentive. In view of robotic entry we would use a ten percent growth from the prior year as minimum growth in the academic achievement objective.



    To get the best results, principals need to be able to change their resources and make quick decisions. To that end, it would make sense to delegate from Central Management, accounting, and financial decisions as long as his budget has not been exceeded, HR decisions about employees, budget preparation, and presentation, and Central Management needs to ensure that the spending difference among schools on a per-student basis shall not exceed 50%. For example, there is no point in allocating 150% more money per student to a school that had very poor performance for more than a decade if that school did not improve its results within three years. There must be a single objective for every supervisory or management position in every school and in Central Management to help achieve the performance objective of their own school or each and every school (GPA) if their responsibility covers several schools and the school district (ACT), if they work in Central Management. We need to raise the ACT Readiness of the school district from 27% only in 2016 of those graduating (only 3% for African American students!) to 80% average ACT Readiness within four years at most. 80% ACT Readiness for ALL minorities as well. Visit Success Academy Schools in NYC who are producing top one percent results passing even most private schools with poor, inner-city African American and Hispanic children only! Also visit Finland for the same purpose and see how one of the best systems in the world works. Three principals to visit each and prepare a report on their return about what these destination schools are doing differently to achieve significantly higher results and what we should implement in our own schools. Nothing is cast into concrete. The objective is to increase education performance. It is very important to try new ways that others tried and you saw working elsewhere with excellent results, if one wants to improve significantly. When one is 40th in performance, it is not possible for such people to come up with methods that will result in significant gains, because they dropped to 40th because their mental preparedness and experience is not at a level where one would need to be to take large enough steps.



    Just to review because it is new, since the ACT is used only in 11th grade: we need a different test to be used by the schools themselves, both monthly and annually, for example a grade point average or GPA. Schools never had an objectives-driven operating plan, although it is the schools that produce the education results. So this is what we need to do, because the dropping of our education quality is now facing aggressive opposition by robotics. Employers want the robotics, because current high school output cannot provide a large enough competitive workforce that is well trained on basics. No wonder! Schools never had to meet performance objectives. That has to change.



    Look at the average year-end GPA for each of five years, and compute their average. Take the average ACT score for the same five years, and compute their average. Divide the average five-year ACT score by the average five-year school district GPA. The answer is the mathematical relationship between the ACT score and the school district GPA. This will give us about plus or minus 10% accuracy when we use GPA tracking to where we are relative ACT performance, and that is good enough for GPA tracking to the ACT score.



    Now take the average ACT score that is your objective for the school district, e.g. 10% higher than the previous average ACT score. Divide it by the mathematical relationship between ACT and the school district GPA. The result is the school district GPA that you want to beat in every school by year end.



    >

    These are the ACT results above from each Knox County high school for the past thirteen years. Too many children are graduating unprepared (NOT ACT Ready).





    WE ARE FACING FOUR MAJOR THREATS AS A NATION CREATED BY OUR POOR PUBLIC EDUCATION

     

    MAJOR THREAT NO. 1 is to our national security (most importantly as a result of cyber warfare), that requires very well educated soldiers, civilians, operators and developers for tools, "weapons", and decision making. Everything is computer controlled for operational and economic reasons. Our electric power grid could be hacked and disabled or destroyed by a better educated enemy. Our technology developments and designs for vitally important things that cost us billions to discover/develop could be hacked and stolen free by a better educated enemy. Intelligent weapons require very well educated soldiers to use them correctly, educated beyond high school. We need a healthy economy (money) to be able to develop the best well-educated people to defend ourselves and to improve our economy. That makes our failing education strategically the most important problem that we must correct. We must change many things like our immigration laws and practices, but most of all, we must improve greatly the poor education of our children urgently. This is how a third world war would begin today, and this kind of activity already started. See: Our educational decline has been jeopardizing our national security.

     

     



    MAJOR THREAT NO. 2 is the impact of poor public education on the entire population since 1970. In 2015 74% of all US high school graduates were prepared only for minimum wage jobs that will be replaced by robotics within just a few years, because these students cannot do even the simplest jobs as required. our education unions and lobbyists and our legislators who worry about losing their jobs, HAVE BUILT A HUGE POWDER KEG BY IGNORING PUBLIC EDUCATION PERFORMANCE. The most dangerous in domestic affairs and education is black student performance, with 95% not being ready for any but minimum wage jobs when graduating from high school nationally (98% in Tennessee). WE HAVE CREATED THE FUSE FOR THE POWDER KEG AND WE ARE IGNORING IT The state Education Department is actively participating in dumbing down the education system with both actions and lack of actions in critical areas. We blame parents when our school performance is poor with all students. Many black students deal with more poverty and single parents than others. Granted that we saw US education dropping since 1970 and that reduced job-required knowledge of today's parents, in turn reducing their family income. As far as bad inner city environments are concerned, Harlem and others in New York are probably the worst in the country. However, a 42-school charter school in New York City's inner city areas produces top 1% results (    Success Academy Schools) with the New York State Common Core tests statewide, beating even most private schools, without parental help. They are achieving this with poor inner city black and some Hispanic children since 2009! They have mostly primary schools and middle schools, now beginning to open high schools as their graduates need them. Why are we not producing the same great result? Why are we not visiting Success Academy Schools to learn how they are doing it? Or better yet, Finland. We should be ashamed of ourselves for the poor public elementary and high school results in general, and especially the black and Hispanic students' results that are even worse, for not doing anything to improve them all. Instead, the above poor results like 98% of black students not being ready when graduating from high school, very foolishly builds a big fuse for the social "powder keg", by not learning from the high performing countries how to teach successfully any demographic group. Not only we produce terrible results for an entire class, school or school district creating at least 3 out of 4 students not being prepared, but we are destroying the future of almost all black children, when the Success Academy Schools' example in New York and especially Finland clearly shows that THEY CAN DO FAR BETTER THAN WE ARE DOING NOW.

     

     



    MAJOR THREAT NO. 3 is to our economy. We compete worldwide with our products and services in all industries. People and companies buy products and services based on their quality and cost. That in turn depends on how well educated each company's workforce is, from research and development PhD's through sales and service, down to manufacturing/production. How well the high school graduates are educated in any company of any country is the most important gateway to a high quality workforce that can create and make/provide the most competitive products and services worldwide. Internationally we dropped to 40th in high school mathematics, and dropped in other subjects as well. That in turn weakened our workforce by dropping their skill level and ability to learn, weakened our product and service competitiveness, and that lowered our national income and tax income. We have lost entire industries to international competition. Initially we lost to lower labor cost, but after a few years they lowered their cost by robotic automation on a larger scale than we did. For example, China replaced one million workers in one huge electronics company alone with robotics to improve quality in 2016-2017. We have been under 3% national income for ten years now, our national debt rose to TWENTY-ONE TRILLION dollars in 2018, on which we have to pay many TRILLIONS in interest. 3% is not a gain. It is only a break even level with current expenses. High school education must be improved very significantly to reverse this dangerous trend, and find a solution for those under educated in the past who will be replaced by robotics with job suitability testing, education for the best job so indicated, and help to get those jobs.

     



    MAJOR THREAT NO. 4 is to a large percentage (60-80%) of high school graduates and today's workforce. New technologies will arrive faster and faster, offering new employment opportunities. The new jobs will require more education and addition to job retraining. The problem is that today's high school graduates did not receive enough education that would lay a proper foundation for the new jobs. With such fast changes, education becomes a lifetime learning effort, which would require a large amount of remedial education to start the new technology-related education for jobs. Unfortunately, our high schools have done a very poor job during the last four decades, making the learning of new jobs based on new technologies impossible for most.



    If we wish to save this sinking ship, we must focus not only the school districts on the right ACT objective that is 10-15% higher than last year's actual ACT score received, but every single school with a monthly, year-to-date academic objective (e.g., GPA) that is also 15% higher than the previous year's actual GPA achievement. We need ACT score school district objectives that are 15% higher than the last ACT score achieved, and we must also have monthly year-to-date academic objectives (e.g., GPA) in every management and supervisory position in every single school, called the Annual Operating Plan.



    SPECIAL NOTE: For the past twenty years many people were of the opinion that the central management of the Knox County, Tennessee school district was bloated. They were correct. We found two standards published about what the maximum size of central management should be. One is the research projects of Dr. Allan Ornstein, Dean, St. John's University's Graduate School of Education in New York City. The other was presented in a letter by the American Association of School Administrators. They both agree that central management administrators and their support staff should not exceed one percent (approximately 95 for Knox County, TN) of the total employees of the Knox County, Tennessee school system (approximately 9,000). The said school district's own published head count for Central Management has been between 300 and 400 people or three to four times the normal size. In view of this huge difference, we requested under the Tennessee Open Records Act a list of school district employees, who are neither directed or performance reviewed by a school's principal or said principal's chain of command within his/her school. That number is above 1350, or 12% of total employees, but we need to examine its organizational structure to decide what the real size of Central Management is. When we know the answer, we will publish it here. There is no question that Central Management is VERY bloated. The question is how bloated it is. We are estimating it to be higher than 8 times normal.



    Personal income levels depend on a person's education, if his/her education specialty is in demand by employers. Poverty is increasing but no one ties it to education's decline. But we certainly tie poor school performance to poverty. It is not a good idea to scream for jobs when one does not have education in a field that is in demand. But there is no screaming for a turnaround in quality of education, to provide a sound foundation in high school to ensure future employment for our children and grandchildren.

     






    ROBOTICS TO THE RESCUE OF EMPLOYERS WHO COULD NOT FIND WELL - EDUCATED HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATES FOR THEIR WORK FORCE DURING THE PAST 10-15 YEARS

     

    A new generation of robotics will replace not just those who are not ACT Ready, but more. It has already started.

    The poor education-created drop in knowledge of our children coming out of high school and a new family of robotics is already creating a major reaction. Many of our companies complained to governors starting 10-15 years ago about the poor education of our children, and having to move if they are to survive where the workforce is better educated. The ACT scores did not improve indicating no change. It is more important than ever for our children to attend schools with a high percentage of ACT Readiness among its graduates. All new technology-based products experience some delays/changes with initial use, generally not more than two years. That includes robots as well. Any such delay will not make any significant change in the 40-45 year working life of today's high school graduates.



    We made the mistake of NOT improving the ACT results in U.S. public education and NOT making most of our children more employable with more knowledge and better attitude for at least the last 50 years. We also turned more permissive with our children, not believing teachers and adults about our children's behavior. We made our children softer and dumbed them down in a world that is getting tougher, with the need for more education by the new, fantastic jobs that appear with each technological change, as old jobs disappear. We blame poverty for the poor schooling, forgetting that almost 50 years of dumbing down education, we actually created more poverty. The only remedy for more income is much more education and a positive, helpful attitude by workers on the job, without any feeling of entitlement.


    The current wave of robots that started in 2016, are non-cognitive, but are replacing many workers in the fast food and other industries. The next wave of robotics are cognitive. They can learn, speak, understand and will replace a large number of professional and semi-professional jobs, starting by 2019. The third wave around 2025 with nanotechnology that will create major cost-reductions and significantly increased performance with artificial intelligence far above average human intelligence. All these will increase robotic performance even higher while dropping their cost significantly within eight years or less.



    When the evidence is there that the objectives and/or operating plans have been incorrect or did not exist, and teachers keep doing their jobs the same way for decades, as is the case, one gets poor performance every time, and poverty cannot be blamed as the most important cause of poor performance.



    BASIC MANAGEMENT KNOWHOW
    IS ABSENT IN SCHOOL DISTRICTS. LET'S SEE IF WE CAN HELP WITH THAT.


     

    A MANAGERS JOB IS TO PRODUCE MUCH BETTER MEASURABLE RESULTS WITH A GROUP OF PEOPLE, THAN THE GROUP COULD PRODUCE WITHOUT THE MANAGER.

    IF THE MANAGER CANNOT DO THAT IN TWO YEARS, THEN CONSIDER REPLACEMENT.



    ELECTED BOARDS OF EDUCATION HAVE A MANAGEMENT TASK. SO DOES CENTRAL MANAGEMENT OF THE SCHOOL DISTRICT. THEIR OBJECTIVE IS ALSO TO PRODUCE MUCH BETTER RESULTS FROM THE ORGANIZATION UNDER THEM EVERY YEAR, THAN WHAT THE ORGANIZATION COULD PRODUCE WITHOUT THEM. THEIR RESULTS ARE VERY POOR AND HAS BEEN THAT WAY FOR DECADES, BECAUSE UNDER THEM FOCUS IS LACKING AND THE OBJECTIVES THEY SET ARE INCORRECT AND INEFFECTIVE. THEY ARE NICE PEOPLE, BUT THEIR MANAGEMENT KNOWHOW DOES NOT EXIST AND WE ARE TRYING TO HELP THEM IN THIS SECTION OF THE WEBSITE.



    One could turn it around and say that a principal or superintendent who did not improve bad performance within two years, and did not make an effort to study and learn how to improve the same as a principal/manager/superintendent, is costing a lot of money for which he/she/they are not providing enough improvement in performance. It is very important to investigate what mistake was made in selecting the person for the management job, so that mistakes are not made in selection the next time, and take steps to replace the person who cannot improve the results. Performance is always measured by the key indicator of performance in a state, the ACT or SAT score. Lack of taking action and making bad decisions under poor performance, is very common in education, and it is a major contributing factor to the current poor performance.



    "All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them."
    Galileo Galilei,
    Italian astronomer & physicist (1564 - 1642)
    Sounds simple but it is not. Who gave you the information? We tend to assume that many in leadership or in our religion, or our wives or husbands do tell us the truth. We also tend to assume that people we don't like for silly reasons, or members and leaders of religions other than ours, or those who belong to another political party than ours, are all lying dogs with such a long nose that they could not cross a garage door sideways. So indeed, discovering truth or its opposite, requires rational, fair thinking and hard work sometimes.


    We would like to describe here what works in management. Any change will cause the management process not to work. However strange it may sound for those who have never worked under achieving a primary objective the following is true. Easy objectives are rarely achieved because people who believe that they are definitely achievable will not put in the effort to achieve the right level of performance. People who are rational thinkers, who take pride in achieving something hard, do rise to the occasion if the objective is a big challenge and difficult to achieve. Such people will intuitively know what needs to be done to achieve the tougher objective and will have the pride to think about what they have to achieve every single day.

    1. Select a "Performance-related" Primary Objective RELATIVE what it was the previous year. It has to be measurable, a number (ACT score is ideal for annual primary objective for school districts); a key indicator of education progress or failure that was not dumbed down; if ACT Readiness is below 50%, the objective should be 10-15% higher than the last score achieved. Where monthly objectives apply (schools), use GPA "year-to-date" measurement, set it for each school 15% higher than last school year's GPA was, and adjust the GPA accuracy every year by the actual ACT/GPA comparison at year end vs. the ACT/GPA ratio that was set at the start of the year.
      • There are several secondary objectives under each primary objective. They would be monthly measurable objectives that are focused on how and what the teachers have to do to achieve much better results with the children. Obviously they have to establish a good relationship with the children to be trusted by them, and they do have to prove to the children that there is a way to learn more, there is a way to figure out why they like or do not like something.


        • Create an Operating Plan. Operating Plan is a list of actions and individual objectives for management and supervisory people for each month, that are supporting the achievement of the ACT objective.


          •
        • The annual ACT objective and the monthly objective computed in year to date fashion, must count as 60% or more of the annual performance evaluation for the individuals with such objectives.


    To improve results, we cannot keep doing everything as we did before. The purpose of the above practice is to enable management and supervisory people to focus their teams daily and via the periodic performance evaluations on what has to be achieved, instead of getting results as a surprise at year end. Reward actual achievement of objectives.

    This all could be a wonderfully enjoyable experience to all, bringing the creativity out of both teachers and students.


    There is an interesting exercise at the start of most management programs. The instructor asks for six volunteers to come up front, and stand in a line NEXT TO EACH OTHER 4-5 feet apart. The instructor whispers something into the ear of the first person, and asks that each person whisper the same message into the ear of the next person. Then the instructor asks the last person to tell the group what the message is, and the instructor tells the class what message was given to the first person. The two messages will be different, sometimes VERY different.

    COMMUNICATION can become the major problem that management needs to solve. It becomes worse if the message is long, verbal only and/or complex. It is a disaster if the parties communicating cannot communicate clearly - a major problem with 75-90% of today's high school graduates. You may assume that you as a manager communicated correctly. But you did not. You may assume that the employee team understood you correctly. But some did not. You have to communicate in writing what you discussed as well, and have your employee tell you what his/her idea is what he/she has to do. Many good employees may have a bad reaction to what you are asking. Their interpretation may be clouded by a bad experience in the past. Be kind. Reassure them. And make sure that they understand what you want done AND WHY. Yes, communication will take more time as you increase the number of employees under you.





    How important is teaching experience for a superintendent? Teachers would say it is very important - if it was high school teaching experience in a high performing school that graduated students with 80% ACT readiness, they would have some credibility. If the school district in question has more than 500 employees, the teaching experience from the US education system would not be of value. Management training and five years of management experience running a 500 employee organization successfully would be of great value. However, teaching experience for five years in a high performing country in education, such as Finland, would be of great value, in addition to the management training and five years of successful management experience heading a 500 employee or greater organization would be very valuable.



    It is very important to define in writing the responsibility and objective of people who work for the manager at all levels, and the manager as well. Discuss such a job description and keep revising it by mutual agreement up to three times. You want to develop people who take the initiative, and do not keep coming to their manager constantly to seek approval. And we want managers who can clearly communicate what they want at all levels. Occasionally mistakes are made. That is all right provided the person who makes a mistake understands what mistake he/she has made. The mistake could be the the manager's if he/she was not clear enough to make sure that his/her employee clearly understood what had to be done by the employee.



    Most of today's high school graduates cannot read or do basic math well enough. It is very tempting to keep messages verbal because it is faster. That makes the life of their employers much more difficult. The above exercise, at the start of this description about management, shows what can happen to an important message if given verbally through others. The larger the number of employees, the more complicated communications become. The real impact of using only verbal communications in an organization that is larger than 100 employees, would have disastrous results. There will be many small or large group meetings to explain things to those working for you, or for making some important decisions that require some discussions up front. There will be discussions about personal performance or decisions that need to be made to name a few. School districts are typically between 100 and 10,000 employees, with up to 4-7 layers of management. The more management layers you have the more complicated communication can become. IT IS VERY IMPORTANT TO TRY TO COMMUNICATE SO WELL THAT THE COMMUNICATION WILL BE CLEAR EVERYONE. BUT YOU HAVE TO TEST IF IT IS SO. Add to that making certain that the right objectives are set, the right operating plan is created, and they all have to be handled professionally - no excuses. Add to that people interaction related problems. That is where management training is most important. People may not do correctly what you tell them, or even write to them for them to do. To make sure they do it correctly, YOU THE MANAGER have to follow up by inspecting in a nice way how the job was done. You will find people who work for you who are very dependable and do a task always correctly, or talk to you first if they cannot do something. Give them as much independence as it is practical. But most employees can be very nice people, want to do well, but may not do as well as their manager expects. Some may not do something exactly as you want it done. Talk to them. Teach them. Letting employees go and hiring a replacement can actually cost as much as 12-18 months of their compensation. But trust your judgement. If you tried to talk to them for a reasonable time and there is no improvement, you have to replace them, with compassion and understanding, but communicating truthfully. Do not lie.






    There is a unique characteristic within management jobs. With most jobs, if it is not done well, it is known within days that there is a problem, what it is and which person is creating it. If an area is not being well managed, and the manager above that manager is not trained in management, he/she may not even be able to tell that there is a management problem below him/her. People under the untrained manager may have problems getting along or have misunderstandings, everyone is doing their own thing instead of working together, the workers in that group will feel that the organization is a bad place to work. We will refer to this later, and also how a well trained and experienced manager can make sure that it does not happen.




    Let us repeat something very important. If one started a "small" office for a professional service, with 20-25 employees, some employees will focus on getting revenue so that all employees can get paid, and the rest are supporting those who get the revenue. One person would have managerial duties as well. When one starts such a business, it will be very challenging: organizing everything, reminding all employees about what the objectives (or jobs) are for each of them, who does what, what their decision making authority is, what we must achieve by what date, solve many people problems and financial problems. And then some day, it MAY all come together, but there always will be new challenges in the management area. Getting problem employees to change for the better, letting go of those who are not working out are very sophisticated and unpleasant problems. Handling them is a management problem/task. Always be truthful about what you need and explain why. One could direct quite easily "who is to accomplish what" in a small organization, but there are some people who could not even do that. They may be excellent working for someone, but not managing others.





    It is very important to catch an employee who has done something well, and thank him or her in public. But if they do something wrong, that should be handled in private. If the employee does not improve, then let him/her go but do it in private. Do not embarrass them, or anyone.



    Next let's imagine how complicated things could get, when you have 200 employees, with varying jobs, and 10-12 people who help the company president to manage such an organization. Now the management task becomes at least 100 times more difficult, and you would be also keeping an eye on competitors, learning from those who are the best, and ensuring that all employees are assigned duties such that the 200 people produce the best possible results, with minimum management. If your employees lie to you about the results, or don't know the academic objective, they can create some problems for you and your entire organization. It will be like not having such an objective, and everyone under such a manager will work like they did for years. Nothing changes, including the results. People deserve a couple of discussions, before any other serious step is considered. Not following an objective religiously and not doing one's best to achieve it is a serious offense and must be treated as such. The manager must find out quickly why that is happening. It is generally an indicator of bad morale being present, and it can spread like an infection. The reduction of productivity as a result can hurt other employees and an entire organization with job losses growing. When finding the sources of such a problem, the manager above that group should talk to the group to find the cause of the problem. But the manager must proceed fast but remain very impartial and fair until the problem or problems are identified. Much of the communication needs to be in writing for the record by the manager before the investigation is over. More than two thousand years ago there was a Roman proverb. "Spoken words just fly away but written words can remain forever". Our communications will need to be in writing so that everything is very clear to employees. Job descriptions in writing, objectives in writing, action or operating plans in writing, policies about what the organization does, have all become more complex to keep 200 people focused in the same direction to get the best results for the entire organization. In addition, you have to know what each of them are doing. It is actually very helpful to walk around and speak to employees to get a feeling for morale and job satisfaction so that the problems found can be corrected. Happy employees who are well suited to the job, will do very well. On the other hand employees who are not happy in their job, cannot do well.






    It is time now to mention something very important. Employees are motivated by open recognition of a job well done, by pleasant working conditions, by management who care about them. By money, not so much. People get used to more money in a matter of a few months. But a salary cut will demotivate them deeply. To get good results, employees need to love their jobs. That can happen only if they are psychologically matched to the job, with tests like the Strong Interest Inventory correlated with the Myers-Briggs Psychological Inventory. I worked for a company that did that, and it was a wonderful place to work. But even under such fantastic circumstances, without some weekly or monthly reminder the results will not be best, because the great majority of us human beings can be easily distracted, and then there is too much pressure toward the end of the year to produce good results. But that is always less than what could be the result. The reminder cannot be set by the worker and his/her judgement. And such a reminder must originate from the top of the organization. Without having a system in place that reminds everyone what to achieve SPECIFICLY weekly or monthly, EVERY EMPLOYEE WILL COME TO WORK EVERY DAY AND WORK THE SAME WAY EVERY DAY, PRODUCING THE SAME RESULT. FOR RESULTS TO IMPROVE, WE MUST CHANGE THE WAY WE WORKED AND WHAT WE WORKED ON EVERY DAY. Obviously that will happen only if the employees are willing to change when requested by the boss. We are not suggesting that the boss may be asking something improper, but something that will enable the worker to create better results. If a worker is not willing to do that, then you need other workers who will be happy to do it as requested.





    Top management of a school district should set only two top objectives for the fiscal year. One for performance, and another for not exceeding the budget in spending. We will only cover this process for Performance. A school system is responsible for teaching the students. It is the student's knowledge we want to measure. The ACT test measures accurately what children have learned from grade one to twelve. A school district in Tennessee has already been using the ACT. You should now go to the READINESS portion of this website by linking to it right here, and return when finished. When performance is so bad that less than 30% of a school district is ACT Ready, You should set your ACT Objective 15% higher than the previously or last achieved ACT score. A 15% increase may look impossible, but it is possible with a healthy stretch. You have been teaching the same way for a long time. You have to find more effective, better ways of teaching. Just read about the high performing countries' education system, and read some US evaluations of how to teach better, but with major focus on how Finland, Singapore and Hong Kong are doing it. Take some tests to find out if teaching is the right match as a vocation for you, and find out what is if teaching is not ideal. Everyone should be in a vocation where they will be happy. The low expectation goals to date produced terrible results. Low expectation goals do not grab people's attention, and motivate no one. We have to change the way we have been doing things, and that applies especially to teachers as well as management. Although teachers are lower in some ways than senior managers, those working in schools are in charge, and those working in Central Management support the schools so that the principals and teachers can achieve far better results. This is not negotiable. Just look at the last ten years' very poor ACT results. If anyone disputes that, then they better offer solid commitment FIRST to increase the ACT score 15% per year.




    To continue, the way we work, learn and study has to change for the better, with focus on the schools. The schools must have a monthly performance objective. This could be an average GPA per month per teacher, per subject, per school, could be monthly year-to-date, ending the year 15% higher than the previous year's average.




    Within each school all supervisory people must have a monthly set of objectives within their job that is vital to meeting the the school's monthly objectives.




    WHAT MAKES THE ABOVE OBJECTIVES A WINNER: THE AVERAGE OF MONTHLY OBJECTIVES FOR THE YEAR WOULD DETERMINE THE PERFORMANCE REVIEW OF THE INDIVIDUAL. IF SOMEONE HAS ONLY AN ANNUAL OBJECTIVE, HIS/HER RESULTS WILL DEFINE THE PERFORMANCE REVIEW OUTCOME FOR THE INDIVIDUAL.




    WE NEVER FOCUSED ON PERFORMANCE. WHEN PERFORMANCE IS POOR LIKE OURS IS, ONE CANNOT DEFOCUS FROM FOCUSING ON PERFORMANCE 100%. THOSE WHO OPPOSE IT OR WANT TO DILUTE IT CARE ONLY FOR THEIR OWN INCOME AND DO NOT CARE ABOUT ALL THE CHILDREN THAT PUBLIC EDUCATION IS DESTROYING.




    Imagine now an organization with 2000 employees. There are quite a few managers to guide various areas of the organization, and the top management job along with most management jobs becomes much more complex. If that person did not have management training, he/she WILL NOT EVEN RECOGNIZE THAT THERE IS A PROBLEM AND IT WILL GO UNSOLVED. Or in addition does not even know how to set objectives and create an operating plan in all operating units of the organization, success will be impossible. This is a very common situation in education districts. That is what any school board needs to understand very well, and the superintendent or a principal has to be very good at being the best advisor to his/her direct employees, appreciate their problems and be of help in assuring that they improve. Education programs are a great investment, and should be completed before that employee is promoted into a position that needs such training. The worst thing that happens most of the time is people not wanting to admit that they don't know how to do something and do not learn on their own what they do not know. Many companies and people fail because of it. So the job of management and related education is extremely important if one wants to succeed. No one is perfect. Not you and neither am I. It is hard sometimes, but it is important to treat others like you would like to be treated. Expect honesty and an honest day's work. If that is not happening, it is time for a friendly discussion to find out why.





