Become The BEST In The USA In High School Education!

[Vic Spencer]

US Students Are Falling Behind In Science And Math: Bleak Future For Our Children.
WE CAN CHANGE THAT!
10/18/08 update.

For details, facts, go to www.knoxedu.info

Things may come to those who wait...but only the things left by those who hustle.” (Abraham Lincoln)

WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR?

Scholastic achievement in our high schools has been falling for close to four decades (see the statistics below). As a result, we experienced a big drop in science and engineering graduates, especially at the MS and PhD levels. These in turn are the most important degrees in maintaining our economic health. MS and PhD level scientists and engineers do all the important research and development for USA products, to make them more innovative and less expensive, and for vital scientific work for our country.

This situation resulted in a gradual reduction of many American products that we all saw and see (cars, engines, steel, electronics, PC's, heavy machinery, and so on). We used to, but we no longer create the best products in many of these important fields. That in turn increased our imports (Americans buying foreign products like Japanese cars) and reduced our exports (foreign countries buying American products). The total dollars we paid/pay for foreign products has been much more than what we get for USA products that foreign countries buy. That created/creates what we call "our negative balance of payments", increasing "our national debt", and that in turn creates the "falling value of the US dollar" to this day. That makes foreign products, commodities like imported oil, more expensive.

Just imagine if you spent a lot more money for many years, decades, than what you made. For us that is impossible. We could borrow only so much. On the other hand the government can print more money, that is devalued. That is what is happening to us as a country, and one of the biggest reasons is us not graduating enough scientists and engineers to make superior products quickly enough to meet the demend of our own American customers.

This situation is an emergency, and it must be reversed.
HOW CAN WE SOLVE THIS TERRIBLE SITUATION?
How could we motivate the students? There are two important communication paths to them.
1. Teachers need to organize 30-45 minute weekly discussion periods with all students, one topic at a time, from grade one to twelve to make sure that all children develop a solid understanding of why studying, high school graduation with additional science and math courses, and an education beyond high school is vital, and all the exciting and high paying jobs that are out there just waiting for such well educated children. The school is the only place where such messages can be delivered and discussed with ALL children so that they will get excited about what they could become if they work hard in school. Major discussion classes could be:

• The long-term decline of US secondary education and resulting national problems (for the adult presentations below)
• What education is (training of the mind, like an athlete has to train his/her muscles)
• Why education is important (future income, quality of life depends on it)
• Why HS diploma is absolutely vital (one cannot get good jobs without it)
• The exciting jobs that await the kids after a university education (this is worth many discussions)
• Free possibilities for education, any university (with very high scores. I know two boys who had a totally free ride at Harvard) and the military options.

Could Dr. McIntyre and KCS initiate this program urgently please? Our students' future literally depends on it. Will Dr. McIntyre and KCS do so? We hope that they will. There are not too many opportunities that cost so little, and yet have such far reaching impact.

2. Parents and the general public need to be informed about the above facts as well. They need to be told up front, what happened to our secondary education system, a national problem we are facing and a local problem as well. The current high school graduates insufficiently trained in math, science and English are no longer suitable to take on a job at many of our local companies who used to be able to hire high school graduates before.

There are parents who do not understand the need for education. The Knoxville Chamber of Commerce (Jennifer E.) is working on a presentation to the public covering this area. This is also very important although we will not reach as many students through the parents as the first method above. However, it is also vital to get as much parental support as we can for this effort, and this is the best method that could achieve that with the right message.


PARENTS AND TEACHERS! SOMEHOW WE ALL HAVE TO EXPLAIN TO CHILDREN THAT THEY HAVE ONLY TWO CHOICES.

