American Public High School Education Has Been Slipping for Decades in a Competitive World Producing Mostly Unemployable Students as of 2010 IT

89% of 9th graders are not ready to be trained for a job in Tennessee! What do you think that will do to our economy? Click here to see why.
How Long Do We Wait For Acceptable Performance
In Tennessee and Knox County, TN Schools?

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

Edmund Burke, Irish statesman, 1776

What Are The Most Important Seven Things We Need To Do?

1. INFORM THE PUBLIC ABOUT THE TRUTH. People don't know about the poor performance of our school system. They are told only good news, however minor or irrelevant. They are not told that 89% of 9th graders will not be prepared to be trained for a job after high school. Why do you think this information was kept from the public by the school system, by the media and the local newspapers? Most of our schools are FAILURE FACTORIES. How can we make the right changes without informing the public repeatedly about the truth in order to have their support? This problem needs urgent action by our legislators and Governor, to get the media and newspapers involved much more to tell the public the full truth and what needs to be done to fix this disaster called public education.

2. MAKE PARENTAL CHOICE FOR SCHOOLS A REALITY. One would think that the most important education-objective of Tennessee would be to develop at least 80% of the children from grade 9 who the ACT's report shows at the end of high school ready to be successfully trained for a job. Not 11% like in Tennessee in 2011. 80% minimum. Public school districts alone cannot achieve that. If a child is capable of learning but is doing poorly in school, or is in a poorly performing school, should a parent or guardian have the right to transfer that child to a better public, charter or even private school, or home school that child, and have the state transfer the entire per student tax money to the school of parental or guardian choice? It's our tax dollars we are wasting in most public schools! This situation also needs urgent action by our legislators and Governor.

3. THE EDUCATION SYSTEM ITSELF NEEDS MUCH BETTER SUPPORT BY LAW. We need to make it very clear to the public that the schools are not baby sitting services, the schools cannot be expected to have to deal with children who do not want to learn, those who bully other children, are disrespectful toward teachers, disrupt a class or school in any way, and who decide to be absent from school without a doctor's or principal's prior authorization. A number of states established laws to allow a principal to issue a ticket to the offending student's parent which carries as much power as a ticket issued by the police or the sheriff's office, requiring a payment or court appearance with financial consequences. We need to start demonstrating high expectations of all students and have school goals and behavior standards to reflect that.

4. ESTABLISH CHARTER SCHOOLS UNDER SEPARATE AUTHORITY UNDER THE STATE, AND IN GREATER NUMBERS. Public education is a monopoly, the only "game" in town. They have no competition. Competition is the great fixer of poor performance. We need charter schools in the education provider mix. We do not have any in Knox County, Tennessee, although the School Board and superintendent approved one in 2011, the Knoxville Charter Academy, who happen to be 100% controlled by the Islamic Gulen Movement of Turkey through the Iris Foundation front, opening in fall of 2012. Currently, the poorly managed public school districts control the application for and performance monitoring as well as the closing of charter schools, and allow them only in poorly performing areas. In order to maximize charter school performance, they need to be free of a failing organization being their approver and overseer. It would serve us well to have an independent state body under the Commissioner of State Education, staffed with the right management experience to approve and performance-monitor charter schools under Tennessee Law, and allow them to exist in any area with the objective of improving scholastic results. Some states are doing this already. Charter schools are public schools also, but they are controlled and are overseen by an appointed board of professionals instead of the elected district school board. If our schools have to compete for our tax dollars by doing a better job educating our students, and if our students' parents and guardians have a choice to send their child to a better public, charter or private school, then all schools will get the message to improve to survive. That is what produces quality and better educated children. This situation also needs urgent action by our legislators and Governor.

5. ESTABLISH BY LAW ONE MEASURABLE ACT SCORE OBJECTIVE, WITH AN OPERATING PLAN TO ENSURE MEETING THAT OBJECTIVE, AND AN EXPENSE BUDGET THAT IS BASED ON SUCH OPERATING PLAN. The ACT measures what students have learned from grade one to twelve as said before. Should we ask what ACT score will be achieved before boards of education approve hundreds of millions of tax payer dollars in budgets or millions in additional spending? Incorporated in such an operating plan, should we have what every supervisory and management person has to achieve each month of the school year in order to achieve that ACT score goal for the school district? Absolutely. Without such an operating plan on both the school and central management level, how on earth can any of us managing anything determine what the amount of money is that we need for the operating budget? Our superintendent never presents an average consolidated ACT score to be achieved and an operating plan by school to achieve it when he presents a budget for approval. Performance is poor. Expenses are sky rocketing. That is not good management by any measure. This situation also needs urgent action by our legislators and Governor.

The Knox County BOE Web site specifies the following goals as follows:

"This bold, measurable goal statement sets our educational objectives as:
• 100% of our students will complete high school
• At least 90% will graduate with a regular diploma
• At least 90% of those will take the ACT, and
• At least 90% of our ACT takers will score a 21 or better."

What does it mean?

"100% will complete high school" is totally meaningless. What does "complete" mean? How do you measure it? In addition, this meaningless term is put into the most important position as first, in a four position cascading computation to find out what this goal really is.
"At least 90% of the those who completed high school will graduate with a regular diploma." According to ACT, only 19% of regular diploma recipients are ready to be trained for a job. 81% are not. That makes regular diplomas from this school system poor value at best.
"At least 90% of the previous result will take the ACT." This is totally meaningless. 100% has to take the ACT by state law. In addition, just taking the ACT is hardly a worthy objective. So now you have a percentage result with is the first one multiplied by the second one, and that result is multiplied by the third one.
"At least 90% of the previous result will score 21 or higher on the ACT. 21 ACT is a poor accomplishment. It may have been all right ten years ago. Job demands are higher today. If the school district had a consolidated average ACT score of 21, more than 80% of the grads would not be ready to learn a job in today's world. Very poor outcome. The superintendent's strategic plan gives him until 2020 to meet this target. It is not a proper goal. It is simply a tool to give someone with low confidence, who doesn't know what to do, plenty of job security until 2020.

