A discussion of education in East Tennessee
Our Education System - An Update
After more than 250 interviews with parents, students and teachers each over 8 months the following picture is emerging.
Basic things are not done in schools at all or with any consistency that could raise more and increase the motivation of kids to really want to pursue a profession and work hard in school for it. Here we must keep in mind that preferences in a person become set by age 18 for life and this is key to job success (loving your job is what makes you successful, see the Strong Interest Inventory correlated with Myers Briggs). So I am talking about a simple program strategy that incents kids to become professionals, preferably in science and engineering, but realizing that they are not ready for a refined career choice until after high school. Nevertheless they have to be ready for successful college completion in science or engineering, even if they are found to be unsuited for it at age 18. I am referring to those children whose mental ability is capable of reaching such a goal including a segment of special education children.
Parental influence in low-performing demographic areas are small to none, so as a target market for educating parents this is not going to have a better than 20% penetration in my opinion. On the other hand all kids are captive in the school and this is the vehicle to educate and sell the kids, but with soft selling; very open discussions about specific topics I am recommending on my Web site knoxedu.info at minimum.
I found that neither parents in low performing student groups, nor many teachers and students have a good and consistent understanding of what education is, why a high school diploma is important, why it is vital to go beyond the curriculum requirements and with what courses, since even the new TN curriculum falls short, and what the future looks like in the job arena. "Falls short" means against the international competitors, about the top 10 countries about the 33 that are ahead of us today (we used to be on top folks). All this can be done at virtually zero cost. I am preparing as a volunteer some materials for this. BUT...teachers need to be willing to read some Web sites to get educated themselves, and the school system needs to standardize on such fundamentals. If there was some guidance about this from the Board and KCS central, I am sure that they would.
School district management styles are at least 100 years behind, autocratic, without having good management tools to keep an eagle eye on both performance achievements vs history, expenses vs budget, by each key operating unit, the school, consolidated by district and focused on year-to-date progress to achieve an increase in the most comprehensive measurement test on the high school level, the ACT. The reason: our key challenge is the increasing gap between high school output and college demand. Our universities maintained a top position in the world. Our primary and secondary schools have been DUMBED down for 3-4 decades now increasing this gap. This is NOT the schools' and teachers' fault. It is Boards of Education and the state education departments that can take a big bow for this result. I am finding teachers underpaid about 20% considering other US figures and Dept of Labor cost differentials.
Ethics requirements for Board members and school employees are supported only by old TN laws that are not adequate today. That must change quite fast. We had two cases, recently and 2 years ago in Knox County. I have no idea why this is taking so long. It did not have to take this many years.
Knox County Board of Ed is dealing with menial tasks mostly, that should be delegated to the superintendent and below (approving purchases and payment of bills, long discussions about the school calendar, and nothing about how to improve specific academic results, programs therefor implemented with monthly measurable results), the only employee under them. Dr. McIntyre was hired to manage an awful problem, a system that has steadily slid down in performance for decades. The man deserves full P&L responsibility and authority, as well as accountability for REAL results to turn this bad situation around. I have also seen a most impolite and rude cross examination of Dr. McIntyre by a Board member in a public Board meeting (calendar discussion), not even letting him answer completely some rapid fire questions by the same Board member, and not one Board member stood up to stop such behavior. No one deserves that. A Board needs to be focusing on how to raise the ACT, all programs that feed it, local innovation, and how expenses could be reduced in a district-to-district competitive environment. This attitude and practice simply does not exist yet today. Boards and central organizations are too "inbred" without sufficient innovating ideas, whatever the reason. It may be healthy to hire supers and or some managers for example from large company management positions, who operated in a competitive commercial environment, and not from within the education system that is pretty antiquated in its management.
Special education is a subset of the above. There isn't sufficient clarity in written policy or the law to avoid any disputes over some definitions that could be made much more clear. If the law is not clear change it. Yes, it will take time, but make a move, instead of just "waiting with mouths open for the roast pidgeon to fly right into it" so to speak. Don't just talk. ACT! Don't just wait. Act!! It makes absolutely no sense to continue with current conflicts in disproportionate numbers (Sped students are 9.9% of total) because the definitions in questions are not communicated sufficiently well or the law is not clear enough to parents.