    THERE ARE TOO MANY MANAGERS IN EDUCATION (superintendents, principals) WHO HAD NO MANAGEMENT TRAINING AND EXPERIENCE. THAT CAN BE A GOOD REASON FOR POOR PERFORMANCE. THEIR RESULTS ARE POOR, THEIR SUBJECT OR JOB TRAINING IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH, THEY DON'T LIKE THEIR JOBS BECAUSE THEIR BOSS DID NOT HAVE ANY MANAGEMENT TRAINING EITHER AND THEY DON'T KNOW HOW TO RESOLVE PEOPLE PROBLEMS. ALMOST ALL DO NOT HAVE THE APPROPRIATE OBJECTIVE, AND EVEN MORE NEVER USED AN OPERATING PLAN, IMPROVEMENT IN RESULTS CANNOT TAKE PLACE. BUT THEY HAVE TO BE PERFORMANCE REVIEWED. THE PERFORMANCE REVIEWS ARE DONE BASED ON HOW ONE'S BOSS AND HIS/HER FRIENDS LIKE YOU, SO WELCOME TO POLITICAL MANAGEMENT AND BAD PERFORMANCE AND OTHER UNPLEASANT THINGS IN RELATIONSHIPS. EVERY DAY FOR DECADES, SUCH PEOPLE CAME TO WORK, DID THE SAME THINGS THE SAME WAY IMPROVING NOTHING. THE RESULTS HAVE NO CHANCE OF IMPROVING. THAT'S WHAT WE HAVE IN THE GREAT MAJORITY OF SCHOOL DISTRICTS. IF ANYONE DOUBTS THIS, WHY DID WE HAVE SUCH POOR RESULTS FOR DECADES? AND WE ARE LYING TO THE PUBLIC THAT WE ARE DOING WELL. ANY PERFORMANCE LOOKS BETTER IF YOU EXPERIENCED ONLY BAD PERFORMANCE. WE HAVE TO DO MUCH BETTER THAN THAT.







    An ACT 25-26 average score is a reasonable minimal goal for survival today until about 2019-2020 to improve ACT Readiness from a current 27% of a graduating class with an ACT score of 21.1, to 70-80% of a class within four years WOULD BE VERY IMPORTANT. Teachers have to be very good at knowing how to do that, and their performance review should reflect how good they were in improving their students learning. If we started in September 2016 to use proper ACT objectives in Knox County, TN, a reasonable performance evaluation for teachers along with an operating plan that focuses all supervisors and managers in each of the K-12 grades in every single school on academic objectives, possibly a GPA, provide continuing subject and teaching methodology education for teachers and institute zero tolerance discipline management, it would take minimum four years to see increases in ACT scores to 23 average with ACT 25 as a goal, with parallel improvement in all twelve grades. We were at only a 27% ACT Readiness of graduating students in 2016. That is a poor result. We should be above 80% ACT Readiness, for which an average ACT score of 25-26 is necessary. There can be no improvement when performance is this low, without the right ACT score objectives. That did not happen in September 2016 with the board of education, and it is uncertain if it will ever happen in places like Knox County, Tennessee. Unfortunately there are many school districts like that.






    The correct measurable ACT score objectives and operating plans were not in place as of 2018 AUGUST. WHAT IS EVEN MORE IMPORTANT IS THE FACT THAT WE NEVER HAD AN ACADEMIC OBJECTIVE, WE NEVER HAD EVEN A 5-10% GROWTH FROM THE PRIOR YEAR'S RESULT, WE NEVER HAD THEM IN EACH AND EVERY SCHOOL WHO PRODUCE THE RESULTS, AND IT IS THE SCHOOLS THAT PRODUCE THE RESULTS FOR THE SCHOOL DISTRICT. THIS WAS AND IS A VERY NEGLIGENT PRACTICE. The point we want to make is that any corrective action will take 4 years minimum, and we are still not starting it. WHAT KIND OF POLITICAL LEADERSHIP DOES THAT? NOT A GOOD ONE, OR NOT ONE THAT BOTHERED TO GET EDUCATION ON HOW TO SOLVE MANAGEMENT PROBLEMS. Experts are forecasting that by 2025, a third of current jobs will be replaced by robots, (reference on spreading of robots), depending on how fast we can improve – or become even worse. All of this depends on the district's elected board. They are responsible for operating decisions. There will be significant public reaction because of the poor job the boards and superintendents have done in public education, and even worse, our law-makers and governors could have solved this problem years ago but did not. Waiting at this point will significantly increase the damage.

     



    The first decision is about what test result is the best, impartial indicator of good or poor achievement at the end of 12 grades and end of each year, in order to measure where we are, where we want to be at year end (objective) and what our goal is 4-5 years out. In our opinion the ACT score is the best impartial and most secure indicator of results. We would feel that because we are so low in performance, we should plan the objective at last year's ACT score, plus ten percent to give us a solid reference point-based objective. The last ACT score and readiness percentage indicates where we are when creating this plan. TO KEEP IMPROVING RESULTS, AN ORGANIZATION MUST HAVE A COUPLE OF PROPER OBJECTIVES AS DESCRIBED FOR THE ENTIRE ORGANIZATION, AND ALSO FOR THE SCHOOLS, AFTER ALL, THEY ARE TO PRODUCE THE HIGHER RESULTS. THE SCHOOLS MUST HAVE MONTHLY ACADEMIC OBJECTIVES. BECAUSE THE ACT IS GIVEN AT THE END OF HIGH SCHOOL, A GPA MEASUREMENT MAY BE THE BEST AND COULD BE USED EVEN FOR CLASSROOM OR INDIVIDUAL ACHIEVEMENT MONITORING. IT CAN BE AUTOMATED QUITE EASILY. WE SIMPLY CANNOT ACHIEVE BETTER RESULTS WITHOUT MANAGING GROWTH BY OBJECTIVES IN THE SCHOOLS WHO GENERATE THE RESULTS AND EDUCATE THE CHILDREN. WE SIMPLY CANNOT CONTINUE AS BEFORE.



    Very strangely, we do not have and NEVER did have objectives and operating plans for the individual schools. We do have the requirement for objectives on the school district level. That is unusual because it is the schools themselves that produce the results, and in such a case management tools and attention should be focused on each school. They are the ones who produce the results and they could optimize the operating plan to their own school's specific needs. Not having an operating plan for each school is like not having an operating plan at all. No one can deliver against an increasing objective unless one has an operating plan per school WITH MONTHLY MEASURABLE OBJECTIVES THAT ARE A KEY INDICATOR OF SUCCESS OR FAILURE FOR THE ORGANIZATION.



    The school objective must be a monthly objective for each of twelve months, so that any problems that prevent the delivery of one month's objective is known right away so that action can be taken to remedy the problem.



    Objectives in a growing environment are realized only if an operating plan was created per school to meet them. To create the operating plan, identify the academic performance-related objective of every supervisory and management position in each school, and also in Central Management. The operating plan for the school district will be a collection of all operating plans from each school and Central Management.



    During this entire process, everyone and especially the superintendent should be making sure that Central Management employees do not exceed 1% of the school districts total number of employees, and any excess money should go to the schools to produce better results.



    In terms of importance and allocation of resources the priorities need to be:

    • 1. Schools, teacher testing for match to the profession, teacher subject and methodology training, management training for principals, delegation of budget management, HR, IT, accounting to senior principals with feeder school principals reporting to them.


    • 2. Appoint a team of principals to research how the best in the world achieve their superior results, learn from it and implement what one learned instead of resisting change.


    • 3. Resisting change is deadly in any organization. But one cannot just accept change from those who never succeeded before - yet we do.




    When an organization has vague and immeasurable objectives like we do, it will have no incentive to do anything better or to work harder or smarter. In such a case, the results of performance evaluations will become political relationship-based, because the objective created by the board is not measurable. The result of such a situation is always based on politics, and not on work results. That means that the effort everyone makes is driven by what their boss and people above their boss think about them, instead of improvement in student results driving the organization. That makes focused performance impossible at all levels and opens the door to continuing poor performance, because actual accomplishment to improve the results will not be the basis of performance evaluations, as we experienced to date. Performance evaluations will depend in such a case on how much a worker is pleasing his/her boss, the boss's friends and family. Achieving good results through his/her job performance becomes less important. This could become very unpleasant for an attractive female worker as an example, and the business or activity will not do well when useless objectives are used. Therefore a performance objective must be measurable, expressed in a number, and it must be the most important indicator of success or failure (e.g., ACT score and GPA). A second objective is generally keeping the spending under a monthly, year-to-date expense budget. Having more than two or three objectives on the top level for the elected board, the superintendent, and principals can easily dilute the importance of the objectives. Management experience is so lacking that major inefficiency indicators are not even recognized, resulting in even worse results, because organizational politics rule instead of grade achievement. The state has no oversight of such things.




    LET US EXPLAIN SOME TERMS AND FACTS FIRST. EVERYONE IN PUBLIC EDUCATION MANAGEMENT PLUS TEACHERS SHOULD UNDERSTAND THESE CLEARLY

     

    Let us try to explain a very dangerous problem we are facing with public education in Tennessee and other states as well. The example I will use is Knox County, TN, an average performer in Tennessee. The performance is ACT-based. Let's cover a few important definitions first.

    WHAT IS "A.C.T. READINESS"?

     

    • "ACT Readiness" is a term that ACT, the testing company, uses. It means that a high school graduate will have a 50-75% chance to complete only the first year of a tech/vocational training course, or first year of college. The "ACT Readiness" percentage of graduates as a group is based on a four-subject benchmark ACT score that establishes as needed based on what employers need, but…
    • Excluding a science or engineering program's first year, because such programs require a 26-27 ACT score in math, much higher than the ACT Readiness benchmark in math. This area represents many jobs.
    • In 2016 many fast food providers decided to replace their workers with robotics, e.g. McDonald's decided to convert 25,000 stores fully because its pilot studies showed that customers preferred to deal with the robot, better communications, faster service, good attitude, additional significant profitability, at a total cost below minimum wage.
    • Robotic involvement in the workforce will raise the company's productivity above those we graduate from high school. For close to 20 years employers complained about many high school graduates dropping in performance instead of improving. If we do not make a very big effort to reverse this situation, virtually all of the next generation will become unemployable if they were attending public schools.




    WHAT IS A "GOAL"?

     

    Both a GOAL and OBJECTIVE have to be specific, measurable, and be the best indicator of how much our children have learned since first grade, like the ACT, with a test that has not been dumbed down. A GOAL is important in that one has a definite desire and strong drive to achieve the GOAL typically in 3-5 years. A GOAL is generally not associated with something that one must achieve, like an OBJECTIVE. Things like Vision Statements and GOALS are almost the same, but it is silly to mandate them as they do in education for superintendents. One may or may not have a great inner desire to achieve something, but they need the job. That is what we observed in education. On the other hand in some other industries, such as in high technology, you find many people who are very enthusiastic, happy, and have a dream about what they would like to accomplish. If it is mandated, in most cases one will not write what they really want to achieve, but write something that sounds good. Many think that GOALS and OBJECTIVES are the same. They are not.





    WHAT IS AN "OBJECTIVE" TO ACHIEVE SOMETHING?

    An objective is something very important if one wants to increase results. It is specific, measurable, a key indicator of success (or failure), like an ACT score that is 10-15% higher than the last one achieved, something you want to and must accomplish during your fiscal year. The complexity of achieving an objective increases enormously as the number of employees increase to achieve it. It is a very important part of management know-how and communications. The ACT is a very accurate indicator of what a child learned from grade one to twelve. It is given annually. However, if one wants to achieve an ACT target, we would need a fairly accurate indicator of performance on a monthly basis. A monthly, year-to-date GPA could serve that purpose with the same annual growth rate as the ACT objective. The reason for a monthly objective is important, because the task of objectives is to focus an entire large group of workers on what we must accomplish that year, and to focus them at least on a weekly basis using a monthly set of academic achievement objectives.

    Look at the bad results for many decades. It will not change unless our school boards, teachers, school district management and the state Departments of Education wake up and learn what academic results the individual schools achieve every month, in each school district, vs. each school's monthly objective. That simply cannot be done, unless monthly objectives are planned and what academic result each teacher has to achieve in each month in their classes, with all actions (and tools and/or materials that are needed by the teacher), and objective that must be achieved each month. The objective is a percentage above the previous year's ACT score. If the increase is small, e.g., below 5%, it is not very motivating. People respond best to an objective that is a healthy stretch. We would suggest a bonus as an incentive, for principals and teachers who achieve greater than 10% growth that is the same percentage (above 10% growth that they achieved) of their salary as the achieved growth percentage above 10%. This is just an example.



    WHAT IS AN "ANNUAL OPERATING PLAN" TO ACHIEVE AN "OBJECTIVE"?



    If the objective is correct as described, this is the next most important thing in planning and managing each and every school to its monthly objective (GPA), in order to meet the school district ACT score objective for the school district. One cannot get good results unless all "operating units that produce results" or all schools, have a monthly GPA objective, year-to-date, so that if we discover a problem one month in achieving the year-to-date GPA, action can be taken immediately to adjust the plan to ketch up with or exceed the original operating plan. Under the operating plan, every single management and supervisory employee must have a monthly action plan with measurable objectives that support directly the achievement of their immediate organization's objective. For example, supervisor within a school must have Monthly Year-to-Date GPA objectives that the school must achieve, plus another objective based on what the supervisor has to accomplish every month to help that school objective's achievement. It sounds complicated, but it is not, and it can be very easily automated with a database management program. If the supervisor or manager cannot detail in writing what each of his/her people should achieve each month, then you have the wrong person in their position.



    New technologies will appear faster, bringing more unemployment and new jobs that require more education. We need a much better foundation in high school for students to survive this, more education especially in mathematics and science, plus music and art education to aid right hemisphere brain development for critical thinking, with 80% ACT Readiness, plus lifelong continuing education to be able to do well with such future changes. Other countries have been doing this for more than a decade. You can view all the backup data at my website, education.org. This is not a pessimistic view, it is a best case view based on what we are doing today. We have been heading in the wrong direction with public education for a long time.

    To survive, we have to be competitive internationally with US products and services. We sell most of our products or services internationally. It is a big part of our national income. Product and service quality and pricing depend on the quality of the workforce. Our workforce has been declining both in numbers and capability as the high school output declined. The quality of the workforce everywhere depends on the knowledge of high school graduates the most. Our high school graduates dropped to 40th recently in international math tests of 15-year-olds (OECD PISA) of 73 countries. We just keep dropping because our high school output is poor and getting worse. Why? Because our elected boards of education will not set appropriate ACT objectives and operating plans in every school to ensure GPA progress to achieve the ACT objectives. One does not need such objectives in a school system that performs well, meaning 80% of ACT Readiness of high school graduates and not just 20-50% ACT Readiness. Our situation and its management is poor, and such a condition cannot be reversed without the right key success indicator-based objective. People who have not been management trained extensively and have not managed at least half as many employees as the school district has for at least five continuous years may not appreciate this fact. Hopefully they will appreciate that the time for experimentation IS OVER. We have been doing education the same way for a hundred years, it generates declining results, it did not work.



    To turn education around, an ACT objective has to be a 10-15% increase from the last ACT score achieved (at 21.1 in this Knox County example), as long as the ACT Readiness in graduating classes is under 80%. Only two top level or primary objectives are needed for the board and superintendent. One is the ACT score (academic) objective. The other objective is achieving it within the approved budget (the fiscal objective). All other objectives are secondary to these two and apply to positions under them, and must be supportive of these two primary objectives. If your objective is not measurable in the key indicator of success, such as an ACT score that shows what students learned from grade one to twelve, then our school districts will not improve.



    Whatever we do, if we do not have the right objectives and operating plan to achieve it, we will continue failing. We are leaving four out of five children behind today. The public is paying for it and they deserve better from boards of education and legislators. Set the right ACT objective and operating plan to meet it please! The boat is sinking and we don't even know where the holes are…or worse…we are keeping it a secret.



    A BLOATED CENTRAL MANAGEMENT USES AN ENORMOUS AMOUNT OF MONEY. THEY ARE 5-10 TIMES NORMAL SIZE (NORMAL IS 1-2% of total number of school district employees). WASTING MANY MILLIONS OF DOLLARS.

    DID THAT MANY EMPLOYEES EVER IMPROVE THE RESULTS?

    NO. NEVER.





     

     

     


    Central Management is TEN times bigger than what it should be according to published standards in education. That's many millions of dollars that could produce BETTER RESULTS IN THE CLASS ROOMS. The school results are terrible and that is where real help is needed. Is THIS acceptable to you? Is THIS what you want for your children and grandchildren? We would expect Central Management and the Board to know this better than anyone else. How can such a situation keep going on?


    As one looks at all graphs above, do they show a well managed school operation delivering excellence to all children? "Excellence for all children" is the slogan of the Knox County School system in Tennessee, that actually delivered 80% of graduates in 2016 who are NOT READY or prepared to learn a job that would make them self-supporting, according to ACT. That means a hopeless future, replaced by robotics. Does the Knox County school district in Tennessee tell the public this truth or a different story? We have seen many different school district slogans. For example "It's about kids!". They are all either untrue or totally unclear. Board members are elected from the public, they assume that the superintendent and his/her person know what to do. AND THE SUPERINTENDENT AND HIS HUGE STAFF DO NOT. THE TENNESSEE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION IS OF NO HELP TO THE ELECTED BOARD MEMBERS OR TO THE PUBLIC. Tennessee is 40th-46th depending on whose survey one looks at. Our African American children achieve BOTTOM 3-6% ACT READINESS. We suggested a visit to this school because there are many things to learn from a high performer, but there was no interest during the past two years after several suggestions. We have 17,000 school districts in the USA. Knox County, Tennessee is a little less than average and will spend about $500,000,000 during the 2017-2018 school year, to put 80% of our graduating children on the road to nowhere. And that is their version of "EXCELLENCE FOR ALL CHILDREN."





    IMPORTANT Never tolerate in the organization the promotion of an individual who had poor results in his previous job. IF YOU DO, IT WILL EFFECT THE ENTIRE ORGANIZATION UNDER SUCH A PERSON. Poor results = poor job done. He or she must know first how to do a good job on the lower level before consideration for promotion. Giving a higher level job to a person who did not do well is incredibly irresponsible, BECAUSE YOU HAVE ALREADY SEEN HIS/HER INABILITY TO DO A LOWER JOB WELL. Such a person will not be able to do an acceptable job. This is one of the biggest signs of incompetence of two people: the one who was promoted and the one who did the promotion. Obviously, neither cares nor knows that they are hurting the students. The board's most important task is to raise the poor results. AGAIN, the state Education Department needs to ensure that this happens.

     

     

    The superintendent in Knox County, Tennessee announced meetings to be held with the public at each high school in early 2018 to determine what the high schools should achieve. Please note that since 1970 our education cost skyrocketed per student, but the ACT results dropped into a very poor area. We dumbed down the public and we are still doing it. As of 2016, we dropped to 40th place in the world in high school mathematics. At the same time, we filled the public's ears with false stories about how well we are doing. There can be no doubt that fifty years of reducing high school graduate knowledge actually dumbed down the public. 39 other nations passed us. AND NOW WE WANT TO LISTEN TO THE PUBLIC ABOUT CREATING A STRATEGIC PLAN THAT WILL IMPROVE THINGS? THAT IS JUST A METHOD FOR THE OLD SYSTEM TO DO ANOTHER 3-4 YEARS AND NOT BE ACCOUNTABLE FOR THE BAD RESULTS THAT THEY ARE CERTAIN TO GET - AS BEFORE. No high performing nation in education does such a foolish thing as " creating the need to consult with those you dumbed down to find out what you should be doing" All high performing countries have one team of experts to make such decisions, not the public, and the results of this method are already known to be the best. What this false method is doing is trying to ingratiate themselves to the public and to have someone else to blame, the public, if things work out as poorly as in the past. The results will be worse. Such a move wastes a lot of money, time, and there is nothing strategic about it. It is not a plan that produces good results. Such people make organizations fail.



    WE ARE FOCUSING THE SCHOOL DISTRICTS ON ACHIEVING A 90% GRADUATION RATE. NOT A GOOD A.C.T. SCORE, BUT A 90% GRADUATION RATE. WE PUSH MARGINAL STUDENTS TO BE PROMOTED TO THE NEXT GRADE. WE PUSH THE TEACHERS TO PASS CHILDREN WHOSE GRADES DID NOT QUALIFY THEM TO PASS.

     



    We are achieving it by dumbing down the state test with "Cut Scores", that raises grades by not requiring as much knowledge as without Cut Scores being established. It is done by pushing teachers to change grades to advance marginal students, and by requiring or tolerating objectives that make no sense, and all without an operating plan that successful management to objective-achievement requires. But the state Education Department does not explain how to use such tools, and such poor preparation destroys what knowledge remains after the state's Education Department ensures with its decisions that the school districts can only be unsuccessful. We have to examine the CONSTITUTIONAL legality of such behavior by the state Education Department. Without high ACT readiness (only 20% of graduates WITH A DIPLOMA being ACT ready, trainable for a job, the 90% graduation rate is meaningless).

     

     





    IS THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION DOING SOME THINGS THAT MAKES THE STUDENTS' FUTURE MORE DIFFICULT?
    It is not unreasonable to ask how a state education department and school district management can exist for longer than two years without solving a reading problem that is normally solved by grade three. It is not unreasonable to ask what a governor is doing, allowing the destruction of most of our children's lives by not fixing this problem.

    How can anyone learn with poor reading skills? The reading skills are needed to learn through grades 4 to 12, and then for jobs that could at least supply minimal living standards. If the reading skills are not reached before grade 4, and for most children it is not in Tennessee, what do you think will happen?

    How can poor reading skills last for more than two decades and not be solved by the elected school boards and state education management? The great majority of schools solved it worldwide in early elementary education.

    Who was responsible for this problem going on unsolved? The governor in every state?

    It is certain that if we had teachers who were well trained in teaching reading, this problem would not be present. Why was the teacher training gap ignored for two decades?

    Who was fired for not solving it within a reasonable time like two years? Not one person! It is not a money problem since we are one of the highest spenders per student in the world.

    This is a big problem in Tennessee and in some other states. How can any governor or state superintendent of education claim that he/she cares about the education of our children, if he/she leaves office without solving this problem? Not solving it is not a sign of caring about the education of our children and their survival.

    Absolutely shameful and unbelievable.



    IT APPEARS THAT "CUT SCORES" CREATED BY THE STATE EDUCATION DEPT., ARE ACTUALLY CUTTING OUR CHILDREN'S KNOWLEDGE. PLEASE LET US KNOW IF THIS IS INCORRECT. The state's objective is to graduate 90% of the graduating classes with a diploma. There is pressure to get teachers to pass borderline students and to allow them to pass from one grade to the next in order to graduate as fast as possible, even if they do not qualify with their scores. The objective is not the level of knowledge gained as shown by an ACT or SAT score. There is a very low 21 ACT score that was identified as the academic goal more than 5 years ago for 2020. There is no pressure to achieve that, other than maximizing those who would squeak by to graduate from high school. The knowledge is not as important, graduating is more important, shows the actions of state leadership. My apologies, but given the two choices: 1. 90% graduation rate, and 2. An ACT score objective that is 10% higher than the previous one, which was refused with any percentage growth, clearly indicates that the state and the teachers' majority is interested in the 90% graduation objective, BUT DOES NOT WANT TO BE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE KNOWLEDGE THAT OUR CHILDREN HAVE WHEN THEY



    It is the quality of the results to date that attract the best people for any job, and create the highest respect for those who do the job. Bad results get mostly employees who come from the bottom third of educational establishments according to the literature. Among the top international countries in education, in one country teachers come from the top 10% of those with a Master's Degree program in the subject that they will teach. The rest come from the top 30%. That alone makes a huge difference. In the USA, teachers come from the bottom 30% of university graduates from a four-year teaching program. Click here to read about it.


    We saw a few decades ago that many of our children who did poorly in high school could not even make change for a customer in a store, unless the cash register computed the change for them. The idea was injected into the public that "all children are not college material" so they may use a calculator in school, even for a test. It was not a smart thing to do. It interrupted brain cell interconnections (neuronal firing paths) in the area of the brain that deals with mathematics. Higher mathematics being connected to many other fields, the calculator use likely has a broader negative impact. We also blame poor performance on poverty. We can prove it of course. But we are forgetting something very important. We have been dumbing down public education for 50 years. Income improves when the worker's education rises and he/she can get a better job. If we dumb down people over 50 years, their income will decrease. Most likely the education decline over 50 years is one major cause of our children getting a poor education. Discuss with a neurologist if desired.



    At the same time another idea was injected into the public. It was the idea that we need to encourage children by telling them that they are very smart and can do anything, because they are the best, and we are the best in the world. All of this, to save their self esteem. Children are not stupid. They know very well that they are not understanding what some teachers are talking about in the boring class they must attend. "Boring" because too many of their teachers changed to a teaching major in college because their chosen major "was too difficult and required too much work". Boring because to excite students about a subject, the teacher needs to be excited about and be very well educated in the subject, especially in math and the sciences. Instead they learned far less per subject, covering about six subjects in the "education" major.

    Teacher training also became a weaker program of study since 1970 in the USA. (Read about it here). It did not improve like it did in many countries after WWII. After a few years the countries that passed us started requiring a BS and MS degree, both in the same subject they needed for teaching. Potential teachers had to be in the top third of the university's grade performance (in Finland the top 10%), whereas in the USA teachers came from the bottom third of university performance. In 2016 the OECD PISA tests in mathematics for fifteen year old school children showed that American primary and secondary education deteriorated to 40th in the world, the bottom of the industrialized countries.

    We used to be on top in 1970. The ACT Readiness benchmarks indicated that as of 2016, 83% of the graduating children in Tennessee, and 76% nationally were not prepared for further learning that would protect their employability. In addition, we will also show that such children deteriorated so much that they cannot communicate properly in English, cannot do basic math and have a bad attitude on the job as high school graduates, according to employers.

    IMPORTANT: During all these years we became one of the highest spenders in the world per student. We were also shocked to find that the poor results were created mutually by the state Education Departments and the school districts. High school graduates feed the work forces for every industry. It is the workforce that creates the high quality products and services at a competitive cost. Look around. Most products that you see were designed in other countries today and made there as well.