So this goal is confusing, complex and doesn't do much to improving the number of students with the job readiness needed for survival by businesses in this area. Good goals are simple, measurable, easy to understand, like the consolidated average ACT score that a school district should achieve by the coming year's end. Not many years away. According to the superintendent, the 100/90/90/90 goal is mathematically more correct than the average consolidated ACT goal. We think that he is wrong.

6. FOCUS ON THE RIGHT OPERATING RATIOS TO SUCCEED AND ESTABLISH THEM BY LAW FOR UNIFORMITY OF PERFORMANCE IN ALL DISTRICTS. Has the increased education spending over the years ever increase the ACT score achieved, showing that our children are leaving high schools with increasing knowledge to be able to learn a job? It did not. The biggest reason: a bloated central management organization ALWAYS creates failure regardless of the money pumped into it, because they become self-protective. Money is power and power in the absence of laws creates corruption and/or job security for unneeded overhead people. Good Ole' Boys' networks. At a recent presentation organized by the school system to tell the public how great a job they are doing, one individual associated with them made a speech focusing on Central Management not being bloated and is being staffed correctly. Even the school district's own published figures show them bloated, and the real staffing figures for central management are far larger than what they present. The false statements by individuals in leadership positions to save the status quo at any cost is not a characteristic of a well run, professional organization that creates good results. The results are bad. The chart below shows how bad our student-to-administrator ratios are in every county around us, with Knox County, Tennessee being by far the worst, based on the figures that they provided to the local newspaper (Knoxville News Sentinel). The reference used for normal ratios is an impeccable source, far above anyone in expertise in this district. When we do not have clear laws actually defining normal operating ratios, the system will be abused, money wasted, and the results can be nothing but poor. This situation also needs urgent action by our legislators and Governor to:
(1) define what employees constitute central management (those who do not take 100% direction and performance evaluation by the office of the principal in a school, but are listed as school system/district employees), and
(2) set normal limits in both head count and budgeted dollars for central management in every district (1% of total district employees), in accordance with the reference provided below by Drs. Lunenburg and Ornstein.

EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION: CONCEPTS AND PRACTICES, 5th Edition is what I have, the best-selling, most comprehensive and respected text on the market, discusses all topics covered by other educational administration texts, and MORE: culture, change, curriculum, human resources administration, diversity, effective teaching strategies, and supervision of instruction. Lunenburg and Ornstein include more exciting pedagogical features than any other text, and topics are covered in a direct and easy-to-understand manner, with an excellent blend of theory and practice.
Dr. Fred C. Lunenburg is Professor and Senior Research Fellow in the Center for Research and Doctoral Studies in Educational Leadership at Sam Houston University. Prior to moving to university teaching, he served as a high school principal and superintendent of school in Minnesota and Wisconsin. He has authored or co-authored 18 books, most recently, THE PRINCIPALSHIP (with Beverly Irby), published by Wadsworth in 2006.
Dr. Allan C. Ornstein is Professor of Administration and Instructional Leadership at St. John's University in New York. He received his Ed.D. from New York University and is author of more than 55 books and 2,000 articles and research papers. Prior to teaching at St. John's, he was a professor of Education at Loyola University in Chicago.

From the "EFFICIENCY RATIOS" area of the book, pages 306, 307 and 308 in the 5th Edition.

Just because large school districts have more hierarchical layers at the central office, and their organizational charts are taller and more difficult to understand, does not mean that they have better or worse manager-student ratios or are more or less efficient in running the schools within the district. For example, in a survey of fifty-one school districts with 50,000 or more students, the manager ratio at the central office averaged one manager per 569 students and the median was 578. The ranges were as high or efficient as one manager per 1650 students and as low as low or inefficient as one manager per 161 students. (ref 160, Allan C. Ornstein, "Administrator/student Ratios in Large School Districts", Phi Delta Kappan, 70 (1989):806-808.)

Eleven school districts out of fifty-one had one central administrator per 750 students. The researcher concluded that school districts should aim for one central manager per 1200 or more students. Only six of the fifty-one surveyed school districts achieved this level of efficiency (Los Angeles 1343:1, Indianapolis 1401:1, Mesa, AZ 1446:1, West Jordon, UT 1512:1, Clark County, NV 1539:1, Granite, UT 1650:1).

Nationwide the average is one district administrator for 954 students and for principals and assistant principals the combined ratio is 1 to 370 students, but for teachers the ratio is 1 to 16 students. (Ref: News and Notes: Survey Round Up, "Thrust For Educational Leadership", 29 (1998): 4; Projections of Education Statistics to 2011, table 32, p.80.)

...The American Association of School Administrators (AASA) argues that central administrators represent 1.0 percent of total district staff and 4.5% of of the total budget of public school districts nationwide. All principals and assistant principals add another 2.4% to staff and 5.6% of the budget, whereas instructional services comprise 70%. (Ref. Nancy Protheroe, "The Blob Revisited", School Administrator, 55 (1998): 26-29.

...the percentage of overhead for central and school site administration has changed very little over the years – about 10% (e.g. from 1.0% to 1.1%) (Ref. Allan Odden and Sarah Archibald, "Reallocating Resources" 2001, Richard Rothstein, "Where Is The Money Going?" 1997).

“A good battle plan that you act on today is better than a perfect one tomorrow. ”

Gen. George S. Patton

7. THE NEED FOR GREATER TRANSPARENCY ABOUT HOW THE EDUCATION FUNDING IS BEING SPENT. NOT JUST A "GENERAL FUND", BUT ALL MONEYS THAT ARE BEING SPENT BY EDUCATION DISTRICTS. The transparency to the public of how school-related funds are being spent is dismal. All spending could be displayed on the Board of Education's Web site up-to-date within a month of spending and go a level beyond the current Tennessee Chart of Accounts definition. The Tennessee Open Records Law is not taken seriously because most people will not have the resources to get an attorney. Two such requests I made in February of 2011 went ignored, until I got an attorney involved.