• THEY CAN WORK HARD FOR 10-12 YEARS IN SCHOOL (THE PARENTS AND TEACHERS HAVE TO MAKE SURE THAT THEY TAKE ALL THE ABOVE MENTIONED MATH, SCIENCE AND ENGLISH COMP. COURSES), PLUS MAYBE 4-8 MORE YEARS IF THEY WANT TO GO TO COLLEGE (FREE IF THEY HAVE EXCELLENT GRADES IN HIGH SCHOOL), AND THEN HAVE A GREAT 50-60 YEARS IN A WELL-PAYING FABULOUS JOB, MAKING PERHAPS 2-4 TIMES MORE, THAN MANY OF THEIR PARENTS.
  
  
• OR ... THEY CAN DECIDE NOT TO WORK HARD IN SCHOOL BUT HAVE MORE FUN, BARELY GRADUATE FROM HIGH SCHOOL, AND HAVE A REALLY HARD LIFE FOR 50-60 YEARS DOING MANUAL LABOR, HAVE VERY LITTLE MONEY, OR DEPEND ON THEIR PARENTS TO SUPPORT THEM FINANCIALLY UNTIL THE PARENTS DIE, MAKING THEIR OWN AND THEIR PARENTS LIFE VERY DIFFICULT. AND THEN PERHAPS BE HOMELESS. THIS IS NOT AN UNLIKELY STORY WITH OUR SLIDING EDUCATION AND ECONOMY.
  
  Those are the two fundamental choices that all school children are facing. Make sure that they know it.

INTRODUCTION: WHAT IS EDUCATION?

(Please click on it to read it. Most people have the wrong impression.)

Click here to see our USA standing in the world:
In math achievement (34th!) or in science achievement (29th!). Source: US Dept of Education, OECD PISA results.

Click here to see Tennessee's ACT standing (38th!) in the USA:
Science and math composite (38th!)

Click here to see our ACT trend in Tennessee:
Five year ACT trend
College/university readiness trend
College/university readiness demographically

Click here to see our ACT standing in Knox County, Tennessee:
By high school
Graduation rate by high school

Let me see if I understand this "picture". USA high school results are 29th-34th in the world. Tennessee average is 38th in the USA. How much is being spent per student for these results?Internationally (USA is 4th) and within the USA (TN is 44th!!)

Picture this again...We are the 4th biggest education spenders in the world (BUT Tennessee is 44th in spending in the USA), and we deliver the 34th in high school results internationally? What are we doing?? Something is very wrong with this picture.

Our competitor countries' curricula include Algebra 2, Solid and Plane Geometry, Trigonometry, Calculus 1, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Geography, local language composition -- all of them. Algebra 1 and some Geometry is shifted to 8th grade. That is what we used to have in the USA, without using calculators. The use of calculators seriously diminishes the mental training of students. If our high school students take and finish all the above courses with an A or B, they will succeed. Although they are not part of the curriculum for a high school diploma, these courses are offered at every high school.

I am sorry, but some of us parents are a big problem.

• Most parents' and high schools' expectations of our high school students have never been lower.
• We have permitted too much under performance for too long. Who loses? Our children, and OUR COUNTRY.
• Kids having more fun has become important at home at an expense to studying time.
• Most parents take the child's side if the child has an academic or discipline problem in school.
• Most parents and school children have no respect for teachers, yet everyone's future depends on them. Very foolish.
• We do not seem to value the importance of a degree in engineering or sciences. Yet this is what leads to much more income and jobs that are more exciting.

NOTE A CONTRAST IN THE COUNTRIES WITH WHICH WE COMPETE:

• Professors and teachers are the most respected professions in the top thirty countries, followed by medical doctors.
• Parents support the teachers without question because they know that their child's future depends on them.
• Disrespectful behavior toward professors or teachers is not tolerated and it results in expulsion from the school.

WE ALL HAVE SOME URGENT WORK TO DO TO CORRECT THESE PROBLEMS IN OUR EDUCATION SYSTEM.

[Debi]

Actually the flu vaccine has been shown to be least effective in the very young, as well as the very old, per CDC.

Taken from http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/qa/vaccineeffect.htm

...The vaccine may be somewhat less effective in elderly persons and very young children, but vaccination can still prevent serious complications from the flu...