    Our competitiveness suffered greatly, because we allowed our public education to deteriorate so much that it has been degrading the US workforce and our ability to compete worldwide. Education expenses per student rose quickly to the 5th highest in the world per student, but the student results deteriorated to 40th in mathematics compared to other industrialized nations during the past 50 years. The ACT and SAT scores measure student results. No governor in those 50 years stopped the skyrocketing education expenses because education was not improving and changed some operating practices to raise the key indicators of performance, the ACT and SAT scores. But what really happened is worse. Before we go there, please look at the chart below, and ask questions until you completely understand the information in this chart.




    AN INTERESTING SET OF QUESTIONS




    IMPORTANT: The states and school districts are pushing students to graduate on time regardless of whether they are ready or not, in order to show that 90% of them graduated. It does not matter to them that more than 80% who graduated are not prepared well enough to get a job, and will be replaced by robots by 2023. What this policy accomplished was the pushing of children into the next grade as soon as possible, damaging their education, even falsifying test grades to do so, on instruction by higher management. Is this a smart thing to do? After all, parents care about their children graduating with the knowledge that will allow them to get a job or get into job training or a university to get a much better job with a secure future. Isn't that right? If we targeted and focused on the achievement of an ACT score that is 10% higher than what we achieved before, instead of focusing on a 90% graduation rate, wouldn't the graduation rate go up? Of course it would.

    Free two-year college state programs will not have much impact BUT COST US MORE MONEY. Measure them by what percentage of graduates from such a program take the ACT again and qualify as ACT READY. Public education as it is, creates many bad study habits, bad attitudes, and insufficient brain development making studying anything new more difficult. Why we are not correcting some fundamental problems starting with pre-school is very strange, considering that it is decisions made at the school district and state education department level that create the bad results. Correcting bad habits and attitudes that developed during the formative years cannot be corrected with our old education practices. It is the education system from pre-school through elementary and high school that needs to be made competitive with the top performing countries, and that requires a systemic change. We created this less than useful system and now we are acting as if it cannot be corrected -- as we implement practices that make it work less?

    CUT SCORES, THEY APPEAR TO BE THE MOST "EFFICIENT" WAY FOR STATES TO DUMB-DOWN STATE TESTS: State tests are created by any one of five large companies that specialize in test creation, with professionals with a Master's degree in each subject and grade level of the test, to match exactly the specific subject as defined by the curriculum for the students in a state. THEY ARE LEGALLY COMPLIANT TO MEET THE CURRICULUM, AND THE STANDARD GRADING SYSTEM. In other words, 90-100% correct answers are the same as an A grade, less than 60% correct answers are an F grade. After a state test is published as a new test for the requesting state, the school districts of that state have to wait for a year or two until the state Education Department test runs the test to see how the state would appear on the new test. Remember that the test covers what the curriculum requires exactly. If the results look bad, which they do in all cases, then the state decides to change the passing percentage THAT IS normally 60%, to a lower percentage in one or more subjects, to allow for more children to pass and eventually to graduate. These passing percentage point changes are called the "cut scores". As with the old TCAPs in Tennessee, 45% correct answer was not to be an F, but a B score. This is the most efficient test to dumb down our children, and it is done not by school districts but the state education departments, with the approval of the governor we assume, in order to show good grades for the public, while reducing the education level of the graduating students. The State of Tennessee and other states also changed the old state test, at a total expense above $200 million. They had the students take it but they decided not to publish the results. Instead, they postponed its introduction and they are working on "making it better", better for using "cut scores" which will "align our children's progress toward the future ACT results to make the ACT scores better". Let us translate. "They are dumbing the state test down with "cut scores" to raise ACT results in years ahead." What!!?? Which is a fabrication, it is not true. The truth is that they are dumbing the state test down, so that instead of showing failing grades, they will show passing grades to satisfy the school's image, the parent and the child. Even with the curriculum having been minimized since the 1950's, the child's knowledge will be reduced enough so that robotics will prevent the child from ever getting a job.

     


    That brings us to a very interesting question. The ACT and SAT tests measure what students learned from grade one to twelve. We are one of the largest spenders per student in the world and we produce the worst result with high school graduates among the industrialized countries. We have education committees in every state senate and house. Did any of these state congressional education committees proposed and had passed any new laws or change in laws that caused the SAT and ACT scores to increase and grow? Please let us know, because we found none! NOT ONE SUCH PROPOSAL IN ANY STATE! We could find nothing that would raise these tests that show what our children learned from grade one to twelve. Why? A few lawmakers told me that being a legislator is their job for life and if they upset the education lobby, they will vote for someone else to replace them.

    The availability of more sophisticated robotics since 2016, with a declining cost and increasing capabilities, is of major concern for today's students and workforce because most high school graduates (40-97% are NOT ACT Ready per ACT) are poorly educated. Many employers cannot find potential employees, who are educated well enough to do the job. ACT's testing shows that 83% of today's graduating class in Tennessee is not prepared to complete even the first year of a job/technical training program or the first year of ANY college program to qualify for a job. The same is true for 94% of African American students who earned a diploma. Such poor performance by our public schools has been creating almost three million such children per year nationally for several years now to weaken our workforce, with such children not being able to compete with robotics and likely to be unemployed for the rest of their lives. This high percentage cannot communicate properly in English, cannot read well enough, cannot even do basic math and if that was not enough, they bring a bad attitude and a feeling of entitlement to the job they get. Robotics can do a high quality job for which they are designed every single time, 24/7, except for 2-4 hours/month for maintenance. Any job that is repetitive, short or long cycle (the time one cycle takes to do a complete job), will be replaced by robots. Any job in a hazardous environment will be replaced by robots. Today's high school graduates are becoming significantly more expensive than robots, and human beings in general will not be able to match the speed and job-quality of robots. This is not a new development. We have known about this since the late 1970's. Unfortunately the state Education Departments did nothing to improve our school districts.



    THE IMPACT OF ROBOTICS ON JOBS: Prior to 2015, it was the low-end jobs in manufacturing mostly that were replaced by robotics and software automation. As of 2017 robotics are advancing rapidly to replace all low-end jobs. The deteriorating public high school performance has become a primary concern of all employers. Artificial intelligence (AI) passed average human levels in 2015 and it is a major component of robotics. AI itself is about to become part of all applications making them easier and faster. Technology expenses dropped, making some robotic solutions much less expensive than hiring people with less education than the job requires. Robots can take many forms other than a walking and talking toy. Robotics will keep advancing higher by 2020 and beyond. That means that children with a high school education only, as education is being provided today, will not be employable longer than a few years. According to ACT, 83% of those in Tennessee, and 74% nationally in 2016, who graduated with a high school diploma are not prepared for more than a minimum wage job. Nationally that is close to three million children PER YEAR. That is a terrible result. Among African American graduates more than 95% are not prepared. THAT IS AN INCREDIBLY BAD AND STUPID RESULT. Robotics is not the reason for all this. Our poor public education is. Robotic automation is a technology that will constantly keep improving almost 100% of low-end jobs, progressing to higher level jobs through the coming decade. There is another technology that will be here by 2001 called nanotechnology. It will revolutionize manufacturing of everything, reducing manufacturing costs as much as 80%. It will create everything with 1-100 nanometer precision, with layers of material structures that are the thickness of 1/20,000th of a hair cross section. It will accelerate enormously the use of robotics, materials science, medicine just to name a few. It will make invisible flying and self replicating robots a reality, and it will create an enormous amount of jobs. But those job will require more education. Many countries passed us in pre-school, primary and secondary education to increase the science and mathematics knowledge of high school graduates very significantly. They will be able to retrain to the new technologies. But our state leaders and Departments of Education dumbed down secondary education, the curricula as well as state tests, that will create too large a gap in required knowledge for the many new technology jobs. Even today, they just keep dumbing down our public education system. WE HAVE A BIG PROBLEM AS A RESULT.

     



    Naturally, there are many excuses for such poor result but a charter school chain in New York City, Success Academy Schools, is passing even most private schools! It has been scoring top one percent with its poor, African American, inner city children AND the education management people are not willing to visit them from Tennessee to find out how they are doing it.

    Do not push children toward a vocational decision. The brain is not sufficiently developed for that until they become at least 18. What they need for the future is at least a 25 ACT average, and a lot more math and science than what they are getting in high school today. By the way, Charter Schools are also public schools, and they are not taking money away from traditional public schools as many may try to tell you.



    THE IMPACT OF ROBOTICS AND NANOTECHNOLOGY ON JOBS


    Prior to 2015, it was the low-end jobs in manufacturing mostly that were replaced by robotics and software automation. As of 2017 robotics are advancing rapidly to replace all low-end jobs. The deteriorating public high school performance has become a primary concern of employers.

    Artificial intelligence (AI) passed average human levels in 2015 and it is a major component of robotics. AI itself is about to become part of all applications making them easier and faster. Technology expenses dropped, making some robotic solutions much less expensive than hiring people with less education than the job requires. Robots can take many forms other than a walking and talking toy. Robotics will keep advancing higher by 2020 and beyond. That means that children with a high school education only, as education is being provided today, will not be employable longer than a few years. According to ACT, 83% of those in Tennessee, and 74% nationally in 2016, who graduated with a high school diploma are not prepared for more than a minimum wage job. Nationally that is close to three million children PER YEAR. That is a terrible result. Among African American graduates more than 95% are not prepared. THAT IS AN INCREDIBLY BAD AND STUPID RESULT. Robotics is not the reason for all this. Our poor public education is. Robotic automation is a technology that will constantly keep improving almost 100% of low-end jobs, progressing to higher level jobs through the coming decade.

    There is another technology that will be here by 2001 called Nanotechnology. It will revolutionize manufacturing of everything, reducing manufacturing costs as much as 80%. It will create everything with 1-100 nanometer precision, with layers of material structures that are the thickness of 1/20,000th of a hair cross section. It will accelerate enormously the use of robotics, materials science, medicine just to name a few. It will make invisible flying and self replicating robots a reality, and it will create an enormous amount of jobs. But those jobs will require more education.

    Many countries passed us in pre-school, primary and secondary education to increase the science and mathematics knowledge of high school graduates very significantly. They will be able to retrain to the new technologies. But our state leaders and Departments of Education dumbed down secondary education, the curricula as well as state tests, that will create too large a gap in required knowledge for the many new technology jobs. Even today, they just keep dumbing down our public education system. WE HAVE A BIG PROBLEM AS A RESULT.

    Naturally, there are many excuses for such poor result but a charter school chain in New York City, Success Academy Schools, is passing even most private schools! It has been scoring top 1-5% percent results with its poor, African American, inner city children AND the education management people are not willing to visit them from Tennessee to find out how they are doing it.

    A third of Tennessee's high school graduates did not even meet Tennessee's low graduation requirements in courses that are prerequisites for a diploma (Click here for details)!

    That means bad management with no controls to put it mildly and virtually no oversight of importance of the state Departments of Education.



    This is in addition to one of the worst education results per the ACT test that shows more than 80% of the graduating high school students in Tennessee do not know enough to be trained for most jobs.


    How can we be so negligent? How can that happen? It happens when the Tennessee or other state Education Departments do not pay attention to the way the school districts do their jobs and how external events are changing to effect employers' needs. We focus on and push children (and even change their grades) to graduate, even on the state level, and do not focus at all on ACT or SAT test achievement. It is damaging our school children, about 3,000,000 every year. They graduate from high school, but do not know enough as a result of their schooling to survive.

     


    More than 70% of high school graduates with a diploma nationally (more than 80% in Tennessee) achieve such a low result that they will not be able to work any future job, then the outcome can become a devastating surprise. Why didn't any governor change that practice to focusing on achieving specific ACT test scores that are 10% higher than the last average ACT score achieved?

     

    We believe that it would not be unreasonable to investigate the education establishment for fraud committed against both the public and the states and federal government, along with forensic audits that will show financial abuses.

    Why do we have bad results in public schools? High technology businesses are growing if well managed, in a highly competitive environment. The successful ones want to know and find out what their customers need and why. They find out without delay what their competitors are doing and are honest with themselves to recognize where they stand against competitors with any new development. No one guarantees them money to keep operating regardless of how good a job they do. They understand management as a science very well, as well as their jobs. They focus on what their customers need. If they do not do all this very well relative to their competitors, they will not stay in business.

     

     

    Our education system has been in competition for several decades. Unfortunately, that fact goes unrecognized. Like any activity in a competitive environment, we must improve or we will have to pay dearly for our inattention to date. Our schools' product, the student, has to be competitively educated compared to other countries' best schools because high school graduates in any country will end up in the workforce. The workforce develops, makes and services the American or foreign goods and services. Our companies and industries are competing worldwide with all products and services. If any company's workforce is not educated well enough compared to the best in the world, their products and services cannot sell as well and will not appeal in price and performance to those who buy such products in any country. Our high school education dropped to 40th in the world in mathematics, a most important subject, and that is why we see the best products in most areas from other countries right here in the U.S. We lost entire industries because this fact went unrecognized. To be competitive, high schools should compare their results to the high international performers not only in their own state or country but to the best in the world, and should do everything mentioned in the paragraph above that businesses do to survive. THAT is the problem with our education system. We have not changed the way we do things in our schools for a hundred years. Other countries changed and passed us. In 2015 we dropped to 40th place in high school mathematics in the world.

     

     

    Our teacher training programs are weaker at the university level than those in the top performing nations in education (click here for details). We must improve it significantly. Without that, our K-12 education cannot improve enough. The education system must change completely to be competitive with the best in the world if we are to regain our economic strength.

     


    DANGER! We all tend to not notice if something is happening right in front of our noses, very slowly over many years. Since 1970 education expenses skyrocketed, but the test results went down. BUT THERE WAS AN INCREASING FOCUS ON GRADUATING AND HAVING A DIPLOMA IN THE HAND, BUT THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE GRADUATING STUDENTS WENT DOWN. We wanted to do something fast. But giving the children knowledge with an outdated teacher force takes a long time. THIS WAS GOING ON FOR ABOUT FIFTY YEARS, AND DURING THOSE FIFTY YEARS THE SPENDING PER STUDENT SKYROCKETED. BUT THE KNOWLEDGE DROPPED AS EVIDENCED BY ACT AND SAT SCORES AND EMPLOYEE SATISFACTION WITH HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATES. The state focuses school districts on achieving higher graduation rates instead of higher scores. That is like us going to the Olympics, and the Olympic Committee decided to award medals to all those who finished, but nothing for those athletes who finished first, second and third. The teachers are pushed every month about the promotion rate of students from one grade to a higher one. They are pushed in some schools to even change scores and grades on some students so that they will graduate on time. The parents don't mind that little Johnny graduates instead of failing. So little Johnny graduates on time - without enough knowledge to be employed. THIS IS AN INCREDIBLY FOOLISH STRATEGY IF THE STATE WANTS EMPLOYABLE CHILDREN TO GRADUATE FROM HIGH SCHOOL. THE TEACHERS ARE PUSHED SO HARD THAT THEY ARE EVEN INSTRUCTED TO CHANGE TEST SCORES. THE RESULT IS THAT THE ACT SCORES REPRESENTING THE STUDENTS' KNOWLEDGE SUFFER, AND 83% OF THE GRADUATING CHILDREN ARE NOT "ACT READY" STATEWIDE. THEY ARE UNEMPLOYABLE. THIS IS SO STUPID THAT IT BOGGLES THE MIND. IF EACH SCHOOL DISTRICT DID TWO THINGS: 1. GPA OR A.C.T. OBJECTIVE THAT WOULD BE 10-15% HIGHER THAN THE LAST YEAR'S GPA PERFORMANCE, 2. STARTED IMPROVING TEACHERS WORKING CONDITIONS AND INCREASED THEIR SUBJECT EDUCATION, THE ACT SCORES WOULD INCREASE AND THE GRADUATION RATE WOULD GO UP AS WELL EVEN IF THE 10-15% INCREASE IS NOT ACHIEVED. SOMETHING IS NOT RIGHT WITH THE WAY WE TEACH IN TENNESSEE. MAKING THE TEACHER'S JOB MORE DIFFICULT IS NOT THE RIGHT WAY. NEITHER IS THE TEACHERS' CLAIM THAT THEY ARE BEING FORCED TO TEACH TO THE TEST. HOW DO THEY PROPOSE TO FIND OUT IF THE STUDENTS LEARNED SOMETHING?


     

    "Never underestimate the power of: stupid people in large groups!"

    George Carlin


    Examples: approval for students to use calculators in our schools; state education departments creating "cut scores" to raise scores while dumbing down the students; having the requirement for objectives that are meaningless and/or unmeasurable, AND CERTIFYING TEACHERS WITH POOR PREPARATION ARE EITHER INDICATIONS OF STUPIDITY ON TOP OR PLANNED DESTRUCTION OF THE NEW GENERATION THROUGH POOR EDUCATION.



    We have an unusually high level of poverty in the U.S. Increasing education is the only way out of poverty. However, poor education is the best way into poverty. Since 1970, our public education declined, increasing poverty.


    Our investigation shows that the declining education reduced the possible income progressively during the last 50 years, with poverty increasing especially for African American children. Let us repeat: INCOME LEVELS ARE EDUCATION DEPENDENT. THAT EXCLUDES A SMALL NUMBER OF CHILDREN FROM WEALTHY FAMILIES WHO REFUSED TO DO A GOOD JOB IN SCHOOL. THE GENERAL REDUCTION IN LEARNING SINCE 1970 AS THE EDUCATION SPENDING ROSE, OBVIOUSLY DID NOT RAISE PUBLIC INCOME BUT REDUCED IT. THAT HAD TO BE A MAJOR CONTRIBUTOR TO OUR UNUSUALLY HIGH POVERTY LEVEL. WE CAUSED IT BY IGNORING EDUCATION WHILE OTHER COUNTRIES IMPROVED IT AND PASSED US. THAT IS HOW WE DROPPED TO 40TH WORLDWIDE IN HIGH SCHOOL MATH.

  • A school system called Success Academy Schools in New York City has been producing TOP ONE PERCENT TEST RESULTS WITH POOR, AFRICAN AMERICAN AND HISPANIC INNER-CITY CHILDREN, PASSING EVEN MOST PRIVATE SCHOOLS! The children they are educating are from the worst inner city area of the nation, with poverty and single parent families who have to work low paying jobs to support their children, yet Success Academy Schools is delivering excellent results with those children. They have 41 schools with about 14,000 students, and they have 19,000 families wait-listed with their children. Clearly they must be doing many things right. Yet the Knox County, Tennessee elected school board members, who are paid $20,000-25,000 per year without term limits, and their school district spending now half billion dollars per year with the above bad results, are NOT willing to visit the Success Academy Schools in New York to learn how to achieve much better results or send others to learn how to produce those excellent results. DO YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS? IT MEANS THAT THESE BOARD MEMBERS DO NOT CARE ABOUT OUR CHILDREN, IN ADDITION, TO NOT HAVING ANY IDEA ABOUT HOW TO IMPROVE THE EXTREMELY LOW SCHOOL RESULTS.

     

    We are showing on this website conclusively why the public education system was and is unwilling to learn to improve. It's poor management that dumbed down our children's education as well as our state tests during the past 50 years, while their spending skyrocketed per student. THE MONEY IS GUARANTEED TO BE THE SAME FOR PUBLIC SCHOOLS TO BE AT LEAST THE SAME AS WHAT THEY RECEIVED THE PREVIOUS YEAR UNDER TENNESSEE LAW, UNCONDITIONALLY. TO MAKE IT EVEN WORSE, THERE IS NO PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF TEACHERS BASED ON ACTUAL STUDENT RESULTS IN THEIR CLASSES. What other job exists that guarantees your income, and the performance review is based on four one-hour visits to your workplace per year to observe you? There is not a single objective about increasing the education results when our results are only a very low 27% ACT Readiness when it should be 80% of those who graduate. But your academic achievement results with the children do not count. No governor stopped this destructive behavior and spending since 1970 to date and did not establish changes that would raise the ACT Readiness percentage more than 5% best case, the test that was not dumbed down in the past. That increase has not happened yet and would be insufficient with the last ten year's trend. Governors need to get the school system fixed from grade 1, instead of spending more millions patching the bad results with two free year's of education.

     

    We are training children today for jobs of 50 years ago, and we are not doing it as well as we did then. Robotics can do a high-quality job in environments where the jobs are boring for a human being and highly repetitive. They will replace humanity in such minimum wage jobs within 2-3 years. Robotic capabilities will improve fast to be better than human beings in more sophisticated better-paying jobs, especially if we do not make our public education better. If we do not enhance our curricula (higher math to include Calculus 1, Reading performance fixed, all three science courses to be increased with more advanced data, add music and art back to enhance right lobe brain development, that is key to good decision making, with teachers focusing on future jobs, and do a much better job teaching) the great majority of children will become unemployable. That is the decision that our political leaders must make. That decision should have been made at least ten years ago, but so far they have not made it.

     

    Comment by the former superintendent J.M. in 2015 (Knox County, Tennessee) about Knox County having a "solid B" performance, TCAP, the Tennessee state test. It is easier than the ACT and therefore its scores are higher. But the typical scores on the TCAP were in the 35-45% (percentage of correct answers) range. Clearly, that is a failing grade. The percentage score reflects student knowledge correctly. To make such poor scores "look more acceptable to the public" and to graduate children faster, the Tennessee Education Department came out with something called "cut scores", to make poor scores look good. The cut scores are a "conversion table" that converts a 35-45% low score to a "respectable" B grade. We wonder why we decided not to fix and make the education system more rigorous because tests are always designed to test student knowledge on the basis of the curriculum for a given grade. This way, we are short-changing the student. They become unemployable in greater numbers as a result. We are changing the Tennessee state test to a new one and stopped using the old TCAP. We are told that we cannot use the new test for two years. Why? Because the state has to determine first how to set the new CUT SCORES on the new test. We have been dumbing down the population for many decades now, since long before 1970. The older generation sees the result of this dumbing down. They must be horrified when talking to most high school graduates.

     



    "Learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change. And the most pressing task is to teach people how to learn."

    Peter Drucker, 1909-2005,
    Father of 21st Century Management By Objectives

    The changes in science and technology are coming faster, but not in our schools. We teach the same old things, the same way we did 50 years ago. 39 countries changed and passed us as of 2016.





    Our universities (teaching degrees) and public primary and secondary schools need to teach what is needed for future jobs following their high school graduation. Instead, they teach what was appropriate 50 years ago, with teaching methods we used 50 years ago (e.g., compare the U.S. vs Finland's education system). Robotics replacing many low-end jobs was known more than ten years ago, but the U.S. universities' education departments did not change their curricula yet as of 2017 in the high school subjects even today. The great majority of our high school graduates cannot speak or read or write properly in English, cannot even do basic math, but robots can. The international trend for teacher training is to complete both a BS or BA and MS or MA in the same subject they would teach, graduate with the Master's degree in the top 10-30% in their Master's program, be identified as the right match for the teaching profession, then hired and learn the latest developments in teaching methodologies. Almost all customers preferred to deal with the robot at McDonald's pilot test for robotic automation, instead of dealing with a human employee, and McDonald's decided to fully automate 25,000 stores. Teacher training at our universities needs to improve significantly, as well as the management of our school districts in order to achieve an average ACT score of 25 or better if we want to succeed.

     

    74% of our high school graduates are not prepared well enough to be educated for future jobs. A new generation of robotics will bring many benefits for us but it will replace poorly educated high school graduates and workforce members within three-to-five years. It was our responsibility to ensure the quality of our education system. No one can do that for us. Internationally we dropped to the 40th place in high school mathematics from the top in 1970. Our public education declined before 1970, as our spending skyrocketed per student. The USA is now the fifth highest spender per student. Our national debt also skyrocketed to $20 trillion dollars during the last ten years, as our national income declined because our poor education weakened our workforce. Just look at where the products you are buying are coming from. We as a nation must be competitive worldwide with our products and services in all industries in order to survive. Our competitiveness depends on how well educated and experienced our workforce is, and that in turn depends on how well prepared our workforce is coming out of high school.

     

     

    The ACT or SAT tests measure what children have learned from grade one to twelve. They are given annually in grade 11 of high school. They would be excellent for setting an annual objective to meet a specific score that is 10% higher than what was achieved in the previous year. They are ideal because the objectives must be a key indicator of success or failure, both, and they have to be measurable with numbers. However, to meet an annual objective, one needs monthly objectives in the individual areas that actually produce the results. Those are the individual schools. They each must have a monthly objective to achieve each month or year-to-date each month, a result that is 10% higher than last year's actual result for the same time period in the same school. A grade point average or GPA could be an effective measurement for this purpose. I can assure you that we are up against an education system that has never done anything like this and never measured individual performance as a measurement criterion in our schools, and as a result never compared themselves against the best in the world and learned how they achieved their high results to become better. Education cannot improve until we do so. More about operating plans later. They are also vitally important to make sure that the correct objectives are achieved. There is no way to improve the poor performance of the past without such measures. About 60% of the US high school graduates use the ACT for end of high school assessment. We would like to show you how to find out what these charts mean, and how they compare with what you read and heard about your schools' performance.



    The problem could be solved, if the public was made aware of this dangerous situation to ensure that the needed action will be taken by the school districts. Our results were so low in 2017, that a greater than 10% improvement would be needed in every future year for ten years to get the ACT readiness of graduating students from the current 24% to 80% minimum. THAT COULD BE DONE, BUT NOT WITHOUT CHANGES IN THE WAY WE TEACH OUR CHILDREN AND MANAGE OUR SCHOOLS.



    Our children's and our nation's success or failure depend on how good an education our children get from our public schools. Why? Because our high schools feed our workforce or higher education (who also feed the workforce). How well educated and experienced our workforce is has a major impact on how well they can design, make and support the competitive products and services they created.

     




    THE HUGE GRADUATION (88%) VS. JOB READINESS (27%) GAP

    HOW AND WHY ARE OUR CHILDREN DUMBED DOWN IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS





    A few decades ago, all children who graduated from high school and received a diploma, were ready and prepared for job training or a university. What kind of education are our children getting if there is a huge difference between those getting a high school diploma (88% of those who entered high school), but only 27% of the graduating class who are prepared for job training and further education?



    Why brag about 88% graduation rate when 83% of those who entered 9th grade are graduating with a diploma, BUT are unprepared to become self-supporting or to obtain more education to be so. Something is very wrong when we call this " EXCELLENCE FOR ALL CHILDREN". The school district is not talking about educating our children well.



    Low to medium compensated jobs will go to robots. New technology-related jobs will require more education. To be prepared to retrain for them within six-twelve months, the high school curriculum would have to be compatible with the international high performers (more advanced mathematics, sciences, and include art and music).



    Why don't we show as high school graduates with a diploma, only those who are prepared to survive in this century like other nations do?