A FEW LOCAL EXAMPLES: There is push for construction projects by some Board members with questionable outcomes. The Hardin Valley Academy was built just before 2009, before Jim McIntyre was hired. It is 247,000 square feet, costing $50,000,000 tax payer dollars. That represents a per square foot cost to tax payers of $204. The normal construction costs in this county run $95-120 per square foot per example provided by the superintendent. But no forensic audit report about the excessive Hardin Valley Academy cost, and arguments like "we build to a higher quality than other counties" or "The site preparation itself was $3-4 million because of rocks and sink holes" are arguments that should automatically trigger a forensic audit for lack of a reasonable explanation for the inflated expense per square foot.

A new Carter School was promised by the previous County Mayor Ragsdale. The superintendent Jim McIntyre and the Board proposed a renovation for about $5 million. Health problems were claimed as the reason for a new school for about $14 million, but any Health Department report warranting a new building was absent. The Board representative for this district pushed for the new school along with the publisher of a newspaper in his district. What is certain is that the ACT scores will not benefit from such spending on construction. Who do you think will benefit?

The school construction expense and related interest expenses on mortgages is huge, but it is not under the education budget.

There are too many things going on here warranting a forensic audit. A forensic audit is an audit that is investigative and digs down to find improper spending practices. It is more expensive than a regular audit, but it is far less expensive than the amount of moneys that are spent unnecessarily and possibly improperly. A forensic audit need not be justified with proven fraud as some may tell you. It is an investigating tool to find evidence upon which one can take corrective action, including but not limited to legal action.

MINOR QUESTIONS:

Does a new vs. restored school building matter if we keep graduating unemployable children from it?

What percentage will the new school building improve the test results of children over the same building if it is not new but restored?

At what point is the education spending stopped in a school and the school is closed, transferring the few better performing students to better schools? If we graduate more than 80% unemployable children from it? Should it stop for a school when the school produces more than 90% who cannot even learn a job?

Why does district and school management deserve a job if they keep delivering such bad results for 2 years? How about 4 years?! More than 10 years, like we do in Knox County, Tennessee and elsewhere in the state, at a cost per student greater than the best 20 nations in the world when their cost of living is higher?

Shall we just keep waiting for better results? A miracle? Or is it time for standing and speaking up? "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing!!" (Edmund Burke, statesman, 1776)

Is it time for the newspapers and media to stop delivering mostly good news about our schools and tell us all of the truth, and nothing but the truth?

Do the media and newspapers represent the people's interest or the school district management's interest? The results show that they are not the same.

The cure is never more money. The cure is never cost-cutting. Yet those are the only two things we see in education in addition to growth in administrators, to a lesser extent in teachers when the student numbers grew only a few percent. The cure is cutting overhead and measured results through innovation at all levels from top management on down to teachers and below IN THAT ORDER, with big changes in methodologies, automation to reverse the antiquated "employee-based" growth. The problems like we have start on the top. They do not start with the teachers.

“However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results. ”

Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965), British Politician

Scary results come out of our high schools with few exceptions

The ACT and SAT scores show what students have learned from grade one to twelve. They are impartial national testing services. The ACT is the one used in Tennessee and other states the most. We use the ACT in our examples. The maximum ACT score is 36. A "consolidated average" 22 ACT score in a school or school district means that 79-82% of those students who entered 9th grade, left high school not being ready to learn a job when leaving high school according to ACT.

At the same time, the money we are spending per student is significantly more than the top 20 education systems in the world whose performance is much higher, in the ACT 26-31 equivalent range depending on the country (OECD-PISA/ACT conversion).

We still do not seem to accept the fact that we are and have been competing internationally in education most of all, and we have been losing that battle very badly for years. Look at the poor results for more than a decade by most high schools below in Knox County, Tennessee as an example. The Tennessee average is worse. Our secondary school performance is very destructive by any measure and that must change. Facts and ideas below.

The 3-year job/college readiness chart below is prepared from data as follows. Drop out rates from grade 9 multiplied by the % of the remaining students getting a regular diploma. Google the TN (or other state) Report Card and then specify the state itself or the school district or school by name to get the four-year drop out percentage, then multiply what is left by the regular diploma rate. Those are the students who get a regular diploma (74%). In the ACT report multiply the previous % of those with a regular diploma (74%) by the % of students with the regular diplomas ready to learn a job or go to a college successfully (19%). Therefore in Knox County, Tennessee, only 14% of those students who enter into 9th grade leave high school READY TO LEARN A JOB. ACT explains in its report that being ready to be trained for a job or being ready for college have become the same. As you see in the chart, Tennessee is even worse.

“Perception is strong and sight weak. In strategy it is important to see distant things as if they were close and to take a distanced view of close things. ”

Miyamoto Musashi (1584 - 1645), Japanese Samurai, and author

Since 2006, ACT Warned: Ready for College and Ready for Work - Same or Different?

The ACT Readiness Brief says that: "Results of a new ACT study provide empirical evidence that, whether planning to enter college or workforce training programs after graduation, high school students need to be educated to a comparable level of readiness in reading and mathematics. Graduates need this level of readiness if they are to succeed in college-level courses without remediation and to enter workforce training programs ready to learn job-specific skills."