Believe it or not, KCS is to provide a service to its customers, the parents, who keep you in operation with their tax dollars. Some are not getting that message yet, but they will. The "education industry" needs to understand real soon that although it is an entitlement for the people who pay them with their taxes, they are a service industry, and they may want to start thinking about surveying their customers', the parents' satisfaction every school term, like successful service businesses do, and publish the results openly by school. What a strange idea! Especially since the customers in this case do not have an option to go to a better competitor.
One cannot obtain very basic operational information on the school level to generate a Return-On-Investment (ROI) picture that enables the education system or anyone to see what is going on or how our money is being spent with what results, or to ask good questions of themselves in order to be managed more efficiently and for less money. One such information that I asked for starting 8 months ago was "average annual total ADA $ spent/student/per high school in each of the past five years. I received 4 dates for this info, non provided an answer. About a month ago I was told that they have no idea when they can provide me with such data. Dr. McIntyre told me that when they can provide such data, their internal questions will take priority, and I understand that although it is devoid of meaning. I think we need to recognize that the man is new and he has a very difficult task ahead of him. Some day after his first anniversary he will own the problems and be fully responsible for them. There needs to be total transparency about school-level details in performance measurement to date, on a monthly basis, and money spent to date, on a monthly basis by program. There has evidently nothing like that existed ever, over several decades costing the public billions. The current cost of KCS is $370 million in 2009. The cost of such a system is about 0.5% of annual expenses. I do not understand why anyone in their right mind would not invest that much and instead they pay for an enormous overhead the size of which we do not know that. But we will. Our tax dollars in action.
The only specific thing that may be coming this year is the KCS operating plan in May 2009. Disregard nice words, and focus on measurable goals on a monthly basis with a target monthly and year to date budget for the same, as well as a specific ACT goal to be reached. The system still compares itself to TN and US averages because that looks better, forgetting that we have become 34th in math in the world (OECD-PISA), and TN is 38th in ACT in the USA, that we are now competing with international companies mainly and losing market share at 5% per annum in 111 of 114 industries. When I mentioned, now at two Board meetings, that we must think and focus globally on the best international competitors and learn from them instead of saying how well we are doing against the TN average, I get a lot of Board member nods, but absolutely no programs, no studies, no action indicating any real interest in how the best world performers have beaten our educational system to date. It is entirely possible that they just want to look as good as possible, as long as possible and not make waves. I can understand that but not the fact that such action is aiding and abetting the dumbing down of the education system when we are paying for it, and doing it as if they were USA champions of that dumbing down task. I am referring here to the TN test measuring our kids at 87% in math when the national test for the same grade level measures them at 21%. This is no accident ladies and gentlemen, and not one Board member or superintendent from the Knox County education system ever stood up to object against it and demand to correct it. NOT ONE to date.
You all will find me updating you on progress, using facts, until I start seeing actual data that this poor educational system (except for a few schools) is actually turning in the right direction after the past 3-4 decades dumbing down our children for OUR tax dollars. I will be the happiest person when I can report to you all evidence of a turnaround.
The dollars below for average cost/student at Farragut high school was my guess, the average for Knox County. Well, Farragut HS gets much less than that -- my chart above shows that.
HOOYA!
Vic
Basic things are not done in schools at all or with any consistency that could raise more and increase the motivation of kids to really want to pursue a profession and work hard in school for it. Here we must keep in mind that preferences in a person become set by age 18 for life and this is key to job success (loving your job is what makes you successful, see the Strong Interest Inventory correlated with Myers Briggs). So I am talking about a simple program strategy that incents kids to become professionals, preferably in science and engineering, but realizing that they are not ready for a refined career choice until after high school. Nevertheless they have to be ready for successful college completion in science or engineering, even if they are found to be unsuited for it at age 18. I am referring to those children whose mental ability is capable of reaching such a goal including a segment of special education children.
Parental influence in low-performing demographic areas are small to none, so as a target market for educating parents this is not going to have a better than 20% penetration in my opinion. On the other hand all kids are captive in the school and this is the vehicle to educate and sell the kids, but with soft selling; very open discussions about specific topics I am recommending on my Web site knoxedu.info at minimum.