    Why are we comparing ourselves only to domestic school performers when we, the US, dropped to 40th place in the world in high school mathematics? We in Tennessee are a lot lower than that. AND COMPETITION IS INTERNATIONAL BECAUSE MOST COUNTRIES SELL THEIR PRODUCTS INTERNATIONALLY, THEIR WORK FORCE CREATES THE PRODUCT, AND THE WORK FORCE QUALITY DEPENDS ON THE QUALITY OF HIGH SCHOOL EDUCATION THEY RECEIVED.

     


    WHY ARE WE HIDING OUR POOR ELEMENTARY AND HIGH SCHOOL PERFORMANCE FROM THE PUBLIC WHO ARE PAYING FOR IT HUGE SUMS?
    FIX IT INSTEAD!


    In 50 years we did nothing to fix it such that the A.C.T. scores would show significant growth, instead of dropping like a stone. We paid one of the highest expenses in the world per student! Instead, 39 countries whose cost of living is higher than ours, but education spending is lower per student, left us in the dust in high school mathematics! It is time to hold people responsible for such a poor job and for the destruction of our children's employability as a direct result!








    "Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."


    Albert Einstein





    BLOATED CENTRAL MANAGEMENT
    A BIG PROBLEM

    This is a huge problem-creator in large organizations above 1,000 employees. The same in education districts, but it goes unrecognized. There are many smart and well-paid employees in Central Management. They notice when their job is not needed, and embark on activities to justify their survival. The easiest for them is to go fault finding all over the organization. If top management is not management trai9n4d and experienced, which is common in education districts, such excess employees create a multitude of internal problems politically. There are specific organizational operating ratios that define the maximum size of central management. They exist in education management as well, and we present those standards here as well. One source is the American Association of School Administrators. The other is the result of a research project under Dr. Allan Ornstein, former dean of the Graduate School Of Education at St. John's University, an excellent private university in New York City. Both are presented below. Dr. Ornstein wrote more than 50 books on education management exclusively, and published more than 2,000 research papers on the same subject.

     



    Keep central management small (less than 1% of total school district employees in administrators or employees who have people reporting to them since titles can be changed), and delegate as much decision making to the individual school principals as possible to increase the ACT results. There are two formal references for this. One is the American Association of School Administrators, read it here: "Consider the actual staffing pattern in public schools. U.S. Department of Education data show that total central-office administrative and professional staff represent less than 1 percent of the total staff of public school districts. Principals and assistant principals add only another 2.4 percent to this figure, according to data published by the National Center for Education Statistics". Decades of history shows that our bloated central management did not achieve any improvement in the poor results. It would make good sense to transfer the excess millions of dollars spent in central management to improve education in the schools, as soon as possible.

     


    The other authority about the size of Central Administration is Dr. Allan C. Ornstein's Research on Education Management Program below. Dr. Ornstein recently retired as Dean of the Graduate School of Education at St John's University, a highly respected private university. Dr. Ornstein published more than 50 books on education management and more than 2,000 research papers on education management. His conclusions are in agreement with general management practices.

     



    CONCLUSION ON CENTRAL MANAGEMENT STAFFING FROM THE TWO HIGHEST LEVEL SOURCES IN THE EDUCATION FIELD IS THAT WITH THEIR SUPPORT PERSONNEL INCLUDED:

    CENTRAL MANAGEMENT SHOULD NOT EXCEED 2% (TWO PERCENT) OF THE TOTAL SCHOOL DISTRICT EMPLOYEES.

    WITHIN THE SCHOOLS, THE PRINCIPALS AND ASSISTENT PRINCIPALS PLUS THEIR SUPPORT PERSONNEL SHOULD NOT EXCEED 2.5% (TWO AND A HALF PERCENT) OF TOTAL SCHOOL DISTRICT EMPLOYEES.

    IT IS VERY OBVIOUS THAT WE ARE WASTING THE MAJORITY OF THE BUDGET ON EMPLOYEES WHO HAVE NO IDEA ABOUT HOW TO DO A JOB CORRECTLY. THAT IS WHAT THE RESULTS INDICATE.

     

     



    The actual pages of the referenced book can be examined here for the second reference by clicking here.



    All Central Management employees, meaning all school district employees who do not work for a school and whose performance evaluation is not performed by a school principal or the principal's staff, should not exceed 1% (one percent) of the school district's total employees. The Knox County, Tennessee school district exceeds this limit by more than eight times! Such an increase represents $35-75 million dollars that could be producing much better results in the classrooms.

     


    These references are based on USA averages. It should be remembered that the USA dropped to 40th place in mathematics for 15-year olds in the world in 2015, and that makes us significantly less efficient than the top 10 nations in education. They are managing with much smaller central management, than what is recommended by the American Association of School Administrators (less than one percent of total school district employees including both administrators and administrator support employees).



    Between 1995 and 2014 Knox County, Tennessee students increased only 14% but administrators increased 130%. The spending would have been more appropriate in the classrooms. BUT THAT IS NOT ALL. Administrators hire people to work for them. The real increase ends up 650-900% instead of an increase of 130% if they hire 4-6 people per administrator for only a 14% increase in students. However, with this huge increase in management, the ACT results dropped like a stone setting an all time low record in 2013 with a score of 20.2! ACT Readiness reports indicate that as a result more than 80% (statewide 89%, nationally 76%!) of those students who enter 9th grade are ready only for minimum wage employment, the types of jobs that will disappear. It is common knowledge in management that if you increase management numbers beyond the standard operating ratios, managers (administrators) will start justifying their management positions by actually creating problems through fault finding, interference with other areas, playing politics because real objectives do not exist. Such efforts hurt results.



    This huge percentage of management increase was not reversed to this day, and it did absolutely nothing but cost a lot of money! So...money is being shifted away from the classroom producing poorly prepared children in large numbers. Management overhead was increased purposefully, but the results dropped like a stone. I am sorry, but the wisdom with which the public's money and these decisions appear to be handled by boards and superintendents is mind boggling. No one in leadership appears to have the wisdom to stand up and reverse such foolish spending.

     

    SCHOOL SPENDING







    COMING EDUCATION AND TECHNOLOGY TRENDS

     

    Robotics are spreading into many different industries, replacing even college graduates, reducing high school graduates' job prospects, since our high schools are graduating poorly prepared children. Too many cannot communicate properly, cannot perform basic math, are not reliable and have a bad attitude. See robotics. VERY STRANGELY the state Education Department appears to be doing some things that dumbs down the students, and we need to clarify such areas as soon as possible.



    Our student performance is limited by how well teachers are educated about the subject they teach, the latest teaching methodologies, and how capable they are to teach, such, that they TURN ON AND MOTIVATE the children to WANT to learn more. If a teacher does not know his/her subject far better than what he/she has to teach and cannot get excited about the subject he/she is teaching, he/she needs to be tested for match to the profession and if he/she is a good match than continuing education would be appropriate to a Master's degree in the subject. It appears that our teacher training is weak compared to many nations. It needs to be improved and working conditions for teachers need to be improved as well. However, improvement in working conditions and income is always difficult to achieve, without measurement of excellent results, and teachers do not want to be measured. See The teachers' challenge.



    "Things not going well with the education of our children" is an understatement.

    What would you do if, in the only hospital available to you, 80% of patients became infected with an incurable debilitating infection and die? And your child is sick, requiring hospitalization. Would you be very concerned? This analogy is better than you think right now. Public schools are the only option for many. Considering dropouts, more than 80% of those children who enter public school in grade 9 are unemployable when leaving high school. Parents should be VERY concerned!

     


    A school's success with students is limited by how well-trained and motivated their teachers are. Some teachers may say that "I have taught for decades but these students just cannot learn!" That's the same as if a sales person said "I have been selling for 30 years, but no one bought." In addition, teacher training in the USA needs to improve both in subject knowledge and teaching methodology, because it is not competitive with the top 20 higher performing nations in education results. Our teachers come from the bottom third of university classes. Our competitors' teachers come from the top 10-30% with a master's degree in one subject that they will teach. IN FINLAND TEACHERS VOLUNTEER FROM THE TOP 10% OF MASTER'S PROGRAMS FOR BECOMING A TEACHER , AND SUCH VOLUNTEERS HAVE AN ACT 32 OR HIGHER EQUIVALENT AVERAGE, and will maintain the same high performance all the way to a Master's degree. The drop in school performance since 1970 in the USA reduced many families' earnings, increasing poverty in the nation. We forget the dumbing down result by state education departments, the loss of jobs and earnings, when we blame the education results on poverty.

     



    Another contributor is school district boards of education not wanting to learn what to do and why, and we have been creating less and less educated people for five decades now or maybe longer. The states' education departments did not or cannot provide appropriate operating guide lines. In the top performing countries, such help is provided country-wide centrally, and not by school district boards. We must correct this situation if we want more employable people.

     

     

    Another contributor is the state Education Department who dumb down the state test that was created to meet the requirements of the state curriculum. They do this with a method called "Cut Scores" to make the test easier to make the student scores higher for the public and to graduate more children. They also do another interesting thing. They require that the elected board establish objectives, but do not prepare a tutorial for the elected boards about what objectives to use, what needs to be monthly or annually, and also what an annual operating plan is, how to prepare one to make sure that the monthly and annual objectives are met. It is a wonderful tool to raise results, IF PREPARED PROPERLY.

     



    We seem to support the philosophy that all decisions must be made by the locally elected school districts' board, because they, as representatives of the people know best what we need to improve education. We have about 13,500 different school districts nationally with elected boards as a sample of the population, and the entire population was dumbed down since 1970 or before. Look at the poor results. In 1970 we were on top in many areas. In 2016 we dropped to 40th as a country in high school mathematics. It is difficult to believe that the old philosophy of neighborhoods offering the best guidance when it is the population that has been dumbed down since 1970. So every single school district must do the work to reinvent the wheel without professional guidelines from the state education departments, or better yet nationally, to work together to reach the same standards to improve performance. What good advice is coming from locally elected boards to improve our high school graduates to be better than other nations? They create lack of focus on the right objective, and that can bring only bad results. That is what we have. It would be difficult to believe that intelligent people did not discover this decades ago, so the interesting question is why the governors did not correct the declining education problem for 50 years since 1970.

     



    We must create an opportunity for better education through vouchers, tax credits and charter schools because public schools are not improving. There must be a function within the state ideally, or within the school district to have actual facts showing to the public which charter, or public or private school (vouchers) produces the best results. Increase the funding in schools that continue to provide better test results, and reduce the funding in those schools that are doing poorly.



    States and school districts must become much better in setting the right measurable academic objectives, like an ACT or SAT score that is 5-10% higher than the last one achieved.



    State guidance of school districts must become much better, the curriculum must be stronger, the teachers better educated with a master's degree in the subject they teach (and with continuing education) and better supported by their management giving the prepared teacher full authority about classroom decisions. Support teacher efforts in the subject they are teaching for a PhD.



    We must educate significantly more of our children with university degrees that are in demand. Not just any degree. That, in turn, depends on how well they do in pre-school, and in grades one through twelve. That is where we have a big problem with the great majority of public schools.



    Teachers need to check all students understanding while they are teaching, several times each day, so that they do not move on with unlearned material that can accumulate and stop that student's progress. We don't check the students' understanding of the material taught with every lesson in the classroom. This is one big difference between us and high performing internationals. For example, in Finland such students are switched to additional tutoring the same day after normal school hours until 6 PM.

     

    Elected boards of education could not develop 80% or more of our children's education during the past 20-25 years to a good enough educated level, to satisfy the needs of employers or universities. We have more than three million open jobs. But employers cannot find well enough educated employees for them. Employers have been complaining during the last fifteen years that our public high school graduates cannot communicate in English properly and cannot even do basic math. Boards of education do not know how to set proper objectives that work or purposefully set improper unmeasurable objectives so that the school system CANNOT CHANGE TO ACHIEVE GOOD RESULTS. They cannot create a good operating plan with proper objectives to improve. The state Department of Education cannot provide guidelines to school districts evidently, as they should. The end result is that in the school districts no one changes the way they do their jobs and the results just keep going down. This could not happen unless the governors, state education and school districts' management DID NOT CARE ABOUT THE FUTURE OF OUR CHILDREN AS WELL AS OUR BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY. IF THEY CARED, THIS COULD NOT HAPPEN.

     

    But the problem is much bigger than that. Neither elected school boards, nor state political leadership noticed a key error. Who educates/produces the students who will be graduating from high school? The schools do. Yet we do not have appropriate easy to understand monthly objectives, that produce good results, GPA-based, and operating plans within each and every school.

     

    There is another big problem as well. Since 1970 school spending skyrocketed, but test results went nowhere. This has been going on for close to 50 years. What is the end result of such a practice for ten years, let alone fifty years, when the international competition has been out-performing our schools? The population gets dumbed down without even noticing it. We dropped from the top to 40th in the world as of 2016 (OECD PISA Tests).

     

    After all this, do we still believe that the best way to guide education is through elected boards that represent the local public? This is a gigantic problem with education laws and management oversight by the state's political leadership and its education department, as well as school districts if the others do not provide it.





    Increasing our children's education is the only way out of poverty. However, poor education is the best way into poverty. Since 1970, our public education declined. That in turn increased poverty and spending to attempt to maintain our living standards.


    >Our elected boards of education are not the only ones who could not solve this problem - and they should not be the ones. This is a huge mistake by governors, state education departments and by the congressional education committees in the states. No one recognizes yet that if you do not plan properly with the right objectives and operating plans, covering the areas that produce the results, YOU ARE ACTUALLY PLANNING TO FAIL. THIS HAS BEEN VERY OBVIOUS FOR DECADES. IT IS ALSO A HUGE POTENTIAL PROBLEM IN LARGE ORGANIZATIONS. We have been doing a very poor job in public education for at least five decades. Did that dumb down the public? Absolutely. Proper objectives and operating plans in schools could have prevented that. Did the dumbing down increase poverty by decreasing income? Absolutely. Whose responsibility was to prevent that from happening: state Departments of Education and governors. Was this accidental or purposeful? Mistakes this large are not made in large organizations. But state Departments of Educations could have made this mistake.

     


    This is not a teacher problem. Some teachers are not suited for teaching. Many are great. School districts do not check that upon hiring a teacher. Too many teachers are discouraged by school district management, instead of being motivated by them. These are big management problems. Most are not interested in learning, like anyone demotivated, whereas in other fields/industries it is very common for employees wanting to learn more, even at their own expense. People who love their job do that. Too many students who could not produce good grades in their selected major in college, transferred to an education major because it was easier. On the other hand, in the high performing countries, they accept only the top 10% performers from the master's level programs for teaching, with a major not in education but in the subject that they would be teaching. That makes a huge difference. There are excellent learning sources out there for our teachers, or students. For example the company we list as an example publishes the best lectures from the best professors in any high school or college subject, and could be an excellent source: The art of teaching best practices from a master educator. Or an excellent company that produced more than 40,000 outstanding tutorials in primary and secondary school subjects, the Khan Academy. Both of these examples had major positive impact on teachers as well as students.


    "Next in importance to freedom and justice is GOOD public education, without which neither freedom nor justice can be permanently maintained."


    James A. Garfield (1831 - 1881)



    A child is born with a 100 billion neurons (special brain cells) in his/her brain. Almost all neurons he/she will ever have in life, unless exposure starting 90 days before conception to heavy metals, certain drugs, insufficient nutrition, cigarette smoke, or genetic abnormalities prevent enough brain cells from developing during pregnancy, creating learning disabilities. The exposure of the child to abnormal family behavior, absence of a loving environment, alcohol, heavy metals like lead in lead paint, continuing exposure of what we mentioned during pregnancy, and drugs will also have a negative impact on the child's behavior and ability to normally develop for life. From birth, brain cell interconnections start developing at a high rate until age 6, and slower thereafter for life. This is how learning, coping with difficulties, behaviors and personalities develop, and this is why the high performing countries create excellent preschool programs to start educating children through games very early in life, from age 3 to 7. We don't do that.

     

     

    We do not prepare children as well for and in elementary school and later high school as other countries. We want to graduate them as soon as possible, and we have cases where teachers are instructed to change student grades for the better. Our elementary school performance ends up very weak, with continuing weakness in reading and mathematics, making high school learning more difficult. This process of insufficient foundation produces the poorly prepared high school graduates, and it makes college and job performance more difficult as well. We must eliminate this handicap by providing excellent preparation for subsequent classes, and stop providing an incentive for instructing teachers to alter scores in order to get more children advancing into the next grade faster, for faster graduation.

     

     

    The state's focus on a 90% graduation rate, instead of focusing on a 5-10% ACT growth is creating this problem. It is not doing the state itself any favors. The graduation rate is not worth more than the ACT Readiness rate which is a function of the average ACT score achieved. Employers do not want children who are not educated well enough. They cannot take years to teach them.

     

    WE ACHIEVE HIGHER GRADUATION RATES, 85-90% OF THOSE WHO ENTERED 9TH GRADE, BUT ONLY 20-30% of them are ready for job training, 80% will be ready only for minimum wage jobs, and virtually all will be replaced by robots in the low end jobs by 2020-2022. Why do this? The 12-13 year education costs us about $120,000-200,000 per child, and for that investment, we get someone unemployable who will need financial support until his life ends? It is interesting that our education did not recognize this problem and acted on correcting it in about 50 years to date. One wonders why it was and why it is ignored: Example1, Example2.

     

    It appears that our leaders have not done anything for more than four decades to raise the most important indicators of education achievement, the ACT and SAT scores. Only 20-30% of our public high school graduates have a chance and only until 2020, to be trained for a better than minimum wage jobs. By 2020 robotics will replace most of the labor force in the fast food and other industries. Instead of only 20-30% of our graduates being prepared, we should be graduating 80-90% of our high school graduates with ACT READINESS, prepared to be trained for a job that provides minimal income for a family of four and the opportunity to obtain more education. Instead, 70-80% of our graduates with a diploma plus dropouts, are not prepared and will be replaced by robots in just a few years. Among African American students, 97-99% of those graduating from high school are not ready according to ACT and will not be employable. However...the Success Academy Schools in New York (41 schools) with poor, inner city, African American children ARE PRODUCING TOP 1% RESULTS BEATING EVEN MOST PRIVATE SCHOOLS.



    Obviously, it is possible to educate children far better than we are doing it, regardless of the color of their skin, without fear of law suits and without tolerating bad behavior. So instead of telling the public a lie about how well we are doing, show them the ACT performance charts we have here, and explain that achieving 20-30% ACT Readiness to be trained is nothing to brag about because those not ready will be unemployable. For that reason we cannot have discipline issues, because discipline problems interfere with the entire class.

     





    URGENT ACTIONS NEEDED IN EDUCATION



    IT IS VITAL TO SHOW THE PUBLIC AND OUR EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS WHERE WE STAND COMPARED TO INTERNATIONAL COMPETITORS INSTEAD OF COMPARISONS ONLY WITHIN THE USA AND WORSE, WITHIN THE SAME STATE. WE DROPPED TO 40TH PLACE IN MATHEMATICS WORLDWIDE IN 2016. OUR WORK FORCE HAS TO BE INTERNATIONALLY COMPETITIVE, AND FOR THAT, WE DEPEND ON OUR PUBLIC EDUCATION SYSTEM TO MAKE IT HAPPEN. THEY ARE OBVIOUSLY NOT DOING IT.

     



    "Things may come to those who wait...but only the things left by those who hustle!"

    Abraham Lincoln

     

     


    "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."



    President John F. Kennedy
    Seven days before he was assassinated.
    What did he know?



    >

    THESE ARE THE GOALS OF THE TENNESSEE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION IN 2017.

    "We now launch a new chapter where we will build on the strong foundation in each of our schools and districts to realize our goals for Tennessee students. If we are successful:

    Districts and schools in Tennessee will exemplify excellence and equity such that all students are equipped with the knowledge and skills to successfully embark upon their chosen path in life."

    HOW DO YOU MEASURE "EXCELLENCE"? "ALL" STUDENTS?! WHEN 83% ARE FAILURES TODAY?

     

    "This is our unifying vision: success for all students upon graduation from high school. This is how Tennessee Succeeds. To this end, we have set three ambitious goals to guide our work through the next five years:

    Tennessee will rank in the top half of states on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), or the nation's Report Card, by 2019.
    No one succeeds with low expectation goals like these. We the USA are 40th in mathematics in the world, and Tennessee is 35th-40th in the USA. We have to do better than be satisfied with being in the top HALF of Tennessee. We need people in management positions to set goals and objectives that are a stretch, AND KNOW HOW TO MANAGE TO ACHIEVE IT.



    The average ACT composite score in Tennessee will be a 21 by 2020.
    The ACT 21 goal was set about 15 years ago for 2020, and we are almost there in 2016. The way to get to a higher goal is with annual ACT objectives on the school districts and monthly GPA objectives on the schools that represent a little stretch, like 5-10% increase per year. The schools do not have specific objectives, yet they are producing the results. CREATE A COMPETITIVE ENVIRONMENT. I cannot believe that this is the guidance from the Tennessee Department of Education.



    The majority of high school graduates from the class of 2020 will earn a postsecondary certificate, diploma or degree.



    We will accomplish these goals by maintaining the department's current emphasis on rigorous standards, aligned assessment, and strong accountability, and by focusing on five priority areas: early foundations and literacy, high school and bridge to postsecondary, all means all, educator support, and district empowerment. As part of this work, the department will continue to support the governor's goal of becoming the fastest improving state in the nation in raising teacher pay."

     







    ***THE IMPORTANCE OF MANAGEMENT TRAINING***
    AND EXPERIENCE



    If one worked in a small company with only 15-20 people, one may encounter some people problems, some misunderstandings, but one can be successful. If one is in charge of 200 people, and 15-20 times more customers, the situation will be completely different. There is a management exercise where six people stand next to each other 5-6 feet apart. The instructor whispers a message into the ear of the first of those six people, who whispers into the ear of the second person's ear the message he/she heard, until the message is whispered from the fifth person to the sixth. Next you compare what the first person whispered to what the last person thinks he/she received, and they are different. So communications has to become more precise and in writing about everything important in the larger organization.



    The person heading the group will no longer have time to personally make sure that all things will get done with the quality required by the customer, the organizational and people problems will grow, communications from the top will change and will be reinterpreted as they pass through a couple of layers of management, the president and the management team has to ensure that all things are done legally, anticipating needs and planning projects will need to be done much more formally ensuring excellent execution, because "people do not do what you expect, but do what you inspect". People may or may not be different than their boss and they may interpret things differently then the boss, so written communication becomes much more important, written standards become more important, and the written policies about how we do things within the company become more important.



    Some people produce excellent quality work, on time, every time. Generally they are the people who are an excellent fit for the job and coworkers, and they are happy in it. Some do not fit well. But if you keep changing them, people turnover is very expensive. It can easily cost 6-18 months (more for mid-to-top level managers) of salary because it took time for the performance to decline and become a terminal case, for the manager or employee to decide that the job and employee are not a good match. A company of 200 people will not be investing $500-$1,000 dollars in testing the employee and his/her background to ensure that they hired the right person. Then you hire the person and some jobs can take a year or more of experience just to adjust to the ways the company works and does business. It is the management training that allows one to eliminate such problems or to provide methods for excellent, trouble free performance - TO GET THE MORE COMPLEX THINGS DONE, INCLUDING THE ACHIEVEMENT OF THE RIGHT OBJECTIVES WITH PROFESSIONALLY CREATED OPERATING PLANS. Without these nothing will happen or improve, and morale may sink in the area that produces the company results, e.g., in the classrooms of a school district with the teachers.



    That was a very simplified description of what happens in a 200 person organization. The complexity of management problems increases with the number of employees in the organization. At 9,000 employees, things get much more complex, and without management training or guidance good results become "impossible" and politics enter the game instead of good performance. People do not recognize the problem, and produce worse results than they could with a little bit of management know-how. Unfortunately, such problems are many in school districts, hence the poor results.



    OBJECTIVES THAT DO NOT WORK

    This is where poor performance starts. Based on each objective that follows below, how can you tell what is needed, quantity or quality required, and by what kind of person and when. These objectives sound good, but they are unmeasurable, so anyone, based on their opinion, could decide if they were achieved or not. These objectives are unmeasurable, unrealistic, and unclear. These objectives do not measure anything that the curriculum includes, and that by itself disqualifies them as objectives.

     

    Success Academy Schools is achieving top one percent results with poor, inner city black children in New York City, beating even many private schools. They raise the children's expectations from grade one on, by referring to them as scholars of the year in which they will graduate from college. Every child believes that they WILL go to college and will achieve great things, and every teacher reinforces this. It is a fantastic way to motivate kids.






    THE FOLLOWING ARE EXAMPLES OF POOR OBJECTIVES

    Because they are not measurable or specific, or not the key indicator of success through K-12 schooling. Board members many times describe great personal qualities or meaningless qualities or nice personal characteristics, but neither of those can be measured for achievement, and they have nothing to do with school achievement, so they cannot be an objective for a public school district.

    "Knox County Schools (Tennessee) will provide an educational program designed to help each student to be college and career ready upon graduation from high school. Through implementation of the Tennessee State Standards, students will be able to:

    • Read a variety of complex text, both literary and informational, to build knowledge, gain insights, explore possibilities and broaden their perspective;
    • Communicate complex information in a clear and articulate manner using effective oral, written and media skills;
    • Develop conceptual understanding, procedural skill and fluency, and application skills in mathematics and science to solve complex real world issues and problems;
    • Participate effectively in civic life with a solid understanding of world geography, economics, history and finance;
    • Develop positive habits that support good physical, mental, social and emotional well-being;
    • Appreciate and participate in the arts;
    • Pursue the acquisition of world languages;
    • Effectively use current and emerging technologies to access, manage and create information;"
    • Think creatively and work collaboratively with others;
    • Demonstrate flexibility, adaptability, initiative and self-direction;
    • Demonstrate a commitment to lifelong learning and personal excellence; and
    • Develop the 21st century skills necessary for a successful transition to college and/or career.



    Many of the above are good skills/traits, but they are not objectives for a school district. Can one describe how to measure them without bias, what each of them is, how to achieve them, how to tell when each is achieved and how well it is achieved (how does one measure progress toward achievement)? The above examples indicate that management does not understand why objectives and operating plans are necessary for achievement. Objectives must be a 1. key indicator of success, and 2. be measurable.



    How do you know what you need to do competitively if you know nothing about the high performers and how they are achieving their great results? The world has changed a long time ago, and because we know nothing about where we should be, we are in the gutter ruining most of the children's lives through our public schools. Most of our public schools are "FAILURE FACTORIES" unfortunately. Just look in the graph at the beginning that shows a list of high schools and the high percentage of graduates who are NOT ACT Ready.
    Those poor children will not be employable long.

    THIS SHOULD BE DONE ACCURATELY IN EVERY AREA BELOW:
    Important actions and questions when interviewing superintendent candidates

    If one is 40th in the world, with others moving forward faster than you, it would be impossible to catch up. The best way to improve one's position is to visit the competitors, study how they are achieving superior results, and implement and use their superior methodologies. Educational methodologies and practices are free from legal problems, if what one is planning to copy and one learns from the other countries' education system.