This simply means that the figures that ACT presents as college readiness percentage of those who have a regular high school diploma also is an indication of what percentage of students are ready to be trained for a job successfully. Job requirements have increased over the years because of the impact of software and robotic technology, that has been and will continue replacing low end jobs. At the same time, we also graduated students from our high schools with less and less knowledge, especially in basic math. We all have seen that with young people behind cash registers not being able to make change, and employers have been complaining about high school graduates not meeting their needs in English communications and basic math for almost a decade. To put it into perspective, Tennessee schools are one of the worst in the USA on the average, and the USA slipped to 52nd place in math and science tests of 15 year olds internationally. That has reduced work force readiness for employers and it also reduced the scientists and engineers we need who graduated with advanced degrees, who are necessary for our industries to develop competitive products. As a result, we have lost entire industries to foreign competition and we are losing market share to foreign suppliers in 111 of 114 key industries.

THE REAL COST OF POOR EDUCATION TO THE TAX PAYING PUBLIC.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing!!
(Edmund Burke, statesman, 1776)

Assume that those entering the Knox County, Tennessee 9th grade are represented as 100 students. 2010 TN Report Card: 14% drop out (x0.86), 85% of the remaining graduate with a regular diploma (x0.85), and only 19% of the remaining are ready to learn a job (2011 Knox County ACT Report) that you saw above, 100%x0.86x0.85x0.19 = 0.14 or 14%.

ONLY 14% of freshman entering our county high schools come out ready to learn a job. Tennessee the state is worse at only 11%. That means that 86-89% are NOT ready to learn a job according to the ACT report above. Is a regular diploma from Knox County Schools worth much when 81% of those with a regular diploma are NOT ready to learn a job? What IS the point in having such a diploma?? Should our political leaders make changes to ensure that all kids with a regular high school diploma are ready to learn a job under the ACT standards?

ANOTHER BIG QUESTION IS: how much does it cost us in tax dollars to develop ONE student out of high school who is ready to learn a job according to ACT? Well, get ready for a huge shock.

The Cost Of One Job/College-Ready Student To The Tax Payers In Knox County, TN:
$10,000+*/year x 12years x 7.1** = $852,000! ONE CHILD!

Add to this the life-time indirect cost of unemployment and social support services for the 86% who left high school without being ready to learn a job. And 81% of those HAVE a regular diploma! A few, perhaps 10% of the 86% MAY get the two-year remedial training needed at parental expense, that the high school should have provided. Our political leaders and Governor must change this.

* The Knox County, TN school district shows only $8500/year per student expense. When one adds capital and interest and legal expenses for the school system, the figure goes above $10K/student.

** We are paying for all students, including those who are not ready to learn a job. Therefore, the 14% job-ready students in Knox County, Tennessee are only one 7.1th of the total students (100% divided by 14% = 7.1). The state of Tennessee situation is worse.

Are teachers or district management the problem?
An interesting finding.

Although this varies state-to-state and district-to-district, teachers are treated very poorly in Knox County, Tennessee by the superintendent and central management, with an autocratic, centralized management style from the 1920s. Insufficient authority is delegated to principals and teachers, and their actions are restricted in what and how to teach as well as in handling discipline problems. Although measurable performance targets and measurement/evaluation of performance are vitally important in any organization, teachers are evaluated currently with very rare classroom observations and about topics that they have no control over, while the paperwork has been increased as part of performance evaluation. There are two fundamental management facts evident here. One is that if you evaluate people for actions that they have zero control over, as is the case currently with teachers, you just demoralize them, and that destroys performance. Second, when you see measurable performance problems everywhere in an organization, the problem is not with the "production layer" of employees or teachers. The problem is always with top management, in this case the superintendent and an unusually bloated central management. In addition there are marginally illegal methods that have come up for possible implementation for disciplinary action or negative consideration for promotion, such as getting reports to the school system of traffic violations, homosexual life styles and even heterosexual cohabitation. If this is carried out in any manner whatsoever, such items in teachers' lives are no business of central management people.

Interestingly the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) appears to be an impartial organization and it shows Tennessee teachers to be the 4th highest quality in the nation on the second page of its report. The reasons for poor performance lie not with the teachers in this state but with the decisions of central management organizations, superintendents and elected school boards. Yet the management problems, such as poor teacher morale, go uncorrected.

The typical defensive technique used by Boards of Education, Superintendents and Central Management in failing school districts like Knox County, Tennessee, is to:

Blame teachers, after all, they deliver the poorly educated students, and
Blame the parents for not pushing the kids to study harder.
They are totally wrong:

Teachers are severely restricted and autocratically managed by Central Management and the superintendent, severely demoralizing them. They cannot do their best under such circumstances. They need complete authority in the classroom, protection from abusive and disruptive children, and then they need specific academic goals to achieve with their new authority.
Other countries also with large minority group problems manage to achieve very close and high academic results student-to-student and school-to-school. Borrow what Finland is doing.

“A lie told often enough becomes the truth. ”

Lenin (1870 - 1924)

Example of how the public is mislead about academic results.

According to a Knoxville News Sentinel story in January 2012, "Knox Co. Schools earned a solid "B" in achievement grades the latest State Report Card issued by the Tennessee Dept. of Education. The district received a "B" in all four categories, reading, math, science, and social studies. In doing so, it matched or beat the grades given to the state as a whole, which was given a C, B, C, and B respectively. Our state report card results show that our improvement efforts are resulting in steady academic progress" - said Dr. Jim McIntyre, Superintendent of the Knox County Schools." True statement except for "steady academic progress". Just look at the charts. The fact is that our public education produces only 11-14% (Explanation) of 9th graders "ready to learn a job" (Explanation) in Tennessee or Knox County, Tennessee respectively after leaving high school. The real results are not a solid B, but an F minus.

These "good" results are based on Tennessee's own tests (TCAPs) that are weak and are mandated to become much tougher under the American Diploma Project by 2014. In 2008, the TCAPs scored Tennessee students at 87%, a very good grade it appeared. But the national NAEP test scored Tennessee students on the same subject and same grade level at 21%! This is how Tennessee and its districts misrepresent to the public in press releases and in presentations the quality of education they provide for our tax dollars. TCAP results do not measure the knowledge necessary for job or college success, like the impartial national ACT scores do. This news about TCAP "B" grade performance in January 2012 does go into the newspapers and media. But the ACT report showing that 86-89% cannot even learn a job after high school, does not.