...Among elderly persons not living in chronic-care facilities (such as nursing homes) and those persons with long-term (chronic) medical conditions (such as asthma, diabetes, or heart disease), the flu shot is 30%-70% effective in preventing hospitalization for pneumonia (a lung infection) and influenza. Among elderly nursing home residents, the flu shot is most effective in preventing severe illness, complications that may follow flu (like pneumonia), and deaths related to the flu. In this population, the shot can be 50%-60% effective in preventing hospitalization or pneumonia, and 80% effective in preventing death from the flu...

...The flu vaccine can prevent 66% or more influenza infections in young children, with even higher estimates for older children, when the vaccine strains are well-matched to the flu viruses causing illness. Vaccinating close contacts of children can also help decrease children’s risk of getting the flu.

From my last 7 years of vaccine research, one thing I've found is that there just isn't a lot of good data. For example, it's not flu that kills most elderly people, it's pneumonia, a secondary infection from the flu that kills the majority of people where flu is associated. I know in some ways that sounds like splitting hairs, but the fact is we need to figure out better ways to prevent pneumonia. Sure a vaccine may be one way, but with the flu shot containing a full 25 mcg of mercury, not to mention aluminum that doubles the dangers of mercury, we must question if a 50/50 shot of preventing the flu is worth the significantly increased association of mercury, aluminum, and dementia.

[Vic Spencer]

Doug and Debi!
You are very convincing. Good job. You guys get a big star.

[Debi]

Hey, I can discuss this one all night long & then some. I think the biggest problem with immunizations is that there just is too much religion in it. I believe immunizations have saved lives, I also believe that they have harmed some lives. Reading through a www.vaers.com reporting database for a week in time, any time, is a real eye-opener. What bothers me is not people promoting or refusing immunizations, it's that we aren't allowed to discuss the negatives and possible negatives without being painted "anti-immunization" or a nut case.

As I like to say, I'm not anti-immunization at all, I'm anti-immunization side effects.

[Ginevra]

Parents do have to sign off, but I believe I recall an instance where vaccinations were being provided on-site for students whose records did not show that they had been done.

My children are already out of school, so I don't know what the current policy is. In addition, I know that this topic is highly controversial. It just seems to me that "conservative" or cautious behavior is the best choice on this one until all of the associated information has been very clearly worked out and there are neither safety issues nor liability issues.

[Debi]

The case of on-site in the news this past year was in Maryland. I do not know if it has happened in this area or not.

And, the information that mercury is out of vaccines is incorrect. Most pregnant women receive the flu vaccine at a full 25 mcg of thimerosal, and it is accepted info that mercury will significantly cross the placenta. In addition, there are several vaccines still containing varying amounts of mercury, not to mention aluminum and other questionable ingredients. The full list can be found at

http://www.fda.gov/cber/vaccine/thimerosal.htm#t3

Just this past week I learned there was not a thimerosal-free tetanus shot available at Children's Hospital.

[Debi]

Yes, my daughter was just diagnosed with mitochondrial disorder two weeks ago by one of the most respected geneticists in the country, if not the world. I had no reason at all to suspect this would be an issue in my family, however my daughter was developing typically until 9 months of age when she was given a hep B shot while still scabbed over with chicken pox. It is unclear whether she had an underlying condition prior to or one of the viruses damaged it. My daughter has been hospitalized multiple times and suffered greatly from all her health problems.

In the state of Tennessee a child can attend school with a medical exemption or a religious exemption. I have posted on this site before requesting that this information be put on the Knox County Schools website; it is just misinformation stating a child must have a forced medical procedure without listing the alternatives.

[Cathy McCaughan]

I like most of what you are saying. I love your passion for education. No matter how loud you cheer for science and engineering, there will still be a LOT of children who are going to excel in other areas. Are you suggesting that we have forced quotas of math and engineering graduates? "I'm sorry. There are too many ___ in your graduating class. Based on your IQ testing, you must study science." Some of the things you are proposing are more than a twinge Darwinist. The child whose parents can't or won't support their efforts is tossed to the streets. The child with physical or emotional disabilities is out. What about the freedom to choose to study to be an artist, musician or writer?