    ACTION: One has to be honest about performance history, and pick new candidates who have delivered significantly better ACT results than what we have delivered. This principle must not be violated. Take ownership of the fact that Knox County, TN (as an example, but consider your county), consistently picked poor superintendents with insufficient management training and experience, AND delivered poor results. It is not a good idea to celebrate in public the arrival of a new superintendent for 3-4 years as Knox County, TN did the last time in 2008, especially when no one checked his background. We celebrated the arrival of a new superintendent for 3-4 years, calling him a Miracle Maker without knowing that he will do well or not. He did not do well. Yet it was known from the start that he never even managed a single school, and was not management trained, when our opportunity required the management of more than 80 schools with more than 8,000 employees. The qualification mismatch created many conflicts around him. These are the most important indicators about what you will actually get. Most board members never paid attention to such indicators and picked the wrong candidate EVERY SINGLE TIME, because the board selection committee was inexperienced in several important topics, like interviewing skills for a CEO for a 9,000 employee organization, or recognizing every year that the ACT results were poor.



    ***ACTION: The management skills (e.g., having a successful principal who delivered excellent ACT results as a superintendent candidate) are very important for small organizations up to about 100 employees, but management training and experience becomes key to success as an organization grows beyond 100 employees. We have close to 9,000 employees at Knox County Schools, and we have never picked a superintendent who had at least 5 successful years with increasing performance, with at least one-third as large organization as the new organization will be. So the people-management skills were totally missing, and so was the knowledge required to improve the key indicator of success, the ACT score, for the school district. They will keep selecting failing superintendents unless they pay attention to picking someone who managed a school district that was greater than 3,000 employees and delivered growing ACT performance that was always above the Knox County Schools performance. Ignoring these important elements will continue the same poor trend: picking an unsatisfactory performer.



    ***ACTION: If one picked ineffective superintendents with poor ACT results every time, and one keeps selecting a new one the same way, a poor performer will be picked again, and you will get political games in behavior instead of good results for our children. That is exactly what we have been doing.



    ***ACTION: A good candidate already examined the organization before the first interview. Ask him/her about what she found about our strengths and weaknesses and what we need to do in detail to improve. If they cannot answer, we have the wrong candidate.



    ***ACTION: A good candidate will be very relaxed and will not get upset about any question you ask. Don't hesitate to test that.



    ***ACTION: Prepare the candidate's ACT/ACT Readiness record for the last five years. Has he delivered at least 0.5 point higher steadily improving average ACT result for each of five years than we did, in a school organization with at least 3,000 employees? For example, the Hamblen County candidate's school district ACT performance was significantly below ours. How on earth will he be able to do better for us? Also, do not bother with any candidate who changed jobs every four years or less. Superintendents have minimum job durations around three and a half years. Unfortunately, there are not too many out there who are good and looking for a job. I wonder if anyone looked up the ACT performance for the candidate to be interviewed. If good candidates are available, don't waste your time on a candidate who was not a superintendent or director of schools, or had less than 20 schools under him/her. That is the most important question.

     

    Our own past performance tells us that we never picked such a candidate before because the selectors did not have the training and experience on the management side to recognize the importance of this fact, and if recruiting firms were used, the results were less than ideal. The above example about objectives or goals the Knox County Schools and our results indicate that no one on the board and no interim or permanent superintendent was or is schooled AND experienced in managing more than 100 employees with success. If they did, then we would see suitable objectives, operating plans, and far better results. ONE CAN SUCCEED ONLY IF ONE OPENLY RECOGNIZES "IN PUBLIC" ONE'S OWN SHORTCOMINGS AND WHAT HE/SHE DOES NOT KNOW, AND THEN TAKES ACTION TO CORRECT THOSE SHORTCOMINGS.



    ***ACTION: Do not be in a hurry to hire. If you do not have a good candidate, continue searching.



    ***ACTION: An external candidate always looks better because we know very little about him/her. On the other hand, we know about all warts that an internal candidate has. That is very good because you get no surprises. The key thing is to listen carefully to the internal candidate's idea about what needs to be done to raise our bad results.



    ***ACTION: One can do a quick background check about any person's public record at intelius.com



    ***ACTION: Talk to his/her references, and find out if they know others who are familiar with the candidate? Call these "secondary" references to find out about what the candidate's successes were, and in what areas the candidate needs a little help to become more effective?



    ***ACTION: What mistakes has the candidate made during each of the last three years, and what did the candidate do about them?



    ***ACTION: Has he/she managed an organization for at least 5 years that has at least half as many employees as the new organization has, and managed it with good results? Our organization is about 9,000 employees, and having managed successfully for 5 years minimum one third as many employees is a suitable prerequisite.

    • ***ACTION: The management part of a job becomes far more challenging after having managed at minimum a 100 employee organization, and increases in difficulty as the number of employees increase.


    • ***ACTION: Unfortunately if someone did not manage a hundred employees in a growing organization and did not have management training, they would not understand this problem as well as someone with experience managing 100 or more employees.


    • ***ACTION: The management training and experience with at least a 3,000 employee organization for five successful years is also vitally important. Those who did not have such experience may not understand the importance of this question, although it is the most important question in an organization of this size.


    • ***ACTION: Teaching experience, AND having been a principal of a school for at least 5 years WITH EXCELLENT RESULTS EVERY YEAR, are also useful experiences if the candidate did well, and such experience should be present.


    • ***ACTION: But the management experience in an organization that has 9,000 employees is far more important. Those who do not have management experience with successful results in any of these areas, will not do well. If anyone claims two years of successful experience in this area, it is too short to be meaningful. If someone claims five years of experience, with poor results, do not hire that person.


    • ***ACTION: If one does not check a candidate's background, then let such person work for your competitor and not for you. Unfortunately, in education, such people are everywhere, in important positions - doing a poor job.
      •
    We hope that Leroy in the above picture will not be the selected superintendent. But...you never know. We had some Leroys in the past and so did many other school districts.






    HOW DOES AN EDUCATION SYSTEM JUSTIFY THEIR POOR JOB-RESULTS WITH STUDENTS BEING SO POORLY PREPARED THAT 75-85% OF OUR GRADUATING CHILDREN ARE NOT PREPARED FOR FURTHER EDUCATION OR JOB TRAINING?! BUT THEY ALL GET A DIPLOMA FROM THEIR SCHOOL!

    The answer:

    ***ACTION: THIS MUST BE FIXED.

    1. By giving children a much better education than what we provide today. It is not possible that 75-93% of a graduating class is too stupid to learn.


    2. By lying to the public as in printing everywhere "Excellence for all children!" and by the superintendent (J.M.) telling the public that "we are doing well, a strong B average" when neither claim is even close to the truth.


    3. By having a PR/Communication group within the school district that publishes positive stories about the schools, detracting from the ACT scores that tells us the truth. At one time, the school district under superintendent J.M. had nine full-time professional PR people.

     

    ***ACTION: Employers have been complaining about the poor quality of high school graduates for more than ten years, and our leaders did nothing to improve the ACT scores. What is a fact is that close to 80% of our children, who are unprepared for life, are the product of our public schools, and that our education system is not good enough and must improve rapidly. It appears that our state and school district management does not feel that our teachers and schools need to improve, because they graduate 80% of the children who are not prepared.



    ****ACTION: Many excellent tutorial programs are available from Internet sources, like YouTube, or the Learning Company or the Khan Academy. They are designed to hold the child's or adult's interest and some are the lectures/presentations from the best professors and teachers nationally. Tutorials in any subject could be very helpful to student or teacher alike. They could be incorporated into the teaching and learning programs in all subjects we teach in primary and secondary schools, except sports. The best company in this area appears to be the Khan Academy. Google them. They cover every subject from preschool to high school graduation. They also have a collection of impressive tutorial programs for teachers to help them accomplish more in less time. For those in education management, read here what the best education systems are doing in the world differently. How many teachers and education system employees read and used in the past the tools presented here? Sadly, very few. Unfortunately most of us unless we are old enough, feel that we know everything, although we have very limited education and experience. Too many people are not interested in learning, a product of dumbing down for close to 50 years. School board members are not an exception. It is not their problem. It is the problem of old laws, and the state education departments whose senior staff is neither schooled nor experienced in management to be able to provide needed guide lines.



    ****ACTION: Your child is your child. He or she is not an adult. You, the parents are the decision makers at home. The teachers are the decision makers in school. There needs to be zero tolerance of bad behavior in school. The schools are NOT the providers of baby sitting services. The children's future job and income will depend significantly on how much they have learned in high school. Make sure that they work hard.

     

    We have one of the highest rates of poverty in the world (see below). Blaming poverty for the poor school performance is not a good idea when it is the poor education that created a large part of the poverty. We recognized that education is poor for more than 20 years. Why have we not done anything that raised the ACT scores? We also noticed 22 years ago that we have a reading problem after grade 3, and it is still there when students are graduating from high school. We spent about $15 million on consultants. Today the problem is still not solved. We need to sober up. Most problems are not solvable by money. They are solvable by people who know how to solve the problem. We have about 3,000 teachers. And we don't have any who knows how to teach reading?! And we don't have any teachers who would know how to get the children excited about every subject that we teach? THAT IS VERY BAD.


     

    ***ACTION: A drop in our education since 1970 must have effected job readiness for a large number of vocations. The only thing that can increase employment and earning-ability is a much higher education level. We have more than three million open jobs because our employers cannot find suitable educated candidates. The deterioration of our primary and secondary public education is turning into a very poor investment of millions of our tax dollars. But that is not all the damage. There is a lifetime loss of income that could be associated with the dumbing down of the public, that could be extremely damaging financially, all because public education has been mismanaged.



    ***ACTION: New technologies eliminate many low-end jobs, and open up many new jobs with better pay. The new jobs require more education. In 2016 we had 3.5 million jobs that employers could not fill because our high school performance was/is very poor. Poor education decreases income and leads to poverty. Too many public schools are "failure factories", that do not train our children well enough for jobs.

    Increasing education is the only way out of poverty. However, poor education is the best way into poverty. Since 1970, our public education declined. That in turn increased poverty and spending to attempt to maintain our living standards.



    ***ACTION: The right education must be completed first, before we can expect to get a job. Income will depend on the education one gets. Low end jobs with a high school diploma will be replaced by robotics. By 2020, a number of jobs will also go to robotics, e.g., in healthcare, accounting and others. During our life, continuing education with higher degrees will be the only way of life in the future. Continuing education does not mean additional degrees. It means additional knowledge obtained by any means.



    ***ACTION: Children's success with education depends the most on how well teachers are suited for teaching as a career, how well they are educated and kept up to date about the subject they teach and with improvements in teaching methodologies included. Teachers must be excellent motivators, which means that they cannot be struggling with low morale as they do today. School district management must be much better trained in management of people, to resolve teacher problems that exist today.

     


    ***ACTION: And now please look at the percentage of graduates from each of the Knox County, Tennessee public high schools who are ACT Ready and the percentage who are not ACT Ready. Remember that ACT Readiness means only a 50-75% chance to finish ONLY one course of the first year of a tech/vocational program or a college program. This excludes even the first year of science or engineering programs in colleges because they have a much higher ACT mathematics score requirement than the ACT Readiness benchmark's math requirement. Those who are not ACT Ready, will not be employable longer than a few years with the following.

    ***ACTION: Looking at the charts on the left and above, the ACT Readiness percentage is very low for those who graduated with a diploma. We are pushing children to graduate instead of being properly educated for the work place or college. Isn't that foolish? It is not what parents want. Parents want 100% graduates with a diploma, all of whom are ACT Ready. Only foolish people would say "90% graduated AND 27% of them are ready for job training or further schooling, but 73% are not ready but maybe they will get a minimum wage job." So four out of five children graduate not ready today. However, the ACT Readiness of African American students is extremely poor, only one or two is prepared out of fifty. THIS IS A DISASTER. Note that a charter school chain in NYC called Success Academy Schools, that started in Harlem in 2006, with 41 schools as of 2016, is achieving a TOP ONE PERCENT result in the NY State Common Core Tests in mathematics, WITH POOR, INNER CITY AFRICAN AMERICAN AND HISPANIC CHILDREN. THEY ARE PASSING EVEN MOST PRIVATE SCHOOLS! At the same time, we are getting a bottom 2-5% ACT Readiness result only in our public schools for African American and Hispanic children. IT IS POSSIBLE TO PROVIDE FAR BETTER RESULTS THAN WHAT WE ARE ACHIEVING IN OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS. IT CAN BE DONE, IF A FEW PRINCIPALS VISIT THEM TO FIND OUT WHAT THESE HIGH PERFORMERS ARE DOING TO ACHIEVE HIGH RESULTS. Success Academy Schools have a zero discipline-problem policy. Teachers have excellent benefits and compensation, and expected to do a good job. Some parents don't like the "zero discipline-problem policy".

     

     

    ***ACTION: A minority of teachers do not like the work-related expectations. We would humbly suggest that you cannot have excellent results with children who are a discipline problem, who disturb all children in a class, and you cannot have success without teachers who have been well trained in the subject they teach, who work hard, AND LEARN ABOUT HIGH PERFORMING COMPETITORS, BECAUSE THEY ENJOY AND WANT TO BE EXCELLENT TEACHERS. Our board of education members (mostly teachers in Knox County, Tennessee in 2017) do not even want to visit the Success Academy Schools to find out why they are getting a top one percent result, because those who produce the bottom 2-5% ACT Readiness result (the Knox County, Tennessee school board) feel that they will learn nothing that could improve their dismal 2-5% ACT Readiness with black students! And we just touched on the biggest problem with our public school performance: most teacher training is poor (at the US university level), when our universities tend to be one of the best in the world in most subject areas. Teachers NEED TO BE matched to the teaching profession. Too many go into teaching because they cannot perform in the major they originally selected. Teachers need to be recruited from the ACT 30 and higher results from high school. Teaching needs teachers who have a master's degree in the subject that they would be teaching. That is what brings success to the other countries that passed us. Teachers need a "zero tolerance for discipline-problems" policy, that must be there for good results. More details later.


    ***ACTION: According to ACT, nationally 74% of graduating high school students, among them 95% of the African American students, were not prepared in 2016 but for close to minimum wage jobs that robots will replace in a few years. IS THAT ACCEPTABLE? In NYC a school chain is getting top one percent results with poor, African American inner city children! We could do much better if the elected boards uniformly acted using the same standards to achieve the kind of results that we should have. In Tennessee the state goal for more than a dozen years was to reach an average ACT score of 21, by 2020!! The ACT Readiness percentage of graduating students at ACT 21 is around 25% only, with 75% not ready. That's no improvement. Just look at the chart. Such a "no improvement", very low goal means that the management has no idea what to do to improve. Our children's education is out of control in public schools, but the education districts through the newspapers tell the public that "we are doing fine, but there is room for improvement." If you live in another state, you are not much better. I fear the time when soon we will have to deal with too many jobless young people, and the public will discover that they were fed lies by the education district, while poorly educating our children for which we, the public paid many billions of dollars.


    We are forgetting what happened to the public since 1970 and forgetting that we fell all the way to 40th place in the world, weakening our workforce, the general knowledge of our population, our products and services. We are getting dumbed down by the public education system, for which WE, the public, paid and pay.



    ***ACTION: Our national income dropped as a result to a "break even level" for about ten years we are told. Not quite. The national debt rose at the same time to more than twenty trillion dollars as of 2017. Let me see if I understand this in very simple terms. We keep spending as long as we have some money. Unfortunately we kept spending on the wrong things, not on things to ensure a good future national income, LIKE MAKING PUBLIC SCHOOLING EXCELLENT. Our public schools kept producing poor results while spending many billions of dollars. The education departments and school districts were and still are telling us at the same time how well they are doing. The majority of high school graduates can get only minimum wage jobs for a short time. McDonald's piloting of robot solutions showed customer preference for communicating with the robot more clearly, the robot could "upsell" the customer, AND robots did a better job for less money, increasing net income almost 20%. Not a problem! We did not and do not stop spending on things that do not improve education. We "borrow" money (using Treasury instruments to sell the debt), because our tax income is poor, and increasing taxes when we are the highest in corporate taxes in the world, a very bad move. What we "borrow" becomes "The National Debt". It is about $20 TRILLION now in early 2017. It is so high that we had to pay over $258 billion dollars in interest on it in 2016 (that's $167,000 per tax payer!!) the national debt interest is payable FOREVER at our current interest rate that was 6% in 2016. Just imagine what we could do with $258 billion, instead of paying interest to countries FOREVER every year who purchased our debt (or "loaned us the money"), with China and Japan being the biggest. The interest rate is too low and it is likely to increase. The national debt is also likely to increase more, in order to strengthen national income-producing activities and our weakened military.



    ***ACTION: The elected board members' great majority doesn't know (and the state's education department does not provide or also doesn't know):

    • where we stand vs. the best international competitors,
    • what the higher performers do differently than us and why
      • ,
    • how to hire the right superintendent for a school district with 200-10,000 employees (a medium to huge management job), who knows how to increase our poor results because he/she was educated for it and has done it for minimum five years
      •  ,
    • how to set objectives that work,
    • how to prepare operating plans that work,
    • how to improve teaching methodologies,
    • how to keep employee morale high and do all of it by facing and telling the truth.

    Elected board members get paid for it, e.g., $25K/year in Knox County, Tennessee. They do not want to or do not even think of learning what the high performing school systems do differently worldwide to get better results, and are not even willing to visit a much higher performing school in New York City to learn how they achieve their fabulous results. By doing so, they have been throwing most of our children under the bus, with very few exceptions. For the average ACT score of 21 in Tennessee, a state goal for more than a dozen years, if reached, we would get 74% of our high school graduates plus 5% dropouts not being prepared by their school system to be trained for a job, for which us, tax payers, paid $10,000-$12,000 per year for each and every student. HOW CAN A GOVERNOR ACCEPT SUCH A LOW ACT SCORE OBJECTIVE LIKE 21, FROM THE STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT THAT GUARANTEES 79% OF THOSE WHO ENTERED HIGH SCHOOL TO BE NOT PREPARED TO BE EMPLOYED?! That is a lot of money, for which we must and should get better results.





    "All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered. The point is to discover them."


    Galileo Galilei, Italian astronomer & physicist (1564 - 1642)




    ***ACTION: There are too many tests. Some measure correctly (ACT, SAT, NAEP, and OECD-PISA internationally), and some show better grades for public consumption (the state tests that are dumbed down with Cut Scores or because they are easier). ACT checks its scores against what the tested high school student achieved a few years after graduation and adjusts its ACT Readiness benchmarks if needed. Their scores and Readiness percentages are accurate. Because the emphasis is on graduating as many children as possible instead of emphasis on academic achievement, we do have a problem with grades being changed for the better by teachers, principals and support for the same by their Central Management. This problem could be solved if the test is taken on a computer under a program that does not allow changing of grades without identification of the person who authorized the grade change (Examples).

    ***ACTION: We graduate close to 90% of those students who entered 9th grade in high school. Only 26% of our public high school graduates (and ONLY 5% of black students!) were "ACT ready" nationally in 2015 for training to go beyond a minimum wage job. The necessity to graduate more children is discussed at board meetings. Teachers have been mysteriously instructed from "above" to change grades so that some students who would fail, actually move on to graduate. The educational performance, the ACT results were and are terrible, because state set average ACT goal of only 21 (equals 24-27% ACT Readiness only). It should be an average ACT score of 25 or above (80% ACT readiness). In twelve years we never heard of any board meetings where increasing the ACT scores, and what we need to do to achieve that was discussed, and a plan was agreed upon to do so. Most of these poor students will be replaced by robots within a few years. As an example, in Knox County, Tennessee, the board members are paid $20,000 salary plus $5,000 for expenses and car allowance every year, but they never have time for discussing how to improve the poor ACT scores. Their results are worse than the above results. The public is not informed about this fact. They just pay for the poor education with their hard-earned money in taxes. We were one of the top performers worldwide in 1970. What we see today, the poor performance, the lack of relevant knowledge and interest by elected board members, the state education department or governors to correct the poor academic performance by taking steps to increase what counts, the ACT scores, is revolting. Although we became the fifth highest spender in the world per student by 2015, we, the USA, dropped to 40th place in mathematics that our public schools delivered (2016 OECD PISA tests). Some states like Tennessee, our example, are worse than that.

    All governors and many locally elected boards and superintendents hired started programs that "will improve education" with additional spending of many millions of dollars, all state tests were made easier to qualify for federal funding (No Child Left Behind Act) and a big effort is made to date to identify learning disabled and children of poverty, because the school district can increase the federal cash they receive for such students. School districts also proposed programs that would permanently increase the school districts' budget annually under the law. No governor of either party stopped the aggressively growing education spending in 46 years or started increasing ACT or SAT scores, that went nowhere! The old education laws gave (and give today) all management decision-making to the elected school district boards in every state along with a guarantee for them to receive at least as much funding as they received in the prior year, regardless of performance. The old education laws that no longer work were not amended. There are approximately 13,500 school districts in the USA, all doing their own thing, but very few who do it well. The requirement to be elected to them is a high school diploma only. Central management is bloated compared to what is defined by two authorities and presented (below). What appears to be motivating school districts is to increase the money they can spend any way possible, then push the students through each grade qualified or not, so that they can graduate 90% - with readiness for job training or further education of only 27% of those who were given a diploma!! The remaining 73%, plus those who attended but did not graduate, plus those who dropped out will be replaced by robots before 2020. Obviously our school districts are interested in money (we became the 5th largest spender per student in the world), and are not interested in the knowledge they teach our children (that is why we just dropped to 40th place in the world). We did not improve the schools; we did an excellent job developing FAILURE FACTORIES.

    One of the latest programs to improve the education of our children is a free additional two-year college education program. Remember that children learn and pickup all kinds of behaviors and habits as they increase their brain capacity during pre-school and the following 12 years of education. Without correcting the elementary and high school education, many children finished with limited knowledge below what they should have for high school graduation, bad attitude, bad ideas like a feeling of entitlement, and they learned all that in their FORMATIVE years. Two years of additional education cannot correct the formative years' behavior problems and poor study habits, but it may provide almost enough remedial training to improve the odds for a job short-term. Since it would be a miracle to educate those children who did a poor job in high school, it will provide a limited benefit, but at a very high price.



    To get a full benefit, the money should go to fixing the pre-school, elementary and high school education itself, make it competitive with the best internationals, such that we graduate from high school better educated children, including a good attitude toward work. Then consider a remedial program for those who finished high school previously. Putting only a "band aid" on mistakes after the fact is never a good and efficient solution. THE BIG QUESTION IS: WHY ARE WE NOT FIXING THE MANY FAILURE FACTORIES, CALLED PUBLIC SCHOOLS?

    CHARTER SCHOOLS AND VOUCHERS. Charter Schools are also public schools. They are less restricted by state and federal laws than traditional public schools. However, many are forced into a working relationship with the low performing traditional public school districts. Any such connection should be avoided. Public schools have an elected board. Charter schools have an appointed board and that can be an advantage. The need for these measures arose because the public school performance was/is dismal and over several decades they were not corrected. Private schools produce an 85-99% ACT Readiness. Public schools produced a 0-50% ACT Readiness of those who graduated. Charter schools had very mixed results but improving during the past twenty years. Of the top three high schools in the nation, two are charter schools. Some but very few charter schools can perform better than most private schools (Success Academy Schools, New York City, 42 schools in 2017 for poor black inner city children with top one percent results!). Their teachers, and superintendents come from poorly performing public education, with teacher training that is less than what the top international school systems are doing (Master's in the subject they will teach, psychological tests to match them to the teaching position, more graduate level training on learning disability diagnoses and the latest about teaching methodologies - before they start teaching in a few high performing countries). The only thing that will remove the need for charter schools and vouchers, is public schools who exceed charter school performance and deliver 80% ACT Ready graduates instead of just 25-27%. What will remove public schools is the good charter schools, vouchers, home schooling that produce much better results on the ACT and SAT tests than the public schools do.



    "He graduated from our high school ten years ago. He signs his name with block letters. He makes funny noises when he reads. And he smokes these funny looking cigarettes that he rolls up with shaky hands. His name is superintendent Jimmy Minimum. He must be very smart because he got his PhD in Education Policy. He said it cost him $2,500.50, so it must be an excellent university. We can't understand what he says. Don't tell anyone, but he doesn't understand either what he says."





    LET'S DIGRESS TO EXPLAIN A FEW THINGS THAT ELECTED BOARDS NEED TO UNDERSTAND FOR SUCCESSFUL PERFORMANCE

     

     

    PAY VERY CLOSE ATTENTION TO WHAT FOLLOWS. So far what we see is expenses skyrocketing yet the ACT or SAT education results, the only annual tests that shows what children have learned, did not go anywhere in 46 years, but our international competitors improved significantly as we are about to see below. We dropped in high school mathematics to 40th place in 2016 of 73 nations, from the top in 1970.

    The state-set performance requirements for schools are too low. That is an average ACT score of 21, that produces upon graduation only 25% of those who earned a diploma minimally ready. The state does not have appropriate objectives and operating plans to reach a 21 ACT score, so they could not reach it now for more than a dozen years. When the objective is too low to motivate or wrong, one cannot stop the poor escalating performance. It is like chasing a big bolder downhill on a mountainside. Most such children would not be accepted by employers if they graduated. Those children who do not want to work or are a discipline problem, should attend different classes or handed back to the parents so that our teachers have a chance to produce better results. We must change being a baby sitting service, and create excellent ACT scores instead.



    Why do we allow public schools to exist without closing them if more than 50% of their students with a high school diploma are not even prepared to be trained for a job?! WHY DO WE GIVE STUDENTS WHO ARE NOT READY A HIGH SCHOOL DIPLOMA?

    Why do we continue operating high schools at public expense for MORE THAN TEN YEARS if more than 90% of their graduates were not prepared for job training, AND WHY ARE WE SPENDING TWO AND A HALF TIMES AS MUCH PER STUDENT ON THEM THAN IN THE BETTER PERFORMING HIGH SCHOOLS? IF THE INCREASED SPENDING MADE NO DIFFERENCE FOR TWELVE YEARS, IT IS A FACT THAT MONEY IS NOT GOING TO THE RIGHT PLACES AND/OR FOR THE RIGHT PEOPLE IN THAT SCHOOL. HIRE A SUPERINTENDENT WHO CAN IMPROVE THEM SIGNIFICANTLY WITHOUT SPENDING MORE THAN DOUBLE PER STUDENT...OR CLOSE THEM.

    Why do we make excuses for such poorly performing public schools instead of making changes to improve their results? If a superintendent cannot make such changes within a couple of years, one needs a different superintendent, instead of letting hundreds of children become not educated well enough to survive.

    We hear objections against "corporate ideas" in education, but no one can explain what these are. It would be better if public schools and leadership worried more about their results and improved them. What corporate ideas are detrimental to education achievement? We must try systems that we have not tried to improve education. If one is against something, then offer a better idea!