Folks, we have FAILURE FACTORIES for education.

BASIC FACTS:

McKinsey & Company, the management consultant organization, concluded in a recent study 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.
"Rising Above The Gathering Storm Revisited" - The National Academy Of Sciences, 2010.
Good education is the only ticket out of poverty, meaning a 22 ACT average or higher by any student in order to be able to get a job or to go for a university education. However, the majority of our high schools are not providing it.

In talking to graduate school professors at our universities one will find that before 2005 foreign students who were the best performers aspired to get a job in the USA and stay, making up for the short fall in American students in science and engineering. That has been changing. Today more and more foreign students with MS and PhD degrees in science and engineering from American universities are returning home because the opportunities there are better. Professors will also tell you that many American students come out of our high schools poorly trained and unmotivated, do not work hard and are unprepared to do college level work.
Too many parents do not care BECAUSE THEY DO NOT UNDERSTAND what will happen to their children who don't do an excellent job in school. Is that their fault? No. In some areas of the US, like in Knox County, TN, and the entire state, local newspapers, radio and TV stations are not telling the public about the poor state of education being a major contributor to the economic failure of the area they serve through unemployable high school graduates. They could be informed by the the newspapers and the local media, but they are not, as if all was fine. It is not enough just for the school to talk to parents. The newspapers and the media must deliver the truth and its consequences repeatedly to both parents and students. If parents don't know the truth about the disastrous results of the education system and understand why little Johnny must rise above it, how much blame can you put on them? Some of the top performing countries and schools within the US solved this problem. We could also, if we were less interested in excuses, and looked at how Finland or schools like the Harlem Success Academy does it instead.
Bad behavior disrupting entire classes by a single student in class is dealt with too lightly making bullying an attractive sport to others. Some districts in the US issue fines to parents of ill behaving kids. Most importantly, we need to understand that we cannot make students learn who do not want to learn, unless we motivate them much better by teaching them about learning being a life time process; and about a better education resulting in more enjoyable and better paying jobs and a better life. Get them excited. Make them possibility thinkers. Help teachers with more freedom and teaching aids to do that.
How can a teacher be expected to do a good job if the class is being disrupted by one child, yet the teacher has no authority to take immediate corrective action to discourage such behavior becoming an example to follow?
Management training and experience on the scale of a school district is lacking both in Boards of Education, superintendents and Central Management, and state laws lack appropriate frame work to ensure better performance with a degree of uniformity across all districts. This is the biggest reason for poor performance in education districts (specifics below).
Jobs in the future will require a more educated work force. Instead we are developing less educated children, more and more students who are unmotivated, and unable to learn a job after high school. As of 2011, this figure is a shocking 86% of those students who enter Knox County, TN high schools in 9th grade (2010 TN Report Card and 2011 ACT Report). As if that wasn't bad enough, Tennessee's statewide results are even worse at 89%.
Principals of schools need most of the authority delegated to them that superintendents and their central management have today in USA school districts:

We need all this to give the young generation a better chance than what they get today from our public schools.

PARENTS AND CHILDREN HAVE ONE OF TWO CHOICES TO MAKE:

This can be accomplished only if the newspapers, media and the schools deliver this message repeatedly.

1. Work hard for 12-16 years in school getting As or Bs in every course, AND HAVE A GREAT LIFE FOR 60-70 YEARS having a lot of fun, a financially problem free family, a nice home, a nice car, great vacations, help parents financially if needed, earning enough money for it all, or...

2. Just have fun for 12 years, getting C's with lower grades, "because fun (including bad behavior) is more important than hard work for a child". "I just want my kids to be happy" - said a local Board of Education member to me. Barely get a high school diploma, and have the lowest paying jobs with a lot of unemployment, poverty and a bad life for 60-70 years. They will be after parents for money, because they cannot earn it!

OUR CHILDREN HAVE TO COMPETE FOR JOBS AGAINST MUCH BETTER-EDUCATED INTERNATIONAL COMPETITORS

1. A better educated work force is the one that attracts employers. A poorly educated work force like ours actually sends employers away. Who is losing? We are.

2. A better educated work force produces more college graduates in science and engineering, who then develop the products that customers prefer and buy in our competitive world. We have been losing markets for almost a decade in 111 of 114 key industries every year. Who is losing? We are.

3. The only jobs left for most of our children are minimum wage jobs with increasing unemployment, as software and robotic innovation keeps replacing low end jobs. Who is losing because most of our public schools are doing poorly? We do. Although our taxes are paying for all of them.

“"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 competition has been international now for more than two decades.
How do we rank in high school education achievement in the world?

The USA was one of the best in the world 40 years ago. Today the USA dropped to 32nd of 65 nations in 2009 (http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/34/60/46619703.pdf, page 8), and to 52nd of 138 nations per the World Economic Council report (http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GITR_Report_2011.pdf, page 344) in 2011 in high school science and math. Do you think that such drops do not matter, your child will be successful whatever we do and such dropping performance will have no impact on our country's economy?

Tennessee is close to the USA bottom in ACT and NAEP national tests, and spends more dollars/student/year than the top 20 performers in the world. Knox County, TN is the same. Should we just keep paying our school districts more millions of tax payer dollars each year?

The USA became the second largest spender per student per year in the world in 2011 (http://mercatus.org/publication/k-12-spending-student-oecd ) producing the above results. Do you think that are getting what we are paying for?

We Are In Deep Trouble Within The USA:

Everyone should read "Rising Above The Gathering Storm Revisited" - prepared by The National Academy Of Sciences, 2010 for the President of the USA by request. We are all in trouble, especially states like Tennessee. Education district management and Boards of Education paint a positive picture with the help of the newspapers and media, hiding how such people are actually destroying our children's economic future through declining education and doing it with our money. Most of those who were elected by us simply turn a blind eye to this major problem, that has a negative impact on all industries by forcing companies to leave to find a better educated work force in order to survive.

