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The State Of Education In The USA, In Tennessee And In Knox County, Tennessee In January 2012 Where There Is Only Decline In ACT Scores We, the USA have become the second biggest spender per student in the world in 2011, yet we dropped to 52nd in science and math in 135 countries among 15 year old students according to the 2010-2011 World Economic Council Global Information Report, page 344. See also The New York Times, or The Atlantic as an example. The table below shows only OECD countries (34). The OECD-PISA tests are another well known set of tests given every 3rd year in about 60 OECD member and non-member countries. In the latest 2009 OECD-PISA tests, the USA was 29th in science and 32nd in math among 15 year olds in the world, on the bottom of the industrialized countries. We used to be among the best 40 years ago. Today we are one of the worst among the industrialized countries. As a result our products cannot compete and we are inundated with imports from the most sophisticated products down to the simplest.  Within the USA the national ACT scores measure what a child has learned from grade one to twelve. Not the state tests, like the TCAPs in Tennessee. As of January 2012, our Boards of Education and superintendents are doing nothing effective about this situation. They come and go, but they have not improved our children's education over decades. That is why the measurable educational results are not changing. Knox County, Tennessee and the state of Tennessee are one of the worst performers in the USA. There is no term limit for Board of Education members. Although Board of Education positions are volunteer positions in the great majority of counties, in Knox County they get one of the highest compensation packages in the country - for a part time position, almost twice what a full time assistant teacher makes. They can therefore be influenced, and several that I have spoken to ran for the position for the money. Publicly they say that "they are working hard for our children" - but the results keep going down. What counts are the ACT scores. None of them have done anything to improve that. As a result, the TN Report card for the county shows that only 74% of 9 graders entering high school will get a regular diploma, and the ACT report shows that only 19% of those with a regular diploma will leave high school trainable for a job. If one does the math, that means that 86% of 9th graders will not be able to learn a job. Their education is that poor, and you can thank the Board of Education members and superintendents past and present for it. Why anyone would keep voting for any of them after such a terrible job they have done, we just cannot understand. It is obvious that they have no idea what to do to improve education, and run for the job only for the money it pays. The solution is to cut the pay 80% and you will find dedicated people will run for the job, who will be interested in improving education.  Depending on the state report cards and ACT reports, 86-89% of public high school graduates are untrainable for a job in the state of Tennessee and Knox County, Tennessee respectively. This state is on the bottom of US states. How will such people earn a living and survive? Is YOUR child one of them?How can we survive economically with such massive poor results? The governor of Tennessee is Bill Haslam, and was Phil Bredesen before him. The Knox County superintendent is Jim McIntyre, and the last three Board of Education chair persons are/were Thomas Deakins, Indya Kincannon and Karen Carson. The ACT results keep going down as the education spending keeps rising under these people. They want more money and they want to raise taxes to get more money. Not ACT improvement first. The horse is behind the apple cart.   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. 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. THE COST OF DEVELOPING JUST ONE STUDENT WHO IS READY TO BE TRAINED FOR A JOB The cost of public education in Tennessee is above $10,000 per year per student, including school-related capital costs and interest expenses. That's more than $120,000 per student for 12 years of education. When 86-89% of students who enter 9th grade are not even prepared to be trained for a job, how much does it cost us taxpayers to have our public schools develop ONE student who is ready to be trained for a job? One student who leaves high school ready to learn a job is costing us $840,000 to almost $1,000,000 in Knox County and Tennessee respectively. When figuring out the answer to this question, we must consider all that we pay also for those students who will not be ready. There are too many of them (86-89%) and that is raising the expense to develop those children who end up ready to learn a job.. This is a shocking fact, making us much more expensive than our competitors or our private schools who do much better. We keep rewarding the ill-performing education system with more money as they request it, when our per student spending is more than 20% higher than the best 10 nations' per-student spending, who have a higher cost of living to boot. They are educating their kids far better than we educate ours. 