I found that neither parents in low performing student groups, nor many teachers and students have a good and consistent understanding of what education is, why a high school diploma is important, why it is vital to go beyond the curriculum requirements and with what courses, since even the new TN curriculum falls short, and what the future looks like in the job arena. "Falls short" means against the international competitors, about the top 10 countries about the 33 that are ahead of us today (we used to be on top folks). All this can be done at virtually zero cost. I am preparing as a volunteer some materials for this. BUT...teachers need to be willing to read some Web sites to get educated themselves, and the school system needs to standardize on such fundamentals. If there was some guidance about this from the Board and KCS central, I am sure that they would.
School district management styles are at least 100 years behind, autocratic, without having good management tools to keep an eagle eye on both performance achievements vs history, expenses vs budget, by each key operating unit, the school, consolidated by district and focused on year-to-date progress to achieve an increase in the most comprehensive measurement test on the high school level, the ACT. The reason: our key challenge is the increasing gap between high school output and college demand. Our universities maintained a top position in the world. Our primary and secondary schools have been DUMBED down for 3-4 decades now increasing this gap. This is NOT the schools' and teachers' fault. It is Boards of Education and the state education departments that can take a big bow for this result. I am finding teachers underpaid about 20% considering other US figures and Dept of Labor cost differentials.
Ethics requirements for Board members and school employees are supported only by old TN laws that are not adequate today. That must change quite fast. We had two cases, recently and 2 years ago in Knox County. I have no idea why this is taking so long. It did not have to take this many years.
Knox County Board of Ed is dealing with menial tasks mostly, that should be delegated to the superintendent and below (approving purchases and payment of bills, long discussions about the school calendar, and nothing about how to improve specific academic results, programs therefor implemented with monthly measurable results), the only employee under them. Dr. McIntyre was hired to manage an awful problem, a system that has steadily slid down in performance for decades. The man deserves full P&L responsibility and authority, as well as accountability for REAL results to turn this bad situation around. I have also seen a most impolite and rude cross examination of Dr. McIntyre by a Board member in a public Board meeting (calendar discussion), not even letting him answer completely some rapid fire questions by the same Board member, and not one Board member stood up to stop such behavior. No one deserves that. A Board needs to be focusing on how to raise the ACT, all programs that feed it, local innovation, and how expenses could be reduced in a district-to-district competitive environment. This attitude and practice simply does not exist yet today. Boards and central organizations are too "inbred" without sufficient innovating ideas, whatever the reason. It may be healthy to hire supers and or some managers for example from large company management positions, who operated in a competitive commercial environment, and not from within the education system that is pretty antiquated in its management.
Special education is a subset of the above. There isn't sufficient clarity in written policy or the law to avoid any disputes over some definitions that could be made much more clear. If the law is not clear change it. Yes, it will take time, but make a move, instead of just "waiting with mouths open for the roast pidgeon to fly right into it" so to speak. Don't just talk. ACT! Don't just wait. Act!! It makes absolutely no sense to continue with current conflicts in disproportionate numbers (Sped students are 9.9% of total) because the definitions in questions are not communicated sufficiently well or the law is not clear enough to parents.
Believe it or not, KCS is to provide a service to its customers, the parents, who keep you in operation with their tax dollars. Some are not getting that message yet, but they will. The "education industry" needs to understand real soon that although it is an entitlement for the people who pay them with their taxes, they are a service industry, and they may want to start thinking about surveying their customers', the parents' satisfaction every school term, like successful service businesses do, and publish the results openly by school. What a strange idea! Especially since the customers in this case do not have an option to go to a better competitor.
One cannot obtain very basic operational information on the school level to generate a Return-On-Investment (ROI) picture that enables the education system or anyone to see what is going on or how our money is being spent with what results, or to ask good questions of themselves in order to be managed more efficiently and for less money. One such information that I asked for starting 8 months ago was "average annual total ADA $ spent/student/per high school in each of the past five years. I received 4 dates for this info, non provided an answer. About a month ago I was told that they have no idea when they can provide me with such data. Dr. McIntyre told me that when they can provide such data, their internal questions will take priority, and I understand that although it is devoid of meaning. I think we need to recognize that the man is new and he has a very difficult task ahead of him. Some day after his first anniversary he will own the problems and be fully responsible for them. There needs to be total transparency about school-level details in performance measurement to date, on a monthly basis, and money spent to date, on a monthly basis by program. There has evidently nothing like that existed ever, over several decades costing the public billions. The current cost of KCS is $370 million in 2009. The cost of such a system is about 0.5% of annual expenses. I do not understand why anyone in their right mind would not invest that much and instead they pay for an enormous overhead the size of which we do not know that. But we will. Our tax dollars in action.