    Many different schools and programs offer higher ACT READINESS than most public schools. Why should not the public, who pay for public schools via taxes, be able to choose a different school such that their child will succeed instead of having to attend a poorly performing school? If you don't like such choices, do something to make sure that the public schools perform better. Why should anyone support schools that prepare our children so poorly that the great majority, as much as 95% of the students, are likely to become homeless? We pay more than twice for more than a decade per student in the poorly performing schools without any improvement, than what the good schools spend per student. Is that good management of the people's money? If something does not work for two years, the money is not being spent in the right places, or the goals, objectives and operating plans are absent or wrong. If it does not work after two changes, then you have the wrong superintendent.



     

    For almost 50 years, as the CATO study showed, our primary and secondary education deteriorated. The school districts kept delivering good news to the public, as one by one 39 countries went past us as we dropped to 40 place, the bottom of the international countries. During all that time we just kept spending more money per student and today we are the fifth highest spender per student, delivering poor results. That means that we became accustomed to the poor performance and we do not even see that when the result of such poor performance is loss of competitiveness with barely breaking even as a nation in national income for the past ten years. So we turned to debt and set an enormous record by driving our national debt to $20 trillion dollars.

    We must become more competitive, and start rising again in the national rankings. Today, our education is so bad that 74% of our high school graduates will not be able to exist financially and cannot compete with robots and more and more countries as a result.

    For several decades now, our strategy became one where we simply throw more money at a problem - and the problem does not get solved. We have been pouring more and more money into low performing schools, two and a half times as much per student as the better performing students get. And for decades, such extra spending did not create a change for the better. Why? Because we did not change the way we actually run our schools, teacher subject knowledge and teaching methodology and the way we handle student behavior that interferes with teaching and learning.



    It is good to see that some principals managed to turn around their schools. We should be able to learn a few good lessons from them. But we as a nation must do better and get back among the top ten nations in high school math, where we used to be four decades ago.

    References: A list of schools that were turned around, and how their principals did it.




    Mathematics in art: The Fibonacci Curve, is one of the most important curve lines in famous pieces of art, in architecture as well as in nature, and in astronomy. The curve is superimposed on a galaxy that is about 100,000,000,000 light-years in diameter with as many solar systems within it that have planets. Today we can conclude that we have about 100,000,000,000 such galaxies in the universe. There are an infinite number of very interesting things out there that all of humanity could benefit from, requiring many highly educated people in related jobs - instead of fighting, killing each other and living in poverty.




    HOW DO WE COMPARE TO OTHER COUNTRIES IN THE EDUCATION OF OUR CHILDREN AND THEREFORE WORK FORCE QUALITY?

     

     

    The knowledge of high school graduates depends significantly on the standards a country sets. Many of the foreign countries teach more under the same subject heading than we do. A parent told us that their two boys went to two different high schools in Knox County, Tennessee. They took the same courses, but in one school they covered much more material in the same course than in the other school. I sat in on 16 math and science courses. The teachers' subject knowledge, teaching skill and ability to motivate students from preschool to high school graduation needs to improve. Teachers told us that a student went to the rest room and when returned, threw feces at the teacher. The punishment was for the parent to take the offender home only for one night, and the offender was back in class the next day. Unbelievable. We, the U.S., dropped to 40th place internationally in mathematics. We need to improve significantly. The quality of our workforce depends on the quality AND amount of K-12 education. The quality and competitiveness of our products and services depend on the quality of our workforce in all of our industries. Our national income depends on the quality and competitiveness of our products and services in a domestic and international market place. Our national income depends to a great extent on the quality, education, and subject knowledge of teachers, and their ability to communicate with and motivate students. Isn't it obvious that we should be comparing our high school output to the best performing countries in the world and the way we teach and manage education to the best international competitors? Instead we always compare against our own poor 40th performance in the world. Our fourteen thousand different elected school boards set objectives that cannot be measured, but no problem! They do their own performance reviews. No wonder that the results are so poor, as we are graduating more and more students each year. Isn't it a necessity to be competitive worldwide today with our high school results, since our industries depend on our high school graduates in order to compete with the best worldwide? Why don't we visit the high performing internationals to find out how they achieve excellent results but we do not? Why don't we learn from them and then make some changes? Read about one of the best, Finland's education system.

     



    "When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bustling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity".
    Dale Carnegie




    Technology like video conferencing, the Internet, airplanes made almost every country easily reachable in the last few decades. The world has become "smaller". Anyone can sell in any country products or services that can meet local requirements, and we compete against products or services from other countries here in the US. A worldwide competitive product or service must ensure that it has a well-trained workforce that is better than its competitors worldwide. The competence of the workforce depends on how well educated they were coming out of high school and how much they improved after that in additional schooling and years of experience. We were on top in 1970, but in mathematics we dropped to 40th by 2015 internationally of 15-year-olds of 73 countries (OECD PISA). According to the 2014 World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Report on 149 nations, the USA is:
    • 41st in Quality of Primary Education, and
    • 66th in Primary Education Enrollment Rate. We do not educate all of our children as some claim, but a list of countries do.
    • 49th in the Quality of Math and Science Education,
    • 49th in Secondary Education Enrollment Rate,
    • 18th with Internet Access in Schools,
    • 12th in Extent of Staff Training (teachers),
    • 9th in the world in grade 4 mathematics (but becoming 40th by the end of high school!), (TIMSS - Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study given every four years),
    • 12th in grade 8 (TIMSS) math of 49 nations and
    • The fifth highest spender per student in 2013 of 65 nations.

    These are the latest figures as of 2016. The big challenge for the USA is high school performance where we are 40th (OECD PISA) of 73 countries or 49th of 149 countries (World Economic Forum) in the world. WHY IS IT THAT WE DID NOT TAKE ACTION TO CORRECT OUR SHORTCOMINGS IN EDUCATING OUR CHILDREN DURING THE PAST 46 YEARS SUCH THAT THE ACT AND SAT SCORES CONFIRMED SUCH ACTION'S EFFECTIVENESS?



    Hong Kong, Macao, Shanghai, South Korea, Taiwan and Japan methodologies may not be culturally transferable to the USA, because the high achievement is the result of parental pressure, e.g., homework until midnight, and getting on the train to school by 6 AM. In addition, Shanghai tests and admits only the highest performing students into its public schools.



    The graph below provides an international view of expenses per student per country. The US is one of the highest spenders, but unfortunately, our performance is poor. THAT MEANS THAT THE MONEY IS NOT SPENT IN THE RIGHT PLACES.



    Delegation of responsibilities does not mean that we can turn our back on it by trusting the individual to whom we delegated. "Trust but verify." - said President Ronald Reagan. Many elected board of education members, nationwide, don't know what ACT or SAT scores mean, and they believe what the superintendent says without knowing if it is fact or not. They certainly could not "inspect" how a school district is doing on a monthly basis, since there are no monthly measurable academic objectives in our public schools EVERYWHERE, AND THEY ARE PRODUCING THE RESULTS. In some countries like Finland, teachers are more educated, the teaching methodology is different and much better than in the US, and a teacher knows exactly how each of his/her student is doing DAILY as accurately as with a test. If a student is slow, extra help is provided immediately. Therefore no testing is required. Our education board members could inspect the ACT (or SAT) scores annually and insist on them improving, but most do not even do that.





    ACT tests 64% of our children nationally as of 2016. Their 2016 results show that 74% of high school graduates nationally are not prepared for higher level education and future training for employment - they are not ACT READY. In Tennessee the ACT scores increased slightly, because the state allowed students to retake the ACT a second time. Making it even worse, many of them have bad work attitude, a feeling of entitlement regardless of how well or poorly they do their job, they are depressed, no ambition, in addition to poor English communication and science knowledge and don't even know basic math.

    It is not enough to demand jobs, if people during their young days are not willing to work hard in our schools and learn what employers need. Just look at the very poor ACT results of Tennessee and its Knox County below.

    One cannot ignore the impact of robotic automation from 2016 on ACT Readiness. Robots will increase the qualifications needed for the jobs that remain, hence the importance of much more science and mathematics knowledge and higher student achievement that will be needed from those graduating from high school. This will become necessary to remain trainable for frequent job changes to higher level vocations, because the lower level jobs will be replaced by automation.

    If you are not certain about what ACT readiness means, please click on the following and read it: Explanation of ACT scores and ACT Readiness



    Take a good look at the above chart results if you were an elected board member at the time in this school district. The NOT ACT Ready percentage of diplomas indicate how many students of those who graduated WILL NOT be prepared for the first year only of a tech/vocational school or college and pursue any science or engineering related course. What we have is a very high failure rate that we call "NOT ACT Ready" based on those students who already earned a diploma and graduated high school. There is another version of NOT ACT Ready, that is based on all those who entered high school in grade nine. Increasing the ACT scores to improve the poor results is the most important task of an education board in our opinion, yet this problem is not discussed and a plan of action is not created at education board meetings to do so. Approving spending bills is a large part of every board meeting. Do you really think that these were good results? The superintendent worked for you, the board. You gave yourselves, the board, and the superintendent good performance reviews for these results every year. About 80% of the graduating children, including 98% of black children, are and will be having a terrible life because you did nothing to ensure better results as board members. A school-chain called Success Academy Schools in NYC is achieving top one percent results with poor, inner city black children, passing even most private schools in New York State. New York State is the 5th best performing state in the US. As a board member in Knox County, Tennessee, you are paid $20,000 annually, plus another $5,000 to cover expenses and a car allowance in Knox County, Tennessee. Yet board members cannot afford to go and visit Success Academy Schools in NYC to find out how they are achieving those high results with poor, inner city black children when black children in Tennessee achieve only a 2% acceptable result? Something is very wrong here with public education. Such inaction about educational performance is building a powder keg that will blow sky high. The low national income cannot support the amount of social services in welfare that our very high percentage of those not ACT ready (74% nationally plus dropouts) put on the street with the help of robotics that replace them.

    The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing!!"


    Edmund Burke, Irish statesman, 1776



    The chart above shows the Knox County, Tennessee school district's annual results and ACT readiness. Look at the high percentage of high school graduates who are "Not ACT Ready". These are terrible results for the county, but the state is even worse! Yet no one does anything about it. The school board gave itself and the superintendent excellent performance reviews every year based on these results. Yes, they all set their own objectives and then performance reviewed themselves every year. See ACT scores and readiness explained. Those not ACT Ready are trainable only for close to minimum wage jobs that will not last long. Unfortunately such jobs are beginning to be replaced by robotics in 2016 and virtually all will be replaced by 2020.

    Robotics will make success increasingly more difficult for ACT Ready high school graduates to succeed and impossible for those not ACT Ready. The only path to reasonable success between now and 2020 is to have students take two more science and math courses beyond the core curriculum, initiate an excellent preschool program for all, and strengthen primary school performance without rewarding earlier graduates.



    The chart below shows the poor ACT readiness within each high school in the same school district. The best high school has only average readiness, and the worst has not a single student ACT Ready! IS THIS THE RESULT WE WANT FOR OUR CHILDREN?! This is shocking. It is rather obvious that measurable academic objectives do not exist for this school district and for any of its high schools. It is impossible to deliver good results without such objectives and school level operating plans in the hands of school management when one is dealing with poor performance like school districts within the entire state of Tennessee and in other states.

     





    In the graph on the left, we show a poor five-year average ACT score history and ACT Readiness of each high school in Knox County, Tennessee. We spend more than twice the amount of money for each student in the two poorly performing high schools - for more than a decade now. Why don't we spend only one percent of that money we spend in one high school, go up to New York, visit the Success Academy Schools. They are achieving top one percent results with poor black inner city children, beating even most private schools, in the entire state of New York. Some teachers do not like this school. They have excellent benefits, good salaries, but they have to work long hours, generally 8 AM to 6 PM. WELL, WHO SHOULD DECIDE IF WE SHOULD IMPROVE OR NOT AS THIS SCHOOL DID? NOT PARENTS BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT INFORMED OF THE REAL SITUATION WE FACE. SCHOOL DISTRICT MANAGEMENT MUST DECIDE. WHY DO WE EVEN ASK SUCH A QUESTION WHEN WE ARE DOING SO POORLY? UNFORTUNATELY, SIMILAR HIGH RESULTS FOR WORKING LESS HARD IN POORLY PERFORMING STATES LIKE TENNESSEE AND KENTUCKY, IS NOT POSSIBLE ANYWHERE.



    The graph below shows a thirteen-year annual average of each high school also in Knox County, Tennessee with performance going nowhere but down. It is rather obvious that neither the state of Tennessee, nor this school district had any effective management controls, the right objectives and operating plans in place to date. It is even more obvious that either we hire state Education Commissioners who are not prepared for the job or the governor does not like their suggestions. Consider that the worst performing high schools spend more than twice as much money per student as the higher performing ones FOR THIRTEEN YEARS OR MORE, WITHOUT ANY IMPROVEMENT. They just keep delivering lower ACT results year after year. What is the major contributors to this failure? The wrong or no academic objective, the 90% graduation rate, and poorly trained teachers in the subjects they teach. If you push children through high school when some may require a year or two more, you miss the most important thing - their education. The result: lack of A HIGH ENOUGH ACT SCORE OBJECTIVE leads to the poorly educated high school graduates and that leads to poor employment for life. We spend more money per student in Knox County, Tennessee than the great majority of the top twenty countries in education, whose cost of living is higher. They cannot even read well enough by the time they graduate. Although our spending per student is the fifth highest in the world, in mathematics we dropped from the top in 1970 to 40th as a country with disastrous results. That means that we spend a lot more money than they do, and we deliver much worse education to our children. The education they get is so bad that three out of four graduates have only 3-5 years of low end employment before robots replace them for the rest of a 40-45 year working life beyond high school. The poor results indicate that WE DO SPEND ENOUGH, BUT IT IS NOT BEING SPENT ON THE RIGHT PEOPLE AND PROGRAMS.


    Our "ACT Readiness" is only 24-99% of those students who graduated with a diploma. What is the logic behind graduating 73-99% of the students who are NOT ACT Ready and therefore will not have a chance for any job in a few years? IS THIS ACCEPTABLE? We do a poor job in education with one of the highest expenses per student in the world. That means that a large portion of the education money is not spent in the right places and on the right, well-trained people. Who are we helping with such an outrageous long-failing system for many decades? Not our children, not their teachers, not the quality of our workforce and therefore not our economy or country. BUT WE CERTAINLY ARE BUILDING ONE GIGANTIC POWDER KEG!




    With the years passing, most job requirements and related education increased as robotics and software automation replaced lower level jobs, and as new technologies created new jobs. ACT changes one or more of the four benchmark target scores to define ACT Readiness accordingly. Such a trend will continue in the future, but faster. According to ACT, in Tennessee 83% of the graduating students (98% of black graduates), plus those who did not graduate, plus dropouts are not prepared to be trained for a job as of 2015.

    Nationally, 94% of black children (74% of all children) who earned a high school diploma, plus about 10% who attended but did not graduate, plus dropouts, were not prepared for anything other than close to minimum wage low skill jobs, and have no chance to finish even the first year of any tech/vocational training or college. ARE THESE ACCEPTABLE RESULTS? ONE WONDERS IF STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENTS AND ELECTED SCHOOL BOARDS UNDERSTAND THE HUGE PROBLEM THEY ARE CREATING BY NOT ACTING ON IT. Some people blame this on parents and poverty. But a 42 school system in New York City called Success Academy Schools takes ONLY poor, inner city black and Hispanic children. They scored TOP ONE PERCENT in the NY State Common Core Tests, PASSING EVEN MOST PRIVATE SCHOOLS! They have a waiting list of more than 19,000 families! There are no inner city areas that are more difficult than Harlem in New York, where this school system started in 2006. The responsible people for the poor performance are the governors, the education subcommittees in legislature, the state boards of education, the state departments of education and the elected district school boards. A very large percentage of our children will be replaced shortly by robots as a result of our poor public education, and because we did not fix our poor education a long time ago. We are not developing the great majority of children in our public schools (very few exceptions) for the future that they will face. We are creating soft, undisciplined and poorly educated children to face a tough world after high school. We are developing a huge powder keg that is about ready to blow up on us.


    In 2015 we had more than three million jobs we could not fill because our companies could not find well-educated potential candidates (Click here for report). Our schools need to understand that they are preparing a "product" called a student, who are required by the "customers" called employers and/or universities for further learning, to supply what employers need. The ACT is a test used by 59% of graduating high school students to show how well they are prepared for employment or further education. The poor ACT results indicate that no one in political leadership either cares or understands this fact and are doing nothing about it. It is totally unacceptable to spend $120,000 of the people's money MINIMUM per student for twelve years of education, 74% of whom are not ACT ready nationally to be trained for a job. With robotics coming now to replace fast food and higher level jobs, the 74% unreadiness of high school graduates will rise. (Click here for report).

    Product and service competitiveness depend on the workforce's education. At the upper end PhDs design and make the products...and they all depend on the quality of high school graduates they produce as a nation. With only 26% of the graduating high school students being ACT READY in the USA, we have been doing a very poor job having our children educated for many years, and Nanotechnology will have an additional major impact by 2020, requiring more education, impacting the great majority of jobs.

    Our children's education declined, but robotic artificial intelligence (AI) passed average human intelligence in 2015 and their cost dropped below minimum wage. Fast food companies plan to automate every store fully. For example, McDonald's plans to replace 25,000 stores before end of 2017 or about 500,000 jobs. However, we are beginning to see robots that replace people with a graduate degree, e.g. new fighter plane pilots, nurse anesthetists and even anesthesiologists.


    We cannot expect teachers to do their best if they do not have full authority to deal with student discipline problems decisively on their own, and if they are loaded down with paperwork, too much testing to reduce their preparation and teaching time. Performance evaluations cannot be done 3-4 times a year without such evaluations being student results-based. After all the purpose of the teachers' and the schools' existence is to provide excellent internationally competitive education for our children. THAT IS NOT THE CASE TODAY. JUST LOOK AT OUR ACT OR SAT RESULTS.




    "A nation can be no swifter than its progress in education. The human mind is our fundamental resource."

     

    John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) Thirty-fifth President of the USA




    It would be reasonable to expect that all 3.5 million children who graduated nationally from public high school with a regular diploma, would be (ACT) Ready for job training or further education. Unfortunately, 74% or 2.59 million of our graduating children are not ready each year, and we wasted more than 31 billion dollars per year covering their TWELVE YEARS SPENDING $372,000,000,000 to graduate children who are not prepared (there is no adjustment to constant dollars because the twelve years of education could shift back or forward. These are very low conservative assumptions and the real cost will be higher). They will have minimum wage jobs for a couple of years and then...NOTHING. Robots will replace them. There are very few public high schools nationally who are exceptions. The public should be aware that private high school graduates have 85-99% readiness. But they cost $8,000-15,000 per year. Since the public pays for the poorly performing public schools, the public would deserve a voucher or tax credit in the entire amount of the public school average expense/year/student, if a parent wishes to have his/her child educated in a private school instead. We feel that we, the public deserve a good enough education for our children, that supports minimally a family of four, and improves each each year to make it possible for our children to qualify for the better jobs that new technologies will create. What the public does not deserve is for 2.59 million of its children nationwide to be sentenced to failure factories for schools EVERY SINGLE YEAR for whom we paid $130,000 constant dollars per child or $336.7 BILLION DOLLARS of the people's hard-earned tax dollars, and be ruined for life by the poor quality of public education.


    A third of a TRILLION dollars is an enormous amount of money that is wasted per year, increasing annually, preparing children poorly, compared to many other nations. Our graduates cannot communicate properly and cannot even do basic math. We are one of the highest spenders per student in the world, and dropped to 40th in the world in performance. Just look at the numbers we are presenting. They are the government's numbers. How many decades do we need to wait and accept such a poor job that we, the public are paying for? We cannot afford to wait. We wasted a lot of money for more than four decades on these failure factories we call schools. We could change for the better. We need changes urgently.



    There is a new development that most of the public does not know as of 2018. A new class of robots have started to replace many low-end jobs in 2016, some of which require a college degree, not just a high school diploma. How do you think those 2.59 million children will survive, who are not prepared well enough each year?


    We have been competing worldwide for decades. Our education management, teaching methodology is about 100 years old. Others improved, especially after WWII. We dropped to 40th in high school math in the world in 2016 because we did not improve teacher preparation, the way we teach and manage school districts and schools, as many other countries did and passed us. If we want to learn about how to become better, look at how the best in the world are achieving their fabulous results, like Singapore and Finland. Study how they do everything in education and adopt their methods. Their methods are transferable to US culture. Then you will have an excellent chance for improvement in student results.



    We are enclosing here a comprehensive document from Finland, one of the best systems in education in the world. Try to read every page of every link in it. This is how the best countries in education plan and conduct the education of its citizens. Click here to read it.






    AS TIME PASSES, THE WORLD IS GETTING "SMALLER", AND MORE INTEGRATED, MORE FAMILIAR WITH EACH OTHER'S CULTURE

    We are moving toward faster technological developments that bring with them faster job changes. Jobs replaced by automation at the low end, and many new jobs open - but they require more education. That means that the fundamental education children get in primary and secondary school needs to create a stronger, much better foundation of knowledge than it has created to date. We need to teach at least as much as in the honors courses to all, not just in science and math with an expanded curriculum, but also with music and art to develop both hemispheres of the child's brain. This is important for good decision making and creative thinking. We are talking about it, but we are not doing it.

    We compete worldwide but we compare ourselves only to US results and US ideas. Our high school graduates dropped to 40th in math in the world. Dropping to 40th in math when you are the fifth highest spender in the world per student, raises serious questions about how we spend our tax dollars to deliver such a poor result. What percentage of public school students who take the ACT in the US are ACT Ready upon graduation? ONLY 26%. What percentage should be ACT Ready? AT LEAST 80%, but preferably all students who graduate with a diploma should be ACT Ready. Since our high schools feed the workforce-needs of all industries, the poor high school output is destroying us from within.



    "The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything."

    Albert Einstein



    SOME THINGS HAVE TO MAKE MUCH BETTER SENSE IN OUR SCHOOL DISTRICTS. WHY DON'T WE ELIMINATE THINGS THAT DO NOT MAKE SENSE AND DAMAGE US? DO MORE WHAT HELPS US INSTEAD!


    When a school district picks low expectation objectives like a 21 ACT score, THAT IS MORE THAN 10 YEARS AWAY, you have a board and superintendent who have no idea how to set the right objectives in each school, how to organize an operating plan to achieve that objective to achieve better results. Why are our education standards so low that we cannot produce 80% minimum ACT Readiness instead of 26% among our high school graduates? Look at Finland whose methods overcome even most learning disabilities.




    "Learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change. And the most pressing task is TO TEACH PEOPLE HOW TO LEARN"

    Peter Drucker, 1909-2005,
    Father of 21st Century "Management By Objectives"

    ACT (or SAT depending on the state) SCORE IS THE BEST INDICATOR OF THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR CHILDREN'S PUBLIC EDUCATION



    Look at the above graph. In 2006, ACT indicated that their empirical research (comparing ACT scores to jobs or additional education the student was able to obtain some years after taking the ACT) shows that college entrance and workforce training have the same requirement in English and math from 2006 onward. That has changed over the years, because ACT started using a four-subject benchmark test for READINESS, plus university degrees in engineering and science require a higher ACT score in mathematics than the ACT Readiness benchmark in mathematics. ACT defined the additional benchmarks for and definition of "Career (job) and College Readiness", that indicates what CHANCE (not a guarantee) the ACT READY child has to finish the first year only of a college or tech/vocational school. Those who are NOT ACT READY (and DO NOT meet all four subject benchmarks) do not have a chance to finish the first year of any tech/vocational or college program and will have spotty minimum wage employment for a limited time. Robotics will replace them. Passing only one benchmark means that the student does have a chance only to finish the college freshman version of the same subject only as the benchmark that the student passed. However, in addition, the robotic technologies that many US companies have already contracted by 2016 will replace them rapidly.

    Some of the new robotic applications are replacing jobs FOR THE FIRST TIME that require more than a college degree (anesthesia robots, already installed in some hospitals, however some robots that are involved in healthcare will have slower growth because of public acceptance). We will see more of such applications within a year. Artificial intelligence passed average human levels in 2015 and it is growing faster. Under these circumstances, those who graduate from high school even ACT Ready, will not be employable within a couple of years at most, unless we increase both the high school curriculum and increase the material within each course of the curriculum significantly, and increase the teachers' subject knowledge to Master's level and improve teaching methodologies, to the same level where the top performing international education systems are.

    With the above poor results - just think about this for a moment: we have poor ACT performance leaving most children behind - not just 51%, but 76-85% and among African American students 96% are left behind. There will be a big price to pay for such negligence!

    1. Investigating how the best school systems achieve their results worldwide is NEVER discussed in board meetings to improve what we do.
    2. School board members never take ANY TIME at school board meetings to discuss and plan how we could improve our poor ACT scores.


    Do you think they are interested in doing better? The evidence is not encouraging.



    "A lie told often enough becomes the truth."


    Lenin (1870 - 1924)




    THE PUBLIC PAYS THE HIGH, INCREASING PUBLIC EDUCATION COST. THEY DESERVE THE TRUTH AND BETTER SCHOOLS WITH A MUCH HIGHER ACT READINESS.

    One cannot solve a problem long by covering it up, or by "packaging" it in good news for those who are paying for it, the public. Unless...those in charge don't want to or don't know how to solve it.

    "A half-truth is a whole lie" is a popular proverb that has been directed at newspapers and politicians since the 1880s. However, the majority in public education management beat them all. For example in the Knox County School District, Tennessee, 76% of those who graduated with a diploma in 2015 are prepared only for a close to minimum wage job. They will not even have a chance to finish the first year of a tech/vocational school or college per ACT. A new generation of robotics will replace them in a few years.

    At the same time the superintendent published everywhere, including on his letterhead, that we provide "Excellence for all children" and knowingly and purposefully told the public that "We are doing well, a strong B performance, but we have room to improve". It was a lie about actual school performance. Tennessee did celebrate the highest growth in the USA in 4th and 8th grade NAEP test scores one year...but we were still below the USA average, which we did not mention. Nor did we mention the fact that Knox County did not even take the test, yet some people and foundations partnering with this school district used it as if they did and this was a county achievement. We as a country should also consider that we dropped very significantly from other nations to 40th place in mathematics. In 2013, the same school district set an all time low average ACT score record at 20.2. The ACT is the most important test. It shows what our children learned from grade one to twelve. No one said a word to anyone about the all time low ACT score in 2013. The bad news and the complete truth was and is ignored. Anything that sounds good is published by the school district communications group. What the public gets is a lie, when all this poor education and the lies about their results are created with the public's hard-earned tax dollars within the education budget.