When poor performers ask for more money or taxes to benefit them, why don't we ask for an ACT score commitment that represents improvement for our students, and an operating plan with school-level detail to ensure that such an ACT score is achieved? Wouldn't it make good sense to do that instead of just rewarding the poor performance with more money? Education is the only area where poor performance is rewarded with more money, and no change in management.Performance is poor because the Board of Education, the superintendent and district management does not care or does not know what to do about it, and the political leadership (mayors, governors, legislators) does not want to risk future votes or feel that they cannot win against the education lobby. But at what price to future generations? The Governor of Tennessee is Bill Haslam. Let's see if he can do anything about this situation. The superintendent in Knox County is James McIntyre and the last three chairs of the Board of Education are/were Thomas Deakins, Indya Kincannon and Karen Carson. These people will do nothing to raise ACT scores sufficiently as in the past. 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 learn a job or being ready for college have become the same. As you see in the chart, Tennessee is even worse.  The chart below shows the ACT performance for Knox County, TN. The state of Tennessee is worse. The ACT score tells us exactly what children have actually learned from grade one to twelve. We have states that average around 23-24. The minimum for University of Tennessee admission is 26. The top ten international competitors are in the 26-31 ACT equivalent area. We are struggling around 20. One gets a very high percentage of job UNREADINESS at around 20 according to ACT's figures, 86-89% of those who entered as 9th graders - a huge number. That is a disaster and it is long standing. We will not have the money to support such a large population segment "to get on the right track with their lives." Performance is poor because the Board of Education, the superintendent and district management does not care or does not know what to do about it, and the political leadership (mayors, governors, legislators) does not want to risk future votes or feel that they cannot win against the education lobby. But at what price to future generations? Spending is another story. That's zooming. Has anyone noticed that the money is never enough, even when we in Knox County, TN are spending more per student by a good margin than the top ten nations in the world? Their cost of living is higher, how can they achieve such great results? Is it the IQ's of our children vs theirs? Not likely. It is the inability or unwillingness of the majority in school boards and school system management to solve problems or find solutions to problems from those who have solved them before. The public is totally uninformed about how poorly our education system is doing. That works against us because many parents assume that everything is just fine, and that can contribute to lack of parental support at the low performance end - a common complaint from education districts. We need public support for a change that will turn this poorly performing machine around. How can that happen without telling the public in the newspapers and media not once, but repeatedly, how badly we are doing and what that will result in, if it continues? As the idea of improving education is gaining a foot hold, we have foundations and other groups forming who simply do a selling job on the wealthier members of the public to take donations for the failing public education system, personally retaining a healthy portion of these donations. They play this game with the full cooperation of the top management of school districts. They tell only the good stories to the donor public saying things that are not true. This is nothing more than a shameful confidence game. The donors remain anonymous, and the scholastic results go nowhere. Since education budgets are the largest part of county and state budgets, this kind of game by unethical people has found a lucrative niche. When in 2011 we as a nation slipped to 52nd in science and math out of high school, and Tennessee slipped close to the very bottom, why is it that we believe that we can do better in our own sinking sand box to innovate, instead of learning from Finland who are on top, to find out what they are doing differently to be so successful with 20%+ less expense per student in a higher cost of living country than the USA, 30% less classroom hours per teacher, breakfast and lunch provided to ALL children and ALL teachers in school, three large minority groups, the same school hours for children and no homework? Our education district can only ask for and spend more money and not do their job by educating our children well enough. WHY DO WE KEEP SUPPORTING SUCH BEHAVIOR? WHY DON'T WE DEMAND A SPECIFIC ACT SCORE RESULT THAT REPRESENTS GROWTH WITH AN OPERATING PLAN TO MEET IT, INSTEAD OF JUST HANDING OVER THE MONEY WITHOUT ANYTHING IN RETURN? HAVE WE ALL BEEN DUMBED DOWN BY THE SCHOOL SYSTEM THAT MUCH?
At the same time, 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. These "good" results are based on Tennessee's own tests (TCAPs) that 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. Our political leaders COULD have done something about them if they wanted to. It may be too late for a traditional solution. We either have to close virtually all money-wasting public schools and go to home schooling and charter schools to replace them, 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 public school districts, 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 a tremendous amount of money on most of our public schools. Just look at the ACT performance of the majority of high schools in Knox County, Tennessee below. How much difference do you think it would make to close the bottom 75% and put the 15-20% top performing students from them into the remaining schools? Do you really think that the students who are not willing to work will be able to be employed for life, or are we just wasting our money? Do you think that the principals and assistant principals of the poorly performing schools should be in their jobs in the same school for 10-11 years? Who are we kidding? How many more years do we need to figure out that the education system is not working and it is simply just wasting our money? I think that we better face the truth instead of worrying about political correctness as we are failing academically and financially. As one looks at the chart, any high school that averages ACT 22 and below develops less than 18% of those who entered it in grade 9 ready to be trained for a job after leaving the high school. Why keep them open at their enormous cost? Replace them with home schooling and charter schools instead for a lot less money. Who had the authority over the schools to bring about better results? Bill Haslam and prior to him Phil Bredesen were Tennessee Governors, James McIntyre was and is the superintendent, Thomas Deakins, Indya Kincannon and Karen Carson were chair persons of the Board of Education.  Taking a closer look, this is the money allocation per student in Knox County, TN high schools. It covers only staff salaries and benefits and it does not include an allocation for central management , capital and interest expenses, that would add approximately 30-35% to arrive at the real expenses spent.  Yet no matter how much money we throw at poorly performing schools, the results remain the same. Why spend so much money then? Check your own county. You will find similar inconsistencies. 