The only specific thing that may be coming this year is the KCS operating plan in May 2009. Disregard nice words, and focus on measurable goals on a monthly basis with a target monthly and year to date budget for the same, as well as a specific ACT goal to be reached. The system still compares itself to TN and US averages because that looks better, forgetting that we have become 34th in math in the world (OECD-PISA), and TN is 38th in ACT in the USA, that we are now competing with international companies mainly and losing market share at 5% per annum in 111 of 114 industries. When I mentioned, now at two Board meetings, that we must think and focus globally on the best international competitors and learn from them instead of saying how well we are doing against the TN average, I get a lot of Board member nods, but absolutely no programs, no studies, no action indicating any real interest in how the best world performers have beaten our educational system to date. It is entirely possible that they just want to look as good as possible, as long as possible and not make waves. I can understand that but not the fact that such action is aiding and abetting the dumbing down of the education system when we are paying for it, and doing it as if they were USA champions of that dumbing down task. I am referring here to the TN test measuring our kids at 87% in math when the national test for the same grade level measures them at 21%. This is no accident ladies and gentlemen, and not one Board member or superintendent from the Knox County education system ever stood up to object against it and demand to correct it. NOT ONE to date.
You all will find me updating you on progress, using facts, until I start seeing actual data that this poor educational system (except for a few schools) is actually turning in the right direction after the past 3-4 decades dumbing down our children for OUR tax dollars. I will be the happiest person when I can report to you all evidence of a turnaround.
The dollars below for average cost/student at Farragut high school was my guess, the average for Knox County. Well, Farragut HS gets much less than that -- my chart above shows that.
HOOYA!
Vic
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by ChangeAgent on -
KNS reporting staff? Are you paying attention?
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Permalink Reply by Vic Spencer on -
CA I tried to have something posted but according to Christina Southern my topics are not good for the SchoolMatters section for printing, but they may fit the Opinion section. I am too wordy, need to be more succinct, more quotes, more backup, actual quotes from others. Her style related comments are right on, and there is nothing to comment on here because she decides, end of story, period. I am telling you frankly that I do not think that there is any bias here. They have to make money and survival of the paper is most important. They have handled the political situation in this county very well in my opinion and this is not any different. They have guide lines, like any business. Sure I was a bit emotional at first but that goes away in 15 minutes. The next stop is the opinion editor, and that is the last stop with the Sentinel.
I had another case with a Sentinel affiliated paper a number of months back whose editor was very interested in the education picture after he heard me speak. He wrote a piece about the education topic about 7 months back, wanted follow ups, which I could not do for about 6 weeks being incredibly busy at that time. After 6 weeks he went suddenly cold faster than one can say Mickey Mouse. Very out of character. A few weeks ago, Karen Carson asked me if I could meet with her at the Kroger in Farragut at some specific time to discuss some things. Sure, I said. When I saw her at a table there was another lady sitting there who turned out to be this editor's publisher. A pretty good cross exam came about and the Publisher lady did not hesitate to make fun of me on several occasions during the meeting, I felt she was very hurtful and followed with an email raking me about my criticism of KCS, and McIntyre's superiority in intelligence and background, which I do accept, and never doubted for a minute. Accidental setup? Maybe but not in my book. I sent her an email with some facts and questions which she did not answer. I would say that the chances are that this was a setup, and it is clear who participated, and it is somewhat unclear who was driving it from behind. It's not important. My followers are growing by a very healthy rate, but this was an unexpected very hurtful experience, very unfair in view of the facts and a surprise to me. So I will remember, but it drives me more to go on to find out what the truth is. Some people get influenced, some people do not get influenced to judge situations prematurely. And some just want the truth and do the right thing. I am on no one's payroll in any way whatsoever, and will never be. I owe God, and this country, my country by choice since age 17, and I will do my best to help or push this system if necessary to increase the ACT performance. I am not benefiting in any way from that at my age, other than helping to resolve what I think to be a huge problem. And that is the end of the story about journalism to date. I did not make any statement here in this post that I do not mean from the heart.