    SIDE NOTE: Please remember that tests are designed for a specific subject or group of subjects in accordance with the curriculum of the state in which the person studies and/or takes the test. In other words, they are designed such that a 90-100% score would merit an "A" and anything under 60% would be an "F", a failing grade. Test designers are professional people generally with a master's degree in the subject for which the test is created. Unfortunately, some states are changing grades based on what they call a "Cut Score" where a low score like 45% may be changed to a "B" to make the school system look better, and the student loses. Then they celebrate the "B" openly in the newspapers!!

    TCAP state test results for Tennessee show approximately double the score of the national ACT or NAEP tests, because they are much easier tests. The TCAP's rigor or toughness was 58% lower than the ACT. In other words, the much easier state test shows much higher grades, putting into good light performance that is a disastrous failure. As a result, we hurt a very large percentage of graduating children who are not ready for a meaningful job or for more education without two years of full time remedial courses.

    Praising and calling a superintendent a Miracle Maker with our TCAP results is not a true representation of the actual results for which the public is paying with their hard-earned tax dollars. Frankly, one would reasonably expect a more truthful representation made to the public in an article like the one below, by any journalist or especially an editor or publisher of any newspaper. The ideals and standards of journalists have changed unfortunately.

    All the above shows a planned, willful and purposeful misrepresentation of the truth, to create an impression that the school district is doing well, when, in fact, it is doing very poorly according to ACT's impartial college readiness figures. The misrepresentation starts with the Boards and superintendents of school districts who are not telling the entire truth. The public is paying for it. The public is misinformed PURPOSEFULLY with partial truth using the easy tests that provide higher grades. Tennessee is changing those tests in 2016-2017.

     

     

    THE SHOCKING COST OF ONE CAREER AND COLLEGE READY PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATE'S EDUCATION WITH A REGULAR DIPLOMA


    One will not survive at minimum wage. With robotics taking the low paying jobs, those not ACT Ready cannot survive. If 80% of graduates are not ACT Ready, then eight out of ten high school graduates will not make it under robotic pressure in the job market. But we will be paying for the education of all ten in our example. Therefore the expense of developing one ACT Ready graduate will actually cost five times as much as one graduate. The average per student cost in Tennessee is above $10,000 per year including capital and interest expenses. We will assume $10,000 for easy calculation. For twelve years the cost of educating one student is $120,000. Remember that we pay for all students. Those students who do not test ACT Ready, will be short term minimum wage material. Therefore the cost of 12 years of education for those who leave high school who are not ACT Ready, becomes part of the cost of all those students' education who ARE ACT ready. to be trained for a job or go on to college. We spent $10,000 per student in 2016 in Knox County, Tennessee that included almost all education-related expenses. These expenses are rising every year. This is the public's money - our tax dollars. Under these conditions, the 12-13 year MINIMUM cost of one career (job) or college ready high school graduate, with a regular high school diploma is sky high, because we also pay for those students who dropped out and those who did earn a regular diploma, who are not career or college ready according to ACT. THAT makes the cost of one ACT Ready student in specific demographic areas as high as presented hereunder, because of the ACT Readiness percentage in a specific demographic area is so low. We did not consider inflation adjustment on these dollars because the twelve year education could be spreading to the past (less $) or future (more $) in different degrees, and the future ACT Readiness may vary up or down.



    One ACT Ready Black Student: $3,960,000
    One ACT Ready Hispanic Student: $1,200,000
    One ACT Ready Average Student: $600,000
    If All Students Were Ready Like In The Top Ten Nations In Education
    One ACT Ready Student would cost: $120,000 - $140,000


    ...because we also have to pay for the many students who are not prepared and not ready in the same demographic group.

    If 75-98% of those students who earned a regular diploma (plus dropouts, and those who "finished" high school but did not earn a diploma) are not ready to be trained for a job, then our diplomas are worthless - and they are. So why push a 90% graduation rate? That means very low income for the majority of those entering our high schools with increasing unemployment and a huge negative impact upon our economy for lack of a well-trained workforce.

    RECOMMENDATION: The state focuses school districts on achieving higher graduation rates. THAT IS AN INCREDIBLY POOR STRATEGY IF THE STATE WANTS EMPLOYABLE CHILDREN TO GRADUATE FROM HIGH SCHOOL. THE TEACHERS ARE PUSHED SO HARD THAT THEY ARE EVEN INSTRUCTED TO CHANGE GRADES. THE RESULT IS THAT THE ACT SCORES SUFFER, AND 83% OF THE GRADUATING CHILDREN ARE NOT "ACT READY". THEY ARE UNEMPLOYABLE. THIS IS SO STUPID THAT IT BOGGLES THE MIND. IF EACH SCHOOL SET A GPA OBJECTIVE THAT WOULD BE 10% HIGHER THAN THE LAST YEAR'S GPA PERFORMANCE, THE GRADUATION RATE WOULD GO UP AND SO WOUILD THE ACT SCORES. SOMETHING IS NOT RIGHT THE WAY WE TEACH THEM IN TENNESSEE.

    THERE ARE MANY JOBS - WE JUST DO NOT HAVE WELL ENOUGH EDUCATED CANDIDATES FOR THEM.

    In the USA, 74% of our schools are public schools, 22% are private schools and 4% are charter schools a form of public schools also. The lower skill manufacturing jobs have been disappearing to robotic and software automation for more than two decades. More and more low-end jobs will be replaced by robotics and many new jobs will open with new technologies faster and faster, but they will require more education on the high school level, not just what we know as job training. There were more than three million jobs open in 2015, that could not be filled because employers were not finding candidates with the education that they needed for such jobs. Such new jobs will require a much better education coming out of high school than what public schools deliver today. The stories about good education are true only with very few public schools. What's going to happen to our children? THREE OUT OF FOUR OF OUR CHILDREN ARE BEING LEFT BEHIND TODAY IN OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS IN ADDITION TO DROPOUTS. What is going to happen to our state and country? I fear the answer to this question.

    The poorly educated workforce, mostly untrainable (80% per ACT), is a major concern of corporations who are paying most of the taxes. To do well, they need a well-trained workforce. They are holding onto cash instead of hiring. To survive, they will have to expand elsewhere or move entirely, or depend on the new generation of robots. This trend just started happening. Expect such changes happening here on a much larger scale. We will not survive the poor objectives and lack of a professional annual operating plans on the school district management level.

    It is common in high performing nations to hire teachers who have a Master's degree in the subject that they would teach, come from the top ten percent of their Master's major, and then they send them back to grad school for learning the latest in teaching methodologies and in some cases diagnosing learning disabilities as well. US teachers come from the bottom third of four-year college programs that are the easiest.



    The graph above shows a demographic breakdown of the unreadiness percentage of those who graduated from high school nationally. The results are horrible nationally because all states and school districts operate the same way with poor objectives and poor plans. You are looking at a powder keg, that is about to blow up. Our employers must go to robotics, because our graduates not only cannot do the job, they are poorly educated, and they have a bad attitude. If they do not go to robotics, they have to leave and go to where the workforce is better trained - or close the business and no one will be employed. But...in New York City there is a charter school chain with 41 schools in 2016, that started with one school in 2006. They are called Success Academy Schools. This school is scoring top one percent passing even most private schools in the entire State of New York WITH POOR BLACK AND HISPANIC INNER CITY CHILDREN! Anyone with such high performance will have plenty of critics. Misbehaving children who disturb entire classes are gone. So are teachers who do not meet their high standards. Guess what the public wants? They want their child to have an excellent education and future. Obviously our traditional public schools have no idea how to provide excellent education to our children of ANY COLOR, and the states are not doing anything about it! They know however, how to spend more money each year than the majority of the top performing twenty nations in education. What do you think will happen when robotics will dump 50-80% of our children on the streets because they have been poorly trained in our public schools? This is very likely to happen by 2020-2021.



    The countries that passed us in education, teach significantly more advanced material per subject per year than we do. Unless we bring up both teacher and student knowledge with a tougher curriculum and life-time education for degrees that are in demand, we will not be economically competitive against robotics in problem solving, critical thinking, decision making and job skills by 2025. Poor results shown in the above charts are unacceptable. In Knox County, Tennessee, and in many other school districts and states, we just keep dumbing down the population with the poor results from our public schools, as the elected school boards keep giving themselves and the superintendents an excellent performance review for the poor performance, and increasing education spending every year.


    As a remedy, some governors announced a free two year college program after high school, that will cost more money and will not solve the problem of declining education, because:

    • We do not take advantage of the fastest brain development that occurs under six years of age with an effective pre-school program,
    • We are not improving and increasing knowledge in K12 education and are not correcting behavior and attitude problems that developed during those formative years. We are not correcting the fundamental K12 problem that limits young people's brain in how much they can achieve for 12-13 years of K12 schooling,
    • We are enabling only some remedial education with the free two-year college, to get closer to the low state standard of today. This does not solve the problems of the K-12 education shortcomings that became set in concrete in our children during the formative years. Yet we will have to pay a higher rate for the additional two years, without fixing what caused the problem in K-12.
    • It would be more effective for the people's money to fix some basic areas within K-12 education to solve the poor performance problem, such as:
      • Raise expectations with a measurable objective, such as an ACT score objective that is 5-10% higher than the actual ACT score achieved the previous year,
      • Create an annual operating plan that simply specifies a monthly year-to-date GPA objective that is minimum 10% above the prior year's monthly year-to-date GPA for all management people and for all teachers. There has to be many years of GPA history available per student. Based on them, an average GPA baseline could be established for at minimum covering the preceding 3 years, using this baseline GPA for every class in any subject before the class starts, and measuring against this baseline GPA what individual teachers achieve at the end of the school year as an average class GPA.
      • There must be a fair assessment of what teachers achieve in average GPA increase beyond the baseline GPA that reflects their class members actual performance for the past three years. Teachers are not treated well compared to the high performing international school systems. They must be treated fairly, and to that end some state laws will need to be changed to allow them to do their best with high morale.



    Our governors, state departments of education and the elected school district boards managed to develop FAILURE FACTORIES nationwide with their inaction instead of good results, through incompetence in management, with weaker teacher training, limiting teachers' authority and preparation time with unproductive tasks. Teacher morale is low. The higher performing countries require teacher candidates to have a master's degree in the subject that they will teach, they are tested for suitability for the teaching profession, and must continue to update their education every year in teaching methodologies and subject knowledge. We do not seem to be interested in learning from the top performing countries. When one dropped from the top to 40th in the world (and our example state, Tennessee, is much lower than that), one does not have the experience to come up with a winning methodology to become one of the best based only on USA experience in education. No wonder we have poverty problems. We don't even recognize that our dropping education results dumbed us down for 45+ years, weakening our workforce, creating more poverty plus a huge problem for employers, who have only two options to survive: move to areas with a better-trained workforce, or replace low-end jobs with robotics.



    McDonalds decided in 2015 to replace 25,000 stores totally with robotics by end of 2019, so did Wendy's and many others. Robots were announced in 2016 to replace anesthesia nurses whose education goes well beyond high school. We better improve education very quickly by focusing on ACT score objectives and learning as much as possible from the highest performing countries in education about how they are achieving their fabulous results. The result for us will be increasing social problems with the unemployed. There will be no money to solve them, because our national income has been struggling for ten years at break even only. All of this happened because the poor high school education output weakened the workforce in all industries, from the low end jobs, up to and including PhD's. For several decades now foreign students made up 50% of the PhD's we needed for research and development, but for the past few years many are returning to their home countries because they find better opportunities there.





    WHY ARE WE ONE OF THE HIGHEST SPENDERS PER STUDENT IN THE WORLD DELIVERING THE WORST EDUCATION RESULTS AMONG INDUSTRIALIZED COUNTRIES?

    School districts do not identify all education spending for the public to see. We try to do that and relate the approved budget to it although the approved budget itself does not include all education-related expenses. We would advocate the board of education being fully responsible for a budget that includes ALL education-related expenses.


    The "Current" budget is approved at the beginning of the school year. It excludes certain education-related expenses, like capital and interest expenses, legal and other expenses that are commingled hidden in different county cost centers. That means that we do not know exactly how much we spend on public education. A special investigative audit, called a forensic audit would be the efficient way to identify ALL education related spending.



    The "Current" budget is overspent 15-18% every single year (2008-2014), and we get the above poor results for it. The state publishes the Grand Total Education Expense Spent in the same school district, that is overspent 28-38% every year beyond the approved budget, including the capital and interest expenses covering school renovations and new schools that the education department decides to renovate or build respectively, but excluding them from the budget they present. Even the Grand Total doesn't include all education-related expenses. All this points to another very important thing that is not being done: ZERO BASED BUDGET PLANNING, AND PRESENTING TO THE PUBLIC ALL PUBLIC SCHOOL-RELATED EXPENSES. It is the school system that initiates or causes all such expenses, but they do not have responsibility for the outcome. This is not a good way to manage to success.



    ZERO BASED BUDGET PLANNING means that the budget being prepared for all departments identifies first all actions that they will have to take during the coming year to improve results and reach a specific performance objective. Then each department and school puts the budget together for themselves on that basis. That is how one can make sure that any surprises are minimized for the coming year, and it is an important part of planning and creating an operating plan for the coming year only. Poor planners do a quick and easy way, called INCREMENTAL BUDGET PLANNING in which one looks at what one spent last year, and modifies it by adding or subtracting amounts that one just guesses without planning. For small organizations that total less than 100 employees one can do that. For larger organizations, the end result is overspending beyond the approved budget every year, and that is what is happening in Knox County, Tennessee and in many other school districts. When one starts putting together multi-year plans, like the five year plan, it just does not make sense because too many unanticipated things will be changing each year that no one can predict that far ahead. Therefore in well-managed operations one sees zero-based budget planning for a ONE-YEAR OPERATING PLAN, based on which the spending can be managed accurately. That is what well management schooled and experienced superintendents do.



    When one sees a five year plan, that looks beautiful with color charts and pictures, with simply a fixed percentage increase on some activities every year, and then adds a tenth year result that looks just OK, no serious planning went into that plan. The superintendent in such a case prepared a "selling document only", it is always a beautiful colorful document, but without any serious planning. Five years are too long. Too many things can change even within a year. What many school districts do not have is a one year operating plan where there is a measurable performance goal like an ACT score that is 5-10% higher than the last one achieved, and measurable objectives are defined for every management and supervisory position in every single school and in central management. One cannot achieve good results with only titles. The Five Year Strategic Plans of the Knox County, TN superintendent, were good examples of this.



    The Knox County, Tennessee school district has an unusually large PR group as of 2015 whose planning and execution on any action they target is excellent. They do not report all of the news. They report only what looks good, creating a positive image in the eyes of the public. As a result, the public is unaware how poorly their children are prepared in our public schools.



    One sees significant additional money requests annually from the board of education, with two big problems.

    • They are never tied to a plan to show how much they will raise the ACT results that count. The promises are endless.
      •
    • Most such programs do not produce any improvement in the ACT scores. However, the amount approved one year just keeps included every year thereafter and no one questions it. It is sad how the people's hard-earned tax dollars are wasted in education without any improvement in results.

    HIDING BAD RESULTS FROM THE PUBLIC
    "A half-truth is a whole lie" is a popular proverb that's been directed at newspapers and politicians since the 1880s.
    "A lie told often enough becomes the truth." - Lenin
    "Present good news to the public and repeat often, no matter how insignificant it is. Do not present the bad news to the public, no matter how important it is" - Goebels and Hitler
    All these methods are used in most PR organizations in school districts.



    We overspend the people's money every year in education in Knox County, Tennessee and produce one of the worst results at the same time within the USA. Internationally, we dropped to 40th place in math, a new all time low record - that's the bottom of the industrialized countries. Our education spending per student is the fifth highest in the world. Our school districts are always pushing for more money as the solution to fix the poor results. We also do not identify for the public all of the money we spend on education. Some such moneys are commingled with non-education related expenses and hidden in different cost centers. I think that the public who is paying for the poor results and high expense levels deserves to get a detailed accounting of how much money we really spend on education-related expenses.



    We need a forensic audit to identify exactly where the money went and why it was not getting to the right place in the school district, destroying most of our children's employability, our workforce and our economy as a result.



    Proposed programs costing additional tens of millions of dollars in each state by school district management, did not and do not deliver higher act or sat scores. They are the only tests that show the real end of high school results. Could these kinds of ineffective actions be accidental after more than 40 years? No, they cannot and they require uniform statewide control via laws.



    More than 30 states cut back education spending since 2008. See http://www.cbpp.org/cams/?fa=view&id=4011. Even with such reductions in spending, the US is the fifth largest spender per student among the industrialized countries, with the lowest academic performance among those nations.

    All things are possible - if one is smart.



    The chart below shows very poor expense management without any reasonable monthly control per school that disregards the approved budget with overspending without any recourse and with poor academic results.



    No report covers all expenses going into education, although the state report covers significantly more in its Tennessee Education Statistical Report for each year than the Knox County education district itself.



    The problem is that when board members look at a chart like this they do not recognize poor results or excessive spending. Most of them do not understand what not being ACT Ready means, and most importantly do not understand how robotics will impact all children who are not ACT Ready, and within just a few years will be impacting some jobs that require training beyond high school. Most board members do not want to learn and do not question the superintendent about academic results and spending vs. objective or budget every month at board meetings. In our opinion two questions are vital in managing poorly performing education districts. THESE TWO QUESTIONS need to be answered monthly:

    • How are we doing with the most important academic results (e.g., annual ACT and monthly year-to-date GPA) year-to-date vs. plan in every school and the school district, and
      •
    • How much money are we spending per school and project, year-to-date vs. the approved budget.
    Neither of these is presented or discussed.





    THE PUBLIC IS NOT GETTING THE TRUTH ABOUT HOW POORLY PUBLIC SCHOOLS ARE EDUCATING OUR CHILDREN
    This is vital in order to get parental help and because the public is paying one of the highest dollars per student in the world. Why are we not doing it?

     


    "Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence."

    Vince Lombardi

     

     


    To get more public support, tell the truth. Generally both parents have to work today, and single parents have a tougher time. We need more support from them. Giving the public good news only is not helpful under the circumstances. Another important consideration is the fact that the public is paying everyone's salaries in public education. They deserve to know the truth. IF THE PUBLIC FINDS OUT WITHOUT FOREWARNING THAT THEIR CHILDREN CANNOT GET A JOB AFTER GRADUATING FROM OUR HIGH SCHOOLS, WE WILL SEE A VERY BAD, VIOLENT REACTION. IT WOULD BE SMARTER TO ADMIT THE PROBLEM WE FACE WITH OUR POOR EDUCATION AND TAKE OWNERSHIP FOR WHY IT HAPPENED. THERE WOULD BE SOME INITIAL REACTION, BUT THE PUBLIC IS FORGIVING IF THEY SEE AN HONEST ATTEMPT MADE TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM.

    Only 26% nationally, 16% in Tennessee and 24% in Knox County, Tennessee of our graduating students with a diploma are ready for job training or have a chance to finish the first year only of a college, tech school/vocational program - in 2015. However the school system tells the public that all is well, and complains about parents not pushing the children enough to study. This level of readiness of public school graduates for job or higher level training is very poor and it is not improving. Many including the schools blame the parents when there are examples of some of the best school systems in the world achieve very high results parent-independently. Our education management has no interest in how they achieve that.

    The graph below shows the percentage of high school graduates nationally by demographics, who are not prepared for any job other than minimum wage jobs that will be replaced by robots shortly. The Tennessee figures are worse.

    We produce only 26% readiness of high school graduates nationally for job training or to have just a chance to finish the first year of a tech/vocational school or college according to ACT. But much worse, we produce only 5-6% ACT ready black high school students nationally (Tennessee 2%). The 41-school charter school, Success Academy Schools of New York City, produce top 1% results with poor, inner city black children. At the same time, a new generation of robots started replacing low and medium level jobs. See examples further down. As a result, those students' chances who are not ACT Ready, will evaporate for any job. If our governors and legislators cared, this would not be happening.

    When Performance Is As Poor As Ours, It Is Vital To Have Two Objectives Only To Focus The Entire Organization On The Key Measurable Indicator Of Academic Success, Like An ACT Score That Is 5-10% Higher Than The Last ACT Score Achieved. The Second Objective Must Be A Limit On Spending To Stay Under The Budget That Was Approved Before The School Year Started.

    Anyone requesting additional school funding must commit to an ACT score increase in return with a plan in writing that explains how the ACT score increase is going to be achieved. State leadership, education committees, state school boards, and the state department of education, all must be focused on achieving an ACT score objective that is 5-10% higher than the last ACT score achieved along with the school districts. There is much more effort going into spending more money on programs that do not improve the ACT or SAT scores that represent our graduates' knowledge, or making excuses on the state or local level.

    There Is No Effort To Learn From The Best International Performers To Improve Our Poor Results. Our Public Education System Has The 5th Highest Cost Per Student In The World, While Dropping To 40th From The Top At Great Cost To The USA Public.

    All ACT objectives require that an operating plan exist detailing what committee members, board members and all management and supervisory personnel need to achieve by each month's end.



    Look at the high percentage of graduating children who are not ACT Ready in the chart. Not being ACT Ready means no chance to finish even the first year of a tech/vocational school or a college. They are qualified only for minimum wage jobs, which will be replaced by robots in a couple of years.



    "Denial. Ask any psychologist what the major obstacle to recovery is, and the likely answer will be denial. It's fundamental. Until you admit there is a problem, you can't begin to solve it."

    John McCormack "Self-Made in America"

     



    The elected boards have to oversee the management and success of a school district with typically 100 – 10,000 employees, and a $10 million - $1 BILLION annual budget through a superintendent that they interview and hire. That is a huge management job, for which the voting majority or even a single board member would not be experienced and qualified. One requires substantial training even to interview and decide to hire a superintendent for an organization of that size. The state cannot provide management guidelines because the old education laws block it and they are likely to not have the experience to give it. School districts have meaningless objectives. They don't know how to change the way they manage and operate to create better results.

     



    The elected board has to set objectives for the coming school year. Their objectives are always very vague, never about achieving an ACT score and never about not exceeding the budget approved at the start of the school year. The result is poor ACT scores, poor readiness after graduation and the budget exceeded every year. Then they perform their own performance review. The superintendent does the same and gives himself excellent marks, although the academic results are terrible. All objectives turn out vague and immeasurable. The superintendent is to prepare a five-year "strategic" plan according to the state, again with vague goals, many $100 words that no board-member dares to question for fear of looking uneducated. The plans do not include academic and financial objectives for schools, and school performance is the most important area. With such an arrangement, life becomes very political, and a poorly performing mayhem where sexual harassment can happen without the individual being fired. You hire and promote friends and relatives. You do nothing about helping teachers and principals to make their life more productive with higher morale so that they become more effective with students. All within current education law.

     



    When the state itself is performing as poorly as Tennessee, it is not happening because they have the right management experience in the Department of Education, in the state Board of Education or even in the governor's office. If you disagree, just look at the ACT results. What does that tell us? It does not tell us that we have brilliant people with the right management experience, they just decided for a very important reason not to solve the problem that is destroying our children's future.

     


    The American public is paying a huge increasing bill for education with a school system failure rate at 74% nationally. For black students, it is an outrageous 95% ACT Unreadiness or failure rate, when a NYC chain of 42 charter schools, Success Academy Schools scored top one percent passing even most private schools with poor, inner city black students! IT CAN BE DONE. VISIT THIS SCHOOL, FIND OUT WHAT CREATES THE SUCCESS, LEARN AND IMPLEMENT ANYTHING THAT WOULD HELP.


    "It's time to admit that public education operates like a planned economy, a bureaucratic system in which everybody's role is spelled out in advance and there are few incentives for innovation and productivity. It's no surprise that our school system doesn't improve: It more resembles the communist economy than our own market economy."

    Albert Chancre,

    President of the American Federation of Teachers





    SOLUTIONS TO THE PROBLEM
    This website lists the ten best tools that could make learning easier for students and make teaching easier for teachers, in any school environment: http://www.teacherswithapps.com/top-10-most-effective-online-tools-for-academic-classes/.

    AVOID OBJECTIVES THAT DO NOT WORK
    SEE THESE EXAMPLES.

    Many objectives dilute each other. A second primary objective is also needed, monthly, to not exceed the expense budget that the board approved at the start of the school year, with each and every school principal being responsible for meeting a corresponding expense objective and academic objective, spending and personnel decisions without interference. All other objectives are secondary objectives applying to specific management positions under the board or superintendent.

    The objectives set in the past that one sees below, cannot achieve good results, because those who produce the results, the schools and support staff are not focused on the right two elements, a measurable academic and expense objective monthly. Schools are not research institutions. They are production institutions of the highest importance, whose national result has a vital impact on our children, every industry and our economy.

    In the school district's website the superintendent mentions that: "In fact, you may remember that a key goal of our strategic plan is 100/90/90/90, that is:"
    1. "100% of students completing high school" (What is the value of "completing" high school with 80% of those who entered 9th grade not being ready per ACT but for minimum wage jobs at best?)
    2. "At least 90% graduating with a regular diploma" (What is the value of a diploma when 77% of those with a regular diploma are not even ready to be trained for a job or to enter a college or tech school per ACT?)
    3. "At least 90% of our graduates taking the ACT," (All students take the ACT by law. What is the value here? Just taking a test has zero value in any case.)
    4. "At least 90% of ACT takers scoring a 21 or better" (An average ACT 21 score means that 73-75% of those who entered in 9th grade are NOT ACT READY and are prepared for minimum wage jobs only. This is a shamefully low objective. A neighboring school district's objective is ACT 24. The top twenty countries in education are delivering high school students in an ACT equivalent range of 26 to 31)."
    In the superintendent's Five Year Strategic Plan we have these different objectives that are also not appropriate, unclear, not measurable, neither academic nor spending related. Ask yourself on each one of these "How on earth can I tell if they met this objective or not? How do I measure how well they have done?".
    1. "Guarantee Excellence in Teaching and Learning."
    2. "Personalize Learning"
    3. "Facilitate High Quality Student Supports"
    4. "Build & Support Our Community of Learners"
    5. "Build & Support Our Community of Leaders"
    6. "Value Our Hardworking People"
    7. "Build & Strengthen Our "One Big Team""
    8. "Invite & Earn Stakeholder Feedback"
    9. "Improve Customer Service & Communication"


    Are these easy to understand, clear, measurable academic objectives and a spending objective vs. the approved budget? Of course not. Can you tell what measurable result to reach in each one? Of course not. Can all workers be focused on these objectives so that the GPA and ACT scores go up in every school? Absolutely not.

    That is the reason for poor performance. No one is going to pay attention to such objectives, and when they are not measurable, there can be no possible consequence. Ignoring it works. What becomes important is to please your boss and shield any complaints from him. Anyone can come up with excuses for the ACT score not improving. And the boss needs good excuses so he/she will appreciate you for it. That is the effect of too many objectives that are not measurable to see with certainty if they were met or not. Such a situation ends up with politics becoming important and achieving good results become less important. Poor, unmeasurable objectives increase the importance of politics in organizational behavior for survival.