This is one of
many bad outcomes of our poor but expensive education:
http://www.designnews.com/index.asp?layout=article&articleid=CA6286283:
The Best Education System In The
World - Finland I am going to discount Shanghai and Hong Kong, China, as well as Japan and South Korea for methodologies because parents in these countries,
without exception have very high expectations of their children,
and not getting the best grades is simply unacceptable to them. Children study until midnight in these cultures.
Permissiveness and bad behavior does not exist here. The results
are incredible, and the high expectations do not make
these Chinese, Korean or Japanese kids grow up poorly adjusted, as many USA
parents believe. Let's look at an outstanding performer in
the world for more than 15 years at the high school level --
Finland who match or better Far Eastern results without parental pressures, without homework or longer school hours, although they have a substantial minority population that is a challenge (gypsies, Lapp tribes and Middle Eastern immigrants). They had a very poor system more than 40 years ago. They
developed a constantly improving teaching methodology and management system from preschool onward. Could we learn from them
instead of trying to find a solution within our country
that has slipped to 52nd in math and science? Sure we could. But we are not doing it.
This is a
very informative and short article by a distinguished
Professor of Education from Stanford University comparing the US
and Finnish primary and secondary systems. And here is another
article
from Great Schools. Their focus is on making teachers more
effective (master's degrees minimum in the subject they are
teaching, an evaluation of how well they are suited for teaching
before they are accepted, plus a 2-3 year teaching-specialized
post graduate program at gov't expense, and no evaluations
after they start teaching), giving them a free hand, and
eliminating any centralized rules and laws limiting teachers so
that they have a totally free hand in the classroom. Their
teaching methodology is very different from ours. Good enough to
create excellent results at all schools, regardless of
demographic differences, without restrictions upon them. The
teachers are unionized. The relationship between unions
and others are excellent.
Why are Finland's schools successful? Why do Finland's schools get the best results? What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school systems 26 amazing facts about Finland's unorthodox education system From Finland - An intriguing school reform model The education system in Finland - From the Finnish Ministry of Education Lessons from Finland's education system We need Finland's school system Finland's National Mission And Brand The other nations on top are Canada, Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore, Japan, New Zealand, Australia. Some of our charter schools, like the Harlem Success Academy also learned from the Finns and produce excellent results. Very importantly, have charter schools be approved and evaluated by an independent state body other than the long-failing local school districts. Today in most states the traditional public school district management has that authority regardless whether or not they have been a failure. Finland is considering "exporting" their successful school system with English speaking teachers from Finland, to compete with IB (International Baccalaureate) schools run out of Switzerland, that are outstanding performers in the USA and elsewhere. NOTE A CONTRAST
IN THE COUNTRIES WITH WHICH WE
COMPETE:
 Professors and teachers became the
most respected professions in the top thirty countries, followed
by medical doctors. All parents support the teachers without
questions because they know that their child's future
depends on them. We need to remember however, that such parental
and public attitudes developed after these systems started
delivering excellent results worldwide. They earned
it. Disrespectful behavior toward professors or
teachers is not tolerated by parents or the schools, and it
results in expulsion from the schools, IF IT HAPPENS. The
children enjoy being in school and it just does not happen with any frequency like ours.Our respect for teachers dropped dramatically during the past four decades, by both parents and students, in parallel with the declining results from our schools. 99% of such parents could not teach their children as well as the poorest teacher. It is much smarter to back and support any teacher in front of your child, and work like a team with that teacher to ensure that your child gets a good education. Children have been known to lie to a parent if they got into trouble in school or anywhere. This is no cultural difference to justify our poor educational results, as some apologists would say. Other countries changed for the better, as we changed for the worse. We should be able to change for the better again. 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: 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:
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.
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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. 