Minority children's performance is very poor, and they are a large population segment. It is vitally important that we turn them around, raising their performance. If there are IQ differences, they certainly cannot be huge like the ACT score differences. Second, some countries, with Finland on top, managed to develop teaching methodologies about 20 years ago that produce very high and close results between minority and non minority children. Our methodology is 1925 vintage in education about everything. All countries have changed for the better, but we did not. Without raising the performance of our large minority segments, we will not be successful, because they will not be able to become self supporting with our current methods. Read all the articles about Finland below if interested.

2011 ACT Comparison
International A-C represents the range of the top 20 international competitors

In the early 1900's a number of countries including the USA formed a centralized, socialist school model for primary and secondary education to raise standards in all participating countries. By 1960 all nations abandoned this system - except for the USA. The Cato Institute study in 1995 describes this problem in detail. Our 100 year-old system is poorly managed, refusing to learn from top performers in the world, poor student discipline and parental litigiousness is supported by some laws, making the teaching effort too difficult, as we slipped to the bottom of all industrialized nations in math and science education. No school Board or school system superintendent stood up and kept standing to raise the flag about this poor performance. To the contrary, they do not tell the public the sad truth.

This is one of many bad outcomes of our poor but expensive education: http://www.designnews.com/index.asp?layout=article&articleid=CA6286283:

COUNTRY	TTL UNI DEGREES	ENG. DEGREES	ENG.DEGREE % TTL	POPULATION
China	567,839	219,563	38.7%	1,330,000,000
Taiwan	117,430	26,587	22.6%	22,921,000
Germany	178,618	36,319	20.3%	82,370,000
Japan	542,314	104,478	19.3%	127,288,000
France	275,316	34,293	12.4%	64,058,000
Ireland	18,669	2,014	10.8%	4,156,000
United Kingdom	274,440	20,280	7.4%	60,944,000
Kenya	15,620	740	4.7%	37,954,000
United States	1,253,121	59,536	4.7%	303,825,000

Why Not Look At Growth Of Educational Achievement Per Dollar?
A Return On Our Investment?

Why not look at education in terms of return on investment? It IS a huge investment, and we expect good results for it. WE, the second largest education spender in the world in 2011, sank to 52nd in math and science. We were among the best forty years ago.

Since the ACT is an excellent "end of pipeline" measurement showing what students learned from grade one to twelve, we use the ACT to compare school performance and college or job readiness. This is a Knoxville, TN example. The Board of Education's response to my example below was "Return on investment is not appropriate for schools. We are not making gadgets (Indya Kincannon, chair, 6/09)." I disagree. Education costs going up, while our educational achievement took a dive relative other nations is absolutely unacceptable, because it damaged work force readiness and our economy as a result. Tennessee being one of the lowest performers within the USA is unacceptable. We certainly could show a ratio of ACT scores related to how much we spend per student. What kind of money are we spending per ACT point achieved is a valid question for each high school. Why it is not going up is a very important concern. We cannot blame it all on bad parents and demographics when others have solved such problems.

A GREAT CHANGE FOR THE BETTER
STARTING IN 2010
- GOD WILLING -

A group of states (35 in 2009) are raising their high school curriculum to begin closing the gap between the USA and those countries that passed us. This is called the American Diploma Project, started by Achieve, Inc. (www.achieve.org) in 2005. It was adopted by 35 states including Tennessee. The curriculum change/increase started during the 2010 school year, and the plan calls for its full implementation within four years.

It is a good start. Its successful implementation, however, depends on a few other things.

We need to be blunt with the public about the sad state of education while we kept telling the public that everything was great and we are the best in everything, with a bright future. We cannot expect full support from the public, without telling them the absolute truth about the purposeful lies, and their impact on our nation. It is time to call it what it is.

We need more parents to be highly motivated to parent better, with much higher expectations from their children. To prepare them for a successful and happy life for 60-70 years, parents and teachers need to be tougher, with the laws backing them. They do not today. We have become too soft while many others became tougher and much better educated.

Most of our education management organizations manage with a 100-year-old method, and are top heavy, wasting a lot of money. We need serious changes in the management area, total openness about spending and educational performance. Without such, we became the 2nd largest spender country per student in 2011, while falling dramatically behind in high school science and math internationally. The impact on our economic growth is huge.

Autocratic management styles from bloated central organizations made up of friends without regard to the training and experience required for their position, is a very damaging practice. The schools and teachers need much more authority and freedom to do their best, and be responsible in a reasonable way for student achievement. We could easily find out how the top 3 countries are achieving their great results. When our country dropped to 52nd in the world, and when our state, Tennessee became 50th in 2011 within the USA, will our school districts come up with any idea in isolation to become one of the best school systems in the world? That is an impossibility without major changes on the state level in education laws and polices.

Our competition in high school performance is international, not domestic. Finland, Hong Kong and Canada would be great examples to study. They are the best performers.

We either have to close virtually all money-wasting public schools and go to home schooling, keeping only schools who develop at least 85-90% of the students who can be trained for a job and not 11-14% like we do in Tennessee, or make some very important changes outlined below and cut the wasteful spending of public schools drastically. Please read End Them, Don't Mend Them in the Weekly Standard, and give it some serious thought. We are wasting money on most of our public schools.

THE SOLUTIONS:

The cure is never more money. The cure is never cost-cutting. Yet those are the only two things we see in education in addition to growth in administrators, to a lesser extent in teachers when the student numbers did not grow. The cure is superior and measured results through innovation at all levels from top management on down to teachers and below in that order, with big changes in techniques, methodologies, automation to reverse the antiquated "employee-based" growth.