    You may want to read "Objectives are vitally important if you wish to accomplish anything" with a group of people - or even alone - especially in a poorly performing organization.

    That is why we are producing the 40th result internationally in math. Tennessee is worse. We were on top in 1970. Teachers do not take the initiative to find out how the best nations in education are achieving their excellent results. They are focused on resolving their own personal issues with management, they have been demoralized over the years and not even given the basic right of being in charge of the classroom with full backing by management over discipline issues in the classroom. That is demeaning to teachers and reduces their credibility and authority in front of their students. Although the states should do this centrally, we do not see teachers making an individual effort to learn about why the top competitors are producing much better results, learn about them and implement such new methods. Unfortunately such attitudes are understandable with low morale but not helpful.

    Most parents are not pushing their children to study harder. A few decades ago only one parent worked and the other parent could focus on what needed to be done at home, including focusing the children on studying. Today, both parents are working, and most parents take the child's side if a complaint comes from school about the child's behavior. When the school district PR machine lies to the public about things going well, it is not helpful in getting single parents to help the school because they are working long hours every day. Many parents are not supportive enough to get their children to work harder today. It would be very helpful if the public was well informed about the poor performance of schools, to motivate them to help.

    However, there are school systems that produce uniformly excellent scores from all students, minority or not, without parental involvement, e.g., Finland's teaching method, or the 42-school Success Academy Schools in New York City that achieved in 2015 top one percent results with poor inner city black children, an amazing achievement. Finland's teacher selection and teaching methodology is better than ours. We are covering them in more detail later. Unfortunately our children pay a heavy price for all this. Four out of five graduates are unprepared for better jobs and robotic automation will replace them. All because our schools are not doing a better job. Parents we cannot control. Schools are to be controlled by their elected board and elected board members do not have the experience to do so.

    Some people show better OECD PISA results for the USA by showing only OECD member country results (35 countries), a smaller number. OECD as of 2015 publishes both member and non-member countries' results, 73 total, on the same page in its results. We dropped to 40th in the world in math in 2015.

    The potential working years of a high school graduate is 40-45 years. More than 75% of graduates in Knox County, Tennessee (more than 80% for Tennessee) are not prepared for any employment other than close to minimum wage jobs with increasing unemployment during their short working life, as robotics replace the low-to-medium level jobs.

    Excellent high school results are critical for our nation and individual graduates to be employable or what is called ACT Ready. Not just by one student in five being ready for employment as we have it now, but at least by four students out of five. Those who are ready, become part of our workforce. We need an outstanding well-educated workforce to create competitively priced outstanding products and services that our various industries can sell worldwide. Our workforce declined in skills. Our national income, GNP, and tax income depend on the success of US industries worldwide. Our GNP has been under 3% in growth for the past ten years. That's not good enough. It is the result of the poor readiness we deliver from our high schools. It is vital for us as a nation to fix our schools' performance.

    The world is everyone's market. That means that we must become competitive in the world market and that means that our high school output must be one of the best. It dropped to 40th in math. CLICK HERE TO SEE HOW WE COMPARE TO OTHER COUNTRIES IN PERFORMANCE.



    The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing!!"
    Edmund Burke, Irish statesman, 1776




    WHAT COULD BOARD MEMBERS DO DIFFERENTLY AND BETTER TO IMPROVE EDUCATION?

    Between 1995 and 2014 Knox County, Tennessee students increased only 14% but administrators increased 130%. The spending would have been more appropriate in the classroom. BUT THAT IS NOT ALL. Administrators hire people to work for them. The real increase ends up 650-900% if they hire 4-6 people per administrator for only a 14% increase in students. However, with this huge increase in management, the ACT results dropped like a stone setting an all time low record in 2013 with a score of 20.2! ACT Readiness reports indicate that as a result, more than 80% (statewide 89%, nationally 76%!) of those students who enter 9th grade are ready only for minimum wage employment, the types of jobs that will disappear. It is common knowledge in management that if you increase management numbers beyond standard operating ratios, managers (administrators) will start justifying their management positions, and such efforts actually hurt results and morale.


    This huge percentage of management increase was not reversed to this day, and it did absolutely nothing but cost us a lot of money! So...money is being shifted away from the classroom producing poorly prepared children in large numbers. Management overhead was increased purposefully, but the results dropped like a stone. I am sorry, but the wisdom with which the public's money and these decisions appear to be handled by school boards and superintendents is mind boggling. No one in leadership appears to have the wisdom to stand up and reverse such foolish spending.


    Why is the state allowing the wasting of so much of the people's money and dumb down virtually the entire workforce year after year? That is what the ACT results indicate under the governor.


    Any school district could reduce total Central Management employees to 1% of the total school district's employees.



    Any school district set as their most important two objectives: a 5-10% higher ACT score than the ACT score last achieved, and an objective for all managers in any school that is a monthly, month-to-date GPA objective. The second objective needs to focus on not exceeding the spending budget.



    The ACT and SAT tests show that our public school results are extremely poor. It is not surprising. If you attend any school board meeting, they never discuss the poor results and how those results could be improved. In addition, it is the schools that produce the results, yet we do not have monthly year-to-date GPA objectives in our schools that is 5-10% higher than the last one achieved. THAT EXPLAINS THE OUTRAGEOUSLY POOR PERFORMANCE.

     



    In our state's plans to improve math and English requirements, we are focusing on public opinion about what the school district should be doing. Education spending per student rose aggressively since 1970, and student performance went down. None of our leaders suggested any changes to our education system that would have increased the ACT and SAT scores, the key indicators of what children learned before graduating from high school.

     

    The public became less educated as a result, was dumbed down since 1970, and public opinion would not know anything about what our international competition accomplished and is planning, and what our employers need. As you see many foreign products around us, it should be very clear that we are competing with foreign countries whose education systems passed ours. We must catch up with the best. It will not be the local public's advice that will improve us.

     

    After all, it did not do any good so far for many decades, especially since they are misinformed by the school district PR groups about how well our schools are doing. It will be the detailed knowledge of what makes the top performers in the world much better than we are in the OECD PISA tests, that will tell us what areas we need to correct in primary and secondary education. We need to forget the old American slogan that "WE ARE THE BEST". We are 40th in high school math. That is not the best. Be honest with the public, and have objectives and operating plans achieved to become the best.



    One should be friendly and fair, but never become personally attached to anyone who works for you. It will bias your judgment about them. You may have to make hard decisions about them. If they are your close friend, you will not be able to do that. You have to judge your employee's performance through measurable key indicators of success in their job, their specific objective. THIS IS NOT BEING DONE.



    Board members must understand VERY WELL what ACT's definition of Readiness means (go to ACT scores explained), as it is changed by developments in robotics to replace low-to-medium level jobs. Most do not understand this area. They must appreciate the impact of new technologies on existing jobs, and also the new job opportunities they create and the education required for them (go to in robotics). They must understand that we are competing internationally, and that we therefore must compare our progress to the countries that passed us. It would be important for board members to be familiar with two high performing countries' education system, Singapore and Finland. THEY KNOW NOTHING ABOUT THEM. It would be important to know exactly what Singapore and Finland cover in each subject in their curricula and try to do better than that. The state education department should be doing such work. But if they do not, we need the school boards to be creative. One can request such information from the Ministry of Education in the country. ACT does provide in their annual readiness report statistics about how to increase the ACT scores. At minimum, Board members must understand these areas well. THEY DO NOT.


    If the board member was a teacher, they need to realize that we have to become much better. Our teachers did not improve in subject knowledge, teaching methodologies and education management like other nations who passed us. THEY ARE NOT AWARE OF THIS AND WE ARE INCLUDING REFERENCES HERE. We have some serious work to do.



    A potential superintendent is very experienced in operating in a political environment whether he/she accomplished excellent results or not. Superintendents last in a job only 3-4 years for a couple of reasons: they take direction from a board who may or may not agree, and he/she is more experienced in the job than the board members. Or he or she cannot produce better results. In interviewing them, ask meaningful questions, such as:

     

    • How would you measure monthly what a school district or a school achieved academically?
    • How can you tell which high school graduates are prepared to get a job after high school that can minimally support a family of four?
    • What does ACT Readiness mean?
    • What ACT or SAT average did you achieve during each of the last three years?
    • What mistakes did you make in each of the last three years?
    • How do you know that morale is high or low in your organization?

    The superintendent is the board's employee and not the board's boss. Board members must understand what ACT Readiness and ACT scores the superintendent is to deliver. That is the superintendent's responsibility. If the superintendent is delivering poor results for seven years and the board gives the superintendent good performance reviews, the Board is responsible for the poor results. The board has destroyed the future of up to 76% (those not ACT Ready) or more of our high school graduates. If the board cared about them, this would not happen - or perhaps the board had no idea what to do and made no attempt at learning what to do.



    When the results have been bad for decades, one must focus the entire organization on one performance and one spending objective like the ACT score and spending vs. budget in education. Without such focus, there is no chance for recovery.



    Look at the chart below about ACT results. If only 24% of the high school diplomas are "ACT Ready" qualified, we are doing and extremely poor job, and both the Board and superintendent do not deserve a good performance evaluation. Yet that is what we gave year after year. It is not acceptable to do a job under which 76% of the graduating children's jobs will be subject to replacement by robots within a few years, and they have not been educated well enough to learn a more sophisticated new job. 76% not being ACT Ready means that they have no chance to complete even the first year of a tech/vocational school or a college. Science and engineering programs require a 26 ACT achievement in math, in addition to the ACT Readiness benchmark in math, and that is way above 24% ACT Readiness. Also in addition, look at the examples listed here for immediate robotic applications. Some of these are replacing employees with four-year college degrees. It is fair to conclude that those who are not ACT Ready have only a few years of employment, because robotic capabilities will increase rapidly from now on. See examples of robotics.



    The ACT achievement and budget compliance objectives need an operating plan. The operating plan requires a monthly year-to-date objective per school in two areas: one is an academic objective to be determined, most likely a GPA average, and the second a spending objective not to exceed a monthly year-to-date expense budget. It is necessary to have a monthly year-to-date progress measurement in both objectives for schools to identify any shortcomings early toward meeting the annual average ACT and budget goals for the school district. Performance-related objectives are needed for all supervisory positions in schools, in central management and for teachers also.



    All objectives at all levels need to be measurable, a key indicator of success for the job of the individual AND FOR HIS/HER SUPERIORS AND ORGANIZATION, that contribute to ACT school district objective achievement. They have to be brief and simple enough to be remembered precisely at all times by the individual. No current objectives at any level meet that criteria today in 2016.



    Click here to see ACT scores explained for the graph below http://www.education.org/1actscoresexplained.html .

    A useful document to read would be this guideline from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) that covered 65 countries' primary and secondary education, with the best in the world among them.



    We can see in the OECD chart above spending per pupil for each of 65 countries. We in Knox County, Tennessee are one of the top spenders per student compared to these 65 nations. But in results, we, the USA, are 40th in math - very poor. Tennessee is at the low end of USA performance. Knox County, Tennessee results would be much worse than 40th worldwide. That means that we spend enough money, but the money is not being spent in the right places. For example not enough money is getting to the classrooms that results come from, and there are requirements on teachers that cut down their preparation and teaching time, so that they cannot do their best. See chart below.




    If we want 80% of those with a diploma to be ready to get better than minimum wage jobs, we need to be at an average ACT score above 25. That simply cannot be done with the poor management performance shown in the above charts. A diploma generally means that the person is fully prepared for a job or further education. With a 20.7 (Knox County, TN 2015) ACT score we produce only 24% of the graduates with a diploma who are ACT ready. That makes our Tennessee public school diplomas - worthless. What is the point in issuing worthless diplomas?

     



    We are raising both at home and in school very soft and poorly trained children for a much tougher and more competitive world after high school. Schools and families must get tougher so that our children can survive in this tougher market. Otherwise they will not survive.





    The public is purposefully misinformed about how poorly our children are prepared in high school. It is done both by the state and the school districts. They employ professional PR people at public expense for which the public pays with their hard-earned tax dollars in order to produce good news. State Education Departments do it with "Cut Scores", no specifications for objectives and operating plans that elected board members do not understand, interviewing standards and practices especially to hire superintendents, limit on the size of central management organizations that are bloated, and requirements as well in addition to the above, to assist elected school district board members.


    It is the ACT or SAT scores that indicate every year how well our children have been educated from grade one to twelve. They can claim that they have done many things, and they blame teachers and parents - but they have not initiated any program that raised the ACT or SAT scores since 1970. Those are the only tests that count and are given every year. But they organize big celebrations if we show even tiny gains in tests that do not count, because they are easier to show higher scores. This is how they misguide and lie to the public, who pay more and more every year for the poor results.


    "Anyone who doesn't take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either".
    Albert Einstein
    Are school boards and superintendents telling the public all the truth and nothing but the truth about their results?




    Raising the minimum wage instead of increasing public high school performance and improving behavior to internationally competitive levels, accelerates the demand for the less expensive and more productive robotic automation.



    Among black high school graduates, 95% were not ready nationally in 2015. 95%! At the same time a charter school chain in NYC (Success Academy Schools 1, Success Academy Schools 2) with poor, inner city black students with 32 schools scored top one percent in math in the New York State Common Core Tests in 2013 beating even most private schools. They demand excellence in teaching and in student behavior. New York State is the fifth highest performer in the USA. Tennessee, a state we use for some examples, is in the bottom half of US performance. Or better yet, look at a world top performer, Finland with methodologies developed that are pure genius to produce excellent results in less teaching hours and lower cost than ours, although their cost of living is higher (Finland 1, Finland 2). Excellent results are possible, but not the way we have been running public schools in any state for the past hundred years. We do not visit those who excel to learn from them.



    "With the long-term decline of primary and secondary education, we are developing a nation of sheep. A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves."

    Edward R. Morrow, Journalist, 1908-1965

     

     


    TCAP state test results for Tennessee showed a much higher score than the national ACT or NAEP tests, because the state tests are easier. In addition, if the percentage score of right answers is low, e.g., 45%, normally it would be a failing grade. To make it look better, the state translates the low 45% score to a "B". They call this failing grade translation "Cut Scores". The result about how well the students know what they were taught, becomes a lie to the public. The TCAP's rigor or toughness was 58% lower than the ACT. Tests are never designed to show less than the intended results for a grade. In other words, the much easier state test shows much higher grades, putting into good light performance that is a disastrous failure using these "Cut Scores". As a result, we hurt a very large percentage of graduating children who are not ready for a meaningful job or for more education without two years of full time remedial courses.





    TAKING A LOOK INTO HOW AMERICAN HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATES COMPARE TO OTHER NATIONS' GRADUATES

     

    Learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change. And the most pressing task is TO TEACH PEOPLE HOW TO LEARN

    Peter Drucker, 1909-2005,
    Father of 21st Century "Management By Objectives"



    For black students the percentage of those not ready for a job is 98% in Tennessee (95% nationally). The public is unaware of these facts. The black student figures are very disturbing. A chain of charter schools with poor black inner city children (Success Academy Schools of New York City 1: http://educationnext.org/what-explains-success-academy-charter-network/, Success Academy Schools of New York City 2: http://successacademies.org/about/, A virtual tour: http://virtualtour.successacademies.org/tour/#welcome) worked hard and had outstanding results with 32 schools in 2014. They have 41 schools as of 2018. These black inner city children from poor families scored in the top 1% in Math and the top 3% in English on the difficult Common Core tests in the entire State of New York, the fifth best performing state in US education. THE PROBLEM CAN BE SOLVED, BUT NOT THE WAY OUR PUBLIC SCHOOL DISTRICTS ARE MANAGED.

    We have created a powder keg that will surely blow up.

    All of this, because state law delegates ALL decisions to the school districts' elected board everywhere, whose majority has no management experience on the scale of the school district. Important: The states do not provide MANAGEMENT GUIDELINES.

    What brings success in other countries?

    (Statement from the national institute for excellence in teaching on the 2013 NAEP results and Nation's report card).



    Most national income tends to be generated internationally, because the international market is huge. That happens only if American companies who sell internationally are selling competitive products in quality and pricing. Such competitiveness depends on the quality of their workforce, which in turn is dependent on the competitiveness of the high schools. That in turn depends on the nation's position on the OECD PISA tests, how wisely that nation spends money on education per student, and how teachers are prepared and managed to educate the coming workforce.





    Education results depend to a large degree on the TEACHERS' education, quality and management of teachers, AND most importantly how the teachers' personality matches the teaching environment. That quality needs to be high internationally to have competitive children in the workforce after high school graduation or to go to higher level learning. The graph below shows the excessive hours that US teachers have to work in the classroom compared to the high performing internationals in education. Our teachers also have a large load in paperwork and in tests relative the competition. COMPETITIVELY THESE ARE EXCESSIVE AND DO NOT IMPROVE THE POOR PERFORMANCE. The results of the teachers are not good, since we dropped internationally to 40th place as a nation when 15 year-old students are tested worldwide.

     



    "Our progress as a nation can be no swifter than our progress in education. The human mind is our fundamental resource."


    John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)
    Thirty-fifth President of the USA

     


    The very low black student performance is likely to become the fuse in this "powder keg", that our state departments of education and elected school boards in our school districts allowed to happen.



    A charter school is a public school also. Before anyone says that improvement is not possible, a charter school system called Success Academy Schools in New York City with 32 schools and poor inner city black children, scored in the top one percent in mathematics in the New York State Common Core tests in 2014. They beat the majority of all state public AND private schools (Success Academy Schools of New York City 1: http://educationnext.org/what-explains-success-academy-charter-network/, Success Academy Schools of New York City 2: http://successacademies.org/about/, A virtual tour: http://virtualtour.successacademies.org/tour/#welcome). The big difference between a charter school and a public school is the board of education who are in charge. In a charter school, the board members are appointed by the school system management. In a public school district, the board is elected. The results mirror the quality of the voting majority on these boards. New York State is the fifth highest performer in the USA.

     



    In our opinion, we are facing a national emergency. No one took sufficient action in any state's leadership to raise the ACT (or SAT) scores, yet the Success Academy Schools clearly show what can be accomplished! At what average ACT score level should we be to be ACT Ready for a job or to enter a college? Assuming 80% ACT readiness ( note that we are 80%+ NOT ACT READY) of high school graduates. More than an average ACT score of 25 would be needed, instead of 21 nationally and close to it in other states for 80% of our high school graduates to be ACT Ready. THE 21 ACT GOAL BY THE STATE BY 2020 IS TOO LOW.

     



    We are not doing as well as the school districts' PR groups tell us through the local newspapers. The education laws allow the school districts to conduct their business in any manner whatsoever. They get fully funded under the law. They don't have to be competitive. The public has to be reasonably satisfied, and the school district PR Groups achieve that. Lenin, the father of "disinformation" theory said that "A lie mentioned often enough "becomes the truth." The public who pays for it all does not get the entire truth. Under Hitler, master propagandist of the Nazi regime, Joseph Goebels, his information minister, added the following practice: use half-truths to build a case that the public will buy. "A half-truth is a whole lie" - says a proverb. A group can get away with it only until the majority discovers that their children cannot get a job. That moment is coming close AND THERE WILL BE A LOT OF ANGER.

     



    Programs with very small growth in objectives reflect low expectations and the gains produced will hardly justify the expense. When people face high objectives, they rise to the occasion and meet objectives. When people face low objectives, they have difficulty meeting them.

     



    For example if Tennessee is producing only a 14% ACT Readiness, and starts a program that will raise it only to 21% ACT Readiness, with the rate at which job requirements are growing, they accomplished nothing. That is exactly the kind of low expectation objective that is being implemented and celebrated. You do improve somewhat with it if delivered, it will look good to the public, but it means nothing. And then cognitive robots come into the market and the majority of your children will have no chance for a job.

     


    " Educational failure puts the United States' future economic prosperity, global position, and physical safety at risk", warns the Council on Foreign Relations Task Force, chaired by Joel I. Klein, former head of New York City public schools, and Condoleezza Rice, Director, Stanford University, former U.S. secretary of state. The country "will not be able to keep pace - much less lead - globally unless it moves to fix the problems it has allowed to fester for too long," argues the Task Force. US Education is a major national security problem that IS VERY IMPORTANT http://www.cfr.org/united-states/us-education-reform-national-security/p27618.

     



    Our failure level, and market size we are demonstrating make us an ideal target market for robots. That has a positive side, because many companies are dissatisfied with workforce quality and are holding funds so that they can move to states or countries with a better trained workforce.

     



    Look at the chart for teacher turnover below. Turnover typically costs 6-18 months of the salaries of the people replaced. We are not showing total turnover expense, but only the portion that could be saved with better people management.




    Many nations spent less per student than we did, and delivered superior results. This is the result of better education management. Poor management: poor results with MORE THAN ENOUGH FUNDING. THE MONEY IS NOT BEING SPENT IN THE RIGHT PLACES. And the poor inexperienced management keeps making the same mistake every year. This is NOT a right or left wing, Republican or Democrat problem. It happened under both parties since 1970. IT IS AN AMERICAN PROBLEM, and we keep doing nothing about it. It is time for some big changes.

     



    We have a problem to solve. IN EVERY SCHOOL DISTRICT OF EVERY US STATE, IT IS THE ELECTED SCHOOL BOARD THAT DETERMINES WHAT OBJECTIVES AND PLANS THE SCHOOL DISTRICT WILL FOLLOW. With more than 13,500 school districts nationally, performance standardization and achievement becomes an impossibility. Imagine a ball game with 13,500 playing. They just follow their own rules, and don't even know where the goal posts are. And, they cost A LOT of money.

     



    The elected boards have more authority than the state or federal government in areas relating to education results, spending and operating ratios. Board membership requires only a high school diploma. The end of high school results (ACT and SAT) are very poor. Imagine that in the case of Knox County, Tennessee, our example, such an elected board oversees an organization with more than 8,500 employees with a budget of more than half billion dollars. That is a huge management task requiring management training and experience on the highest level. Such background and experience is not available in school boards even on the individual level let alone for the voting majority. The results can only be terrible under such circumstances.



    Who was responsible for these poor results and bad teacher morale in Knox County, Tennessee? The board of education is totally in charge of all decisions about objectives, operating plans and financial decisions under the state law. However, we have a sample of the public running for the school board, and the state education departments do not help them at all with explanations and guide lines in areas where the average person is not familiar with the process - because they don't even know. The people who were responsible for the poor results in Knox County, TN, are the superintendent, and board of education chairs INDYA KINCANNON, KAREN CARSON, LYNNE FUGATE AND MIKE MACMILLAN. Superintendent taught for one year, then managed food service, security and accounting with less than 150 direct employees, never managed a single school before the board hired him with a 5:4 decision to manage 89 schools, more than 8,500 direct employees and a half billion dollar budget.

     



    Read this website. Verify the sources. Decide where the truth is, and what they don't tell you. "WILL MY CHILDREN AND GRAND CHILDREN BE EMPLOYED?" Your child's future depends on them.


    "Things may come to those who wait...but only the things left by those who hustle!"
    Abraham Lincoln




    THE NATIONAL PLAN IN 2008 - THAT WAS IGNORED TO DATE:
    Benchmarking for Success: Ensuring U.S. Students Receive a World-Class Education
    Click on the title to read the plan.
    A report by the National Governors Association, the Council of Chief State School Officers, and Achieve, Inc.


    • Action 1: Upgrade state standards by adopting a common core of internationally bench marked standards in math and language arts for grades K-12 to ensure that students are equipped with the necessary knowledge and skills to be globally competitive.
    • Action 2: Leverage states' collective influence to ensure that textbooks, digital media, curricula, and assessments are aligned to internationally bench marked standards and draw on lessons from high performing nations and states.
    • Action 3: Revise state policies for recruiting, preparing, developing, and supporting teachers and school leaders to reflect the human capital practices of top-performing nations and states around the world.
    • Action 4: Hold schools and systems accountable through monitoring, interventions, and support to ensure consistently high performance, drawing upon international best practices.
    • Action 5: Measure state-level education performance globally by examining student achievement and attainment in an international context to ensure that, over time, students are receiving the education they need to compete in the 21st century economy.


    THE ABOVE PLAN WAS APPROVED BY MORE THAN 40 STATES AND THE US GOVERNMENT. This plan was not created by the US Government. The intent was clear: study the top international performers, determine what made them more productive in education than the US, and implement the new practices and standards in the states to produce significant improvement. Nothing of significance was implemented as of August, 2015. If implemented, the ACT (and SAT) scores would have risen significantly. They did not increase and went down in many states like Tennessee, where we set an all time low ACT score. Look at the results below.

     



    The Success Academy Schools of NYC, having achieved top one percent status in the entire State of New York with 32 schools of poor black inner city children in 2013, is an example of what is possible, when everywhere else the same children are on the bottom. Look at the example for turnover analysis below. It is very costly. We are not showing total turnover expense, but only the portion that could be saved with better hiring practices. Sadly, we are killing the country and don't want to change in order to save the jobs of those who are creating the problem.

     



    The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has an Education Department that tracks the performance of 15 year olds in 73 countries and presents excellent reports on where and what improvements are needed. Key indicators of success per country: http://www.oecd.org/edu/educationataglance2013-indicatorsandannexes.htm#Annex3. Test results (PISA) and detailed reports per country (USA Status Report, http://www.oecd.org/edu/EAG2014-Indicator%20D4%20(eng).pdf). Per country education analysis and polices: http://gpseducation.oecd.org/Home. What countries' teachers spend the most hours teaching (compare to top performing countries Finland and Korea): http://www.oecd.org/education/skills-beyond-school/48631419.pdf. Class size makes a difference in outcomes if less than 20 students: http://www.classsizematters.org/research-and-links/.

     



    A presidential project, "Rising Above the Gathering Storm, Revisited: Rapidly Approaching Category 5 (2010)", concluded that "disparities in U.S. K-12 education compared to those of many other nations, impose the economic equivalent of a permanent national recession - one substantially larger than the deep recession the country is currently experiencing." You can read it here.

     



    Good education is the only certain way out of poverty. Unfortunately, our education system has become so poor that it can drive even children who are not from poverty, into poverty.

     



    For years now, our education system in Knox County, Tennessee has been creating more than 80% of the students from 9th grade who are not prepared for jobs beyond minimum wage after leaving high school, according to ACT. The State is worse at 86%. They will be replaced by robots by 2025.





    WHY WE MUST IMPROVE URGENTLY: It Is A Good Idea To Peek Into The Future With The Videos Below To Understand Why Better Education Than What We Currently Have Is Absolutely Vital For The Future Existence Of Our Children.

    Dr. Michio Kaku, world famous scientist, in "America has a secret weapon":



    ...and if you would like to understand more about the future in depth, here is Dr. Ray Kurzweil,a brilliant man, head of AI and Robotics at Google (http://www.kurzweilai.net/) a world famous scientist, whose accuracy of forecasting future events and developments has been more than 85% accurate.










    Copyright © 2018 V. Spencer
    This is a work in progress.