The countries that have military-rigid schools and math/science focused educations are also the countries that leave the disabled to live and beg in the streets. They arrest writers and artists for expressing individuality instead of conformity. The majority of the citizens in those countries live in extreme poverty.

Knox County used to have liaison programs that contracted mental health case management services out to McNabb. Knox County decided it would be cheaper to handle it themselves and the services are nearly non-existent now. The unspoken rule in our schools is to not suggest that any child needs anything or the school will have to pay for it. This is not helping anyone. Teachers should be able to refer students to outside agencies for assistance.

I love the idea of a 13th year for students who are going to advance to college. I think it might be easier for there to be two types of high school diplomas. College prep diplomas would be earned with advanced academic classes at a C or better average. Vocational diplomas would be more of a liberal arts diversity.

[Debi]

I know someone I consider one of the smartest men on earth who works in the engineering field but never got his engineering degree. Right out of high school he was more interested in working to assist his parents, both were high school drop outs and one ended up physically disabled, to help with his younger brothers. As time went by he had various reasons for not ever going to college. This is a man who knows all the basic physics formulas despite never having taken a physics class. He has trained engineers out of college but cannot get his stamp because of no degree.

When I try to really figure out why he never went to college, I think a lot of it is environment. Having parents who left high school so early, they were not promoters of higher learning. I have heard his family many times speak highly of people who have been financially successful by hard work, such as opening a business & working 70 hrs/wk, but I never really saw them speaking so highly of people who got their MBA, as an example.

So I really don't know what the answer is. I know so many young men and women who are scientific and technically-savvy, perhaps more so today than ever before.

I myself LOVED science and health care growing up. However, as a young adult I had not the belief that I could achieve anything. It took my child getting sick and lighting a fire in me that could not be quenched to return to fulfill my calling. If you would have told me I could finish classes like anatomy & physiology with straight A's two years ago, I would have laughed. But I love the subject matter so much I read about it even when I'm not studying because I have been inspired.

I guess my point is that there are plenty out there to fill the void, it's just figuring out how to inspire these young adults to the point they are willing to give the commitment and have the belief in themselves to accomplish it. As I type this I know a 20 year-old man working with this other man who has not started college. He's got the same "stuff" going on, despite having great potential.

[Vic Spencer]

Debi, we have to inform the public about our bad situation, and tell them that there is an easy way out still.

As the years go by, the really exciting jobs in science and engineering are mushrooming like crazy. There are many opportunities in this area.

The world has changed. Many jobs that were available even to those who didn't graduate from high school, are gone. Even in the military you are no longer accepted without a high school diploma. In the Air Force you are not accepted as a pilot trainee unless you have an engineering degree. So the trend is up in requiring better, more educated employees, but very unfortunately the trend to provide better educated people from high schools went in the opposite direction. It went down. This situation is creating a huge problem for us as a nation. If we do not reverse the high school trend, we will become a third world nation with dropping labor rates, and people who are capable of doing only minimum wage jobs. This is of particular problem for our grandchildren's generation about 50 years from now.

[Vic Spencer]

Cathy, I would not even suggest quotas about anything. What I am saying is that our college output has been dropping in science and engineering fields for several decades. In fact our graduation rate is the same as that of Kenya in Africa. That impacts a lot of things, but mostly the ability to develop competitive products. The MS and PhD level scientists and engineers are the key people in developing better products that customers want, quickly for the market place. I have all the background and related links on this at knoxedu.info . The reason we are losing the battle in this area is because high school education is way down in science, math, and even in English. But our universities maintained their #1 position worldwide. So more HS graduates are unable to gain acceptance. And of those who are accepted, many are not prepared to successfully study science or engineering on the university level, so more and more drop out and just cannot graduate from college. To be specific, countries who are our economic competitors have 15-25% of their college students graduating in a science or engineering field. We are down to 6-8%.