1. IN STATE LAWS

By far the most important trend is that of what percentage of 9th graders will be ready to learn a job after leaving high school in the last chart above. 86% not being job ready is a disaster, and Tennessee is even worse at 89%. Actions are needed to correct this bad situation in 2011.

By far the biggest issue is that the education-related state laws that lay the foundation for good management practices and transparency with public dollars do not exist. The laws are too old or nonexistent (centralized decision making, very inefficient, 1925 vintage). Without these new or changed laws, nothing much will improve without standardization in every school district of:

Management practices,
Management controls,
Public visibility on the Board of Education Web site of how our money is being spent in detail, in a timely manner within 30 days
Management reporting to shareholders (the public) and our leaders about education achieved vs the key operational goal (e.g., a specific ACT score) and
Money spent in detail vs what was budgeted,

are vital elements to success in any endeavor. Instead, overhead grows to abnormally high levels (e.g., Central Management), excuses for bad performance are consistently increasing instead of an effort to create a healthier management structure to do a better job each year with ACT achievement.

Today, in 2011, we the USA are 52nd internationally in math and science of 135 countries. Within the USA, TN became the 50th in 2011. The average US performance is slightly better than Knox county, TN, but far below the international competitors.

Change State Law To Define Modern Education Management Practices
This is our biggest problem today.

1. A budget presentation for Board of Education (BOE) approval should include an average, consolidated ACT score goal that represents an increase from the previous year. It should also include an annual operating plan per school to reach the ACT goal for the district, and said operating plan must have monthly academic achievement goals per school to ensure that the Board of Education (BOE) reports monthly on its Web site in detail where the district and schools are against these goals, to show the public how we are progressing toward and meeting the annual plan and ACT goal.

One cannot expect better results with the way budget approvals have been done to date without ACT goal and without a proper operating plan per school to meet such a goal. Frankly it is an impossibility to prepare a budget without such an operating plan and have it mean anything. It's like getting into a car for a vacation, but you don't know to where (the goal), you don't have a map to get there, but uncle Joe did give you a thousand bucks for it.

2. The annual operating plan above should have the district ACT score goal count 50% of any supervisory performance goal (common goal, common interest) for performance evaluation in order to focus all management people on the single most important district goal. The other 50% of a supervisory performance goal should have also up to 3 measurable academic performance achievement goals that the individual controls, and only goals that contribute to raising the ACT score. We have to be focused at all management levels on the ACT and the annual district ACT goal. THERE MUST BE CONSEQUENCES FOR MISSING THE GOAL(S) - LIKE IN ANY OTHER JOB IN INDUSTRY. If you deliver bad results, what is the justification for delivering the same salary when you deliver good results? Or…how does one justify a good performance evaluation for someone who consistently produces poor and declining results (including a superintendent) and give them a raise and contract extension out to four years? Even a world famous place, the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, provides only a one year contract to any doctor on staff, with strict performance and quality control guide lines.

3. Public education is a monopoly. They are the only game in town and the child goes to school where they tell you to go. There must be competition among schools to get the best results.

Charter schools must be approved by and monitored by a state body that is unrelated to the long-failing public school system, that makes such decisions today. They can't even manage themselves, and we expect them to evaluate and approve an effective competitor?
We don't have a single charter school in Knox County, Tennessee. So last year they approved one, who is funded by the Iris Foundation (Google it!), who are controlled by the Turkish Islamic Gulen movement 100%. Successful charter school management companies were turned down all this time (e.g., KIPP).
Allow the full amount of tax dollars in any public school district to follow the child to a school of parental choice: any public school, charter school or any private school. For private schools below $100K annual parental income only.

4. Limit the number of employees who do not report and work for a school (Central Management and related cost centers), to 1% of the total district employee head count part or full time. This is the published standard and one endorsed by the American Association of School Administrators. Florida is working on getting it down to 0.5%. The secret is in delegating full responsibility to principals with the measurable academic goals and financial goals they have to meet. Central management focuses on monitoring of government and other programs, and school policies. You can subcontract HR, Finance and IT and get impartial good quality service for less money, avoiding nepotism and friends as well as good ole boy networks.

5. Total transparency of money spending on behalf of education at any cost center, published one more level below the current chart of accounts detail mandated by the state (and not followed) and made available to the public for scrutiny every month, and up to date by month on the Board of Education Web site.

6. Adopt the winning teaching methodologies developed by the winning countries, most significantly Finland. We have been increasing teachers, administrators for 3 decades, but our results went down because we did not change the way we teach, and we try to discover new methods to improve in our own sandbox only. There is a good reason for that I found. Any improvement elsewhere would cut a bunch of our huge overhead. There are strong private interests involved in protecting the current situation that produces bad results by allowing the flow of money into non ACT-achieving activities.

7. Start measuring education-achievement with average consolidated ACT score achieved per dollar in addition to the above. THAT is where we are failing miserably. We keep spending more and more money, hiring more and more people into non-school positions and the results keep going down. That's what one gets in any activity if we DO NOT measure results per dollar. If you make such a thing clearly visible to the public who pay the bills, it WILL get the attention of all people and it will tighten some rectums in the right places to start doing something about improving results.

8. Amend the Tennessee and other Open Records Act with teeth: let any violation of the time limit for response carry an automatic fine of significance to the school budget, the BOE members and the superintendent. Second, incorporate even larger penalties if the information provided is not true in any manner whatsoever (e.g., dollars, people by name and title and documented actions are not in the time period requested or do not exist). Today, this law is toothless. I tried and personally tested it.

THE SOLUTIONS:

2. WITHIN OUR SCHOOLS:

Simple Solutions To Motivate In The Classroom

SCHOOLS: TEACHERS AND STUDENTS, HIGHLY INTERACTIVE MINIMUM 30-MINUTE DISCUSSIONS IN EVERY CLASS, EVERY MONTH, FROM GRADE ONE ONWARD (AGE APPROPRIATE LEVEL SUBJECT AND DISCUSSION) ABOUT THE FOLLOWING SUBJECTS.