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Permalink Reply by Vic Spencer on
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Of course I would be happy to join Obama's group. They talked to me several times before the election, but I don't know of any Obama's group. I know education is high on his priority.
Senator Frist formed a group for action in TN, was invited and I joined him.
Look, a man leading is unimportant. Me leading is unimportant to me. If people want me to lead for reasons of substance, that's fine. But I would be just as happy as a worker bee who contributes significantly.
I also want to help the schools, KCS and the Board, even if some are not the most comfortable with it. I may not agree with all of them all the time, but I sure agree with all of them most of the time. Everyone I met are really good professional people and Indya is a forward thinking chair person which is a very good thing. They have a tough job, but the management system they use is old, and no one really likes to leave their comfort zone, as I am sure Jim McIntyre knows.
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Permalink Reply by Vic Spencer on
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I'll be happy to join you. Count me in.
You should know that I would love to support the BOE, but there is one condition under which they will find me less enthusiastic, and that is if we see an operating plan coming from KCS at end of may that does not say much meaningful, with real easy goals that require no rise in expectations, and no monthly targets on productivity by school with budget target also by month by school. Two Board members were anything but helpful to me. People talk and some comments got back to me. Do I care? No. That is to be expected if you utter even one word with which such a person disagrees. If we do not see a real operating plan than this system will not achieve anything as a result of their work, but only the state mandated increase in the curriculum. In other words in my opinion we need more than just enforcing the state mandated curriculum. That is an easy job that should not require a big central organization to deliver it. The schools themselves could deliver it. Let me say it another way. I could be wrong. I just do not see the value that the currently huge central organization adds to the schools. I would love to know the answer to that question and I am confident we will get there. For example they need a much larger accounting function now in absence of the correct system wide management and accounting tools. I am sure they have a huge paper traffic, and they could not even answer a pretty fundamental question from me that I asked 8 months ago. They will require a smaller accounting function at central when they have the right tools.
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Permalink Reply by Cathy McCaughan on -
You do recognize that the state, err district spending the most has the worst results? Also, you can't compare US results to countries who don't have every single child enrolled and tested, regardless of ability or economic status.
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Permalink Reply by Vic Spencer on
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Cath, the one you refer to is Washington DC.
If you go to knoxedu.info, go to my OECD link about the comparison sheets and they have a complete description of their methodology. They are very smart people.
Setting rules like you suggest is a certain formula for defeat. The REAL rule is "whose product will take most of the business in a competitive world", and I would humbly suggest that we do not tie any of our hands behind our backs for a fight. You must remember that I was impacted by my special ops experience and working in two large and successful high tech companies in management, and my rules for comparing and winning may be different than yours.
But we both want our kids to be successful. Please think about what I wrote right under the picture that shows the level of computing power for $1000 reaching the human brain capacity and when it will exceed the combined power of all human brains in the world. It is deadly serious for every child and it will be happening in the first half of this century. This will be a deadly serious 50 years.
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Permalink Reply by granma2 on -
First of all, there are more like 54,000 students enrolled in KCS. Comparing private schools and public schools is not an apples to apples comparison because private schools do not admit anyone who wants to come. They're very selective and rarely take sped kids. KCS low test results are at schools that traditionally have a low socio-economic status. They don't send their kids to private schools. It's the same for trying to compare the United States with other countries (sorry Vic). Most European countries do not count sped students in their test results. We do. I don't understand the first part of your post about homeschooling, but my opinion is that KCS looks at homeschooling as just one less student they have to worry about until they come in to be tested or require special services. I don't think, and rightfully so, that they are worried that people pull their kids out to be homeschooled.
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Permalink Reply by Vic Spencer on
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No problem granma2. We agree to disagree about that one. If you want to improve, study the best 3 in the world. Sped is 9.9% of the total. Even if you were right, we would still be behind. I would suggest that you study the top 3, starting with Finland and then tell us that they ignore Sped.
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Permalink Reply by Debi on -
I think the other 30,000 may be kids too young and not educated at KCS kids?
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Permalink Reply by Vic Spencer on
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Disagree Tex. Sorry. If you want to learn about how to become the best, study the top 3.
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Permalink Reply by Cathy McCaughan on
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Mmkay, Korea is way up there on the charts. Let's look at how well they are doing and . . . oops, I guess we just need to ignore 20% of special needs students to raise our scores and placement.
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