Despite all this, students should study beyonf high school, what they are best suited for, a job that will make them happy. If they are happy in the job, they will be good at it. The great majority do not know where they would be happy, because they have not done the job. In fact there are many adults who do not like their job but have no clue about where they would be happy. There has been a very reliable test to determine what job is best suited for a person. These tests have been around for decades, but we have been using them mostly in hiring professionals for a job. They are called the Strong Interest Inventory, and the Myers-Briggs Personality Inventory. Their assessment when correlated is 100% accurate. Preferences of any person are set for life by age 18. It is a very helpful idea for students (or anyone) to take these two tests at or above age 18 to determine the best job fit, before we blow a lot of money on college education. Unfortunately the public is not aware of them.

So I am definitely not for quotas in any sense. We have a huge national problem with the drop in science and engineering out put. We lost industries mostly to the Japanese for this reason, like the automobile industry, consumer electronics, heavy construction equipment and so on. Our national cash flow is negative, our national debt is sky high and rising, and the value of the dollar is down. This is a major contributor to the problems in the airline industry, and the high price of oil.

I am not presenting anything that I pulled out of the air. One just have to look at what info I found, and what the source info tells you.

We have a huge problem, but it could be corrected, if we simply make parents and students aware of the courses that our high schools teach, that will make the students performance better on the college level, like Algebra 2, Trigonometry, Geometry, Calculus, Physics, Chemistry, Biology and English composition. All of them. And by the way, some 40 years ago, we had to take those to get a high school diploma, but the curriculum was made weaker gradually, along with the SAT, during the past couple of decades.

I am sorry but you are tieing military rigid schools above to poverty in countries. That is just not true. Let me know where you got that info. You are suggesting in fact that the higher you push high school performance, the more our chances are for ending up in poverty. That's just not true. Regardless of what direction a high school graduate is best suited for, they will do better in life in any profession. We should not forget that the primary reason for school is to exercise the mind for bigger things, like an athlete needs exercise to do better and win. You do not take Calculus or Physics to be an expert in these areas. You take it to stretch the mental capability of your child. Not stretching mind has the same effect on the mind as if you were not using your body and let it atrophy.

I think your second to last paragraph is right on.

[Vic Spencer]

I hope that you all will excuse my typos above.

[Cathy McCaughan]

You cited the graduation rates in China and India. I am not comparing murder rates to ice cream sales. I am stating that there are other factors which are being ignored. The majority of the citizens in China and India live in extreme poverty. The disabled are literally dying in the streets in those countries. Americans recognize the value of all human beings and won't toss out the students who don't fit in the round peg holes. We recognize that throwing those students away will cost more in the long term than in the extra effort and money involved in the short term. We know that if we only reach two out of every ten of those difficult children, that is two more than other countries would have reached. No, schools shouldn't shoulder the expenses for this. Schools ARE the best bridge to use for reaching children and families.

America recognizes the value of personal choice and freedoms. We allow artists, musicians and writers to express themselves in ways that would never be permitted in the countries you compare us to. We should encourage increased literacy in ALL areas and not just science and engineering. Knox County schools needs a Civics requirement.

As a community, we need more support for education and educators. We should never hear people complain that they shouldn't have to pay for education because they don't utilize the public education system. People need to recognize the value that a good school system adds to every aspect of the community. Teachers should be highly paid instead of working two jobs. Teachers need to be allowed to pull in outside professionals to teach specialized units. Retirees need to be welcomed into the schools. Outside agencies need to provide their services through the school system. Modern technology needs to be used to its' full advantage. The government needs to hold up their financial end of the deal that they made when IDEA was first created. The families that can and will need to pick up extra slack to help every child in the schools so that the next generation will place a higher value on education and the family's role in supporting it.