Quite a few teachers may not be experienced enough to deal with the subjects below. Bring in someone who can. I could prepare a script, or a list of talking points for each subject below if it is helpful. These sessions must be highly interactive, with many ideas flowing, and with students talking 75% of the time. Compassion and understanding is very important.

Possibility thinking. What is possible for you as a student? What is really impossible for you? What is success? Does success require good work and trying twenty times if necessary if we do not succeed first? When we keep trying, should we just try the same way without any change? People rarely succeed on the first try. We can learn from not succeeding so that we win the next time or the twentieth time (we may need 2-4 sessions discussing this depending on progress). Talk to school kids as if you could actually see what they could become.

What is right and wrong behavior and why? With parents, teachers, sex, taking or damaging what does not belong to you, hurting other people and taking drugs. How important is it to be really cool so that your friends admire you? What is the difference between something cool, or just plain dumb? Remember to treat others as you want to be treated.

What IS education? Training of the mind, like an athlete has to train his/her muscles. ONE ACTUALLY INCREASES COMMUNICATION PATHS IN THE BRAIN. THE OTHER ACTUALLY INCREASES MUSCLE CELLS.

Why is education so important? What is your dream? What kind of life would you like to have? What will it take to get a life like that? What kind of jobs can you get without education? What is more important, what you want, what kind of job you are qualified to do, or what employers/companies need out there? Future jobs require it more and more, good future income, quality of life depends on it.

Why is a high school diploma absolutely vital? One cannot get good jobs OR higher education without it. One cannot even get into any US Army, Navy or Air Force training program. IMPORTANT: if a high school student takes all the following: Algebra 1 and 2, Geometry, Trigonometry, Calculus 1, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Geography and English Composition with As or Bs, even if not required for a diploma, YOU WILL SUCCEED in going through a science, engineering or any other curriculum at a university and have 60-70 years of a great life. You could also get a much better job out of high school, or be admitted into the most advanced university programs through our military services, paid for by the military in total. TAKING THESE COURSES WITH GOOD GRADES TO REVERSE THE DOWNWARD TREND IN EDUCATION IS VITAL.

The exciting jobs that await the kids after a university education in science and engineering are exploding (this is worth many discussions). This could really turn the kids on! For example thousands of different vocations are coming as part of nano technology, with millions of well educated people needed in each! We cannot even satisfy the need with foreign graduates today. Our science and engineering grads are down more than 50%, while other countries went up. This is actually a great opportunity for those who study hard in high school.

Free possibilities for education, any university (with high scores one can get scholarships. I know two boys who had a totally free ride at Harvard) and the military options are great as well – free if you have good test results in the military, which will be easy if you take the above courses with good grades in high school.

Every child and adult has days when you feel down and disappointed. I learned a very useful tool that could help anyone. I found that negative thoughts were almost always (always in my case) incorrect. You brain can make up things that are not correct based on what one learned during childhood. If you heard and saw a lot of bad things, it will tend to be negative. If you saw only good things, it will be positive. Both can be unrealistic. The question is how can we fix that? And the solution I found is surprisingly simple. When I felt bad, I wrote down immediately what I felt and why, and dated it. Then I looked at it 4-7 days later, and I saw that I was not right, I was seeing negative things where there were no negatives. I looked at my original note when the results came (actually talking to someone to find out if my feelings were correct or waiting for results that I thought would be bad.), and found that my original negative thoughts were not correct at all. Then for months when a negative thought came, I could say that I tested you my dear brain and you were incorrect 10 out of 10. After six months or so of using this method, the negative thoughts did not even come up. I grew up during WWII in Europe and saw bombings, even blown apart bodies and many other bad things as a young child. I suspect that is where the negative feelings came from.

Add to the above for classroom discussion, and also EDUCATE PARENTS AND GRAND PARENTS in parent and teacher meetings:

The long-term decline of US secondary education and resulting national problems for our children: minimum wage and increasing unemployment.

VITALLY IMPORTANT: The brain is the most developed organ at birth. It has all the necessary brain cells at birth for life, but it does not have the communications paths set among brain cells that are necessary for a successful and normal life. The communication paths develop from birth throughout life and repetitive experiences in the same area reinforce them. Most of the brain development takes place during the pre-school years, and how a child is brought up during these years impacts the kind of life and school performance he/she will have. Poor diet, drinking, smoking and drug use during pregnancy will also have a negative impact on the child's ability to learn and succeed. If a child is exposed to abuse, neglect and violence around him/her, it will impact the way his/her communications paths are wired, and it will have a detrimental impact on the child's ability to become a successful human being.

Teach kids right from wrong. The children must get a “moral compass” that most do not have today. Involve faith based organizations in this, and very seriously. The children need to know and keep the proper balance between appropriate responsible fun and what they must do very well today for their future success (get good grades in school). They are children. They do not make good decisions. Parents must enforce things in this area.

About the need to trust and support the teachers in all actions with the children, with special emphasis on low income families and single parents. Your child's future depends on the teachers.

If your child complains about the school or any teacher, and if his/her grades are not A's or B's, take the teacher's side because the child's future depends on his/her education, and that depends on the teachers.

If you have a complaint about the school or a teacher, talk to the teacher privately to get his/her side first. You the parent could be wrong. Never talk negatively about the school or any teacher with your child. That just makes the child's attitude bad toward the teachers. His/her education depends entirely on them. It is your job to make sure that the child walks into the school every single day with a respectful and positive attitude toward those people on whom the child's education depends - THE TEACHERS.

As in every job, some teachers are better than others, like some bosses are better than others. That's life. How good a job you do, does not depend on how good your boss is, and similarly, your child's performance does not depend totally on how good his/her teacher is. Anyone can do a great job, or get an A, with a bad boss or a bad teacher. Many of you adults have done it.