A discussion of education in East Tennessee
The Ten-Year ACT Results Including 2009
To follow up my previous posting, I am going to show you three pictures about the ACT test results, the best indicator of educational achievement by the end of high school.
The above picture represents the actual ACT scores by Knox County high school, the county, the state and the USA. Overall, there isn't any significant change in what the Knox County School System has achieved. A common complaint from area employers is that most high school graduates cannot communicate in English properly and cannot do simple math. Our county average is 21.8, and it was 21.9 in 2008.
I think that a very easy conclusion we can draw from this is the fact that any ACT average below 22 is far from the kind of improvement we need. When we look at the top ten countries of the 33 countries that are better than us in math at the high school level, I am estimating that their OECD-PISA score equivalent in average composite ACT score is between 28 and 31. That's pretty far ahead of 22 that neither Knox County, nor Tennessee, nor the USA is achieving today. Our economic competition is not within the USA. Our competitors are foreign companies from the top performing countries, whose products you see all over the place in our country as imports, in almost every industry. We are losing our own market to foreign competitors in 111 of 114 key industries, because our high school education output has become so poor. The gap in knowledge between our high school graduates and the knowledge needed in the first year to do well at a university, has grown bigger and bigger for several decades, to the point where today we are simply unable to graduate enough scientists and engineers to make competitive products. It is all due to our primary and secondary education failing us, while we paid enormous tax dollars every year for the education they provided. This is not the schools' fault. As I explained before, those who managed districts, state and federal education departments, purposefully dumbed down the tests and the amount that we require our children to learn. WE PAID for it and THEY DID IT.
A chart with numbers is difficult to understand. Let me show you what these results look like in a graph-chart. Remember that the real objective was to get the ACT scores to shoot up much higher, and not just hang around between 17 and 22. Farragut and Bearden High Schools clearly understand this message, and show much better performance. Naturally, you will hear a lot of excuses from the education system about why most of our schools are not doing well. One excuse will be not enough money, while, we as a country are the fourth largest education spenders per student, delivering the 34th math result.
On the left side of the above chart you see the ACT score scale. Along the bottom, you see each of the ten years I am showing. Each color represents a different high school, and all Knox County high schools are represented. There is a color key for the high schools just under the title of the graph. You can see that some high schools produce very low ACT numbers. Most of these children will be looking forward to a worsening life, as future jobs will require more education. Most will probably become unemployed within ten years, unless they start studying very hard. A few high schools are doing well. Not as well as our top ten international competitors, but well enough to produce mostly successful people for the future. Then we have most of our high schools between these two extremes, under a 22 ACT score. Unless these children study a lot harder, too many of them will also become unsuccessful, poor and unemployed as future technologies accelerate ahead. And they will accelerate at a very high rate, like you have never seen before. Parents and teachers, there is no more room for allowing your children and students to slack off. Your expectation for our students and children are way too low. You have to become much more demanding and insist that they do much better quality work and work much harder. Otherwise they will have such a terrible life that you cannot even imagine today. Robots will do their work 24/7, without complaining, and they will be out, because the companies will not be able to pay for employees whose English is poor, whose math skills are poor, whose education is low, and who complain about hard work, and do a poor quality job. Most of what we produce out of high schools today are exactly that to date. It is time to sober up: parents, teachers, and especially the administrators within our education departments and districts.
I am adding another chart. Even the second chart becomes a bit confusing with all the squiggly lines. Although I am making it look a little more confusing, I am actually simplifying it for you. "Linear Regression" is a method in higher mathematics to provide a very accurate trend line for multi-year results like I am showing on the second chart. The third chart simply adds a straight trend-line in the same color to each school. If you look at these straight lines, you will clearly see how each high school developed over this ten-year period. Such trend-lines are therefore very important and they do not lie. They tell you the "straight" story. No BS. Some schools show a steady increase in ACT scores. Their lines are rising up, as you move more to the right. Most schools are below the ACT 22 line, either rising very little in ten years, or not at all. Such poor results raise a valid question about what on earth are we doing. Ten years is way too long in not producing better results for the huge amount of tax dollars we pay for education. If they cannot improve in a couple of years, it is time for serious changes, or even the act of closing the school that is wasting our hard earned dollars.
Find and look at the straight (Linear Regression) trend lines showing what we have accomplished at each high school during a ten year period. Anything that is under the ACT 22 line and is horizontal or shows a slight increase only, signifies a situation where we are wasting money. Why? Because most students coming from this kind of performance background, simply will not become good enough to earn a good living. They will be mostly unemployed and a drag on society. And the responsibility for this clearly rests on parents, teachers, and school administrators in any district or state or in the nation, because they all chose to dumb down our children until now with extremely low expectations and political agendas.
With the American Diploma Project, we have a chance to improve things. It is virtually impossible to do that unless we can admit where we are and how we got there. And for Heaven's sakes, dispense with stories about how this district wants to maintain the high standards of the TN Diploma Project, because it is in danger of being watered down. That is BS. When TN signed up for the American Diploma Project, it had to agree to abide by its terms to get federal funds. The TN Diploma Project Web site even says that. Just inform the people where we are, what happened on your and your predecessors watch, and how we shall resurrect this bad situation with the help of all parents and all teachers. And you must change your expectations for our children, so that they become competitive.
I will tell you right now why the story about the TN Diploma Project being watered down and why KCS supposedly wrote letters to prevent that. KCS and the BOE never did take ownership for the dumbing down of our children. They always said good things about our scholastic performance when it was anything but that. For this reason the majority of the public thinks that everything is all right with education, so why does this "idiotic TN Diploma Project" wants to increase the load on us parents and our children. Therefore they may raise enough hell against the TN Diploma Project, because they are not being told the truth about how our children were dumbed down to end up with useless high school diplomas. If the public by chance wins such a fight, KCS and the BOE wants evidence that they backed the TN Diploma Project. But so far, they do not want to tell the public what they and their predecessors did. They do not want to admit and lose face. And I must tell you that it indeed takes extraordinary character strength to stand up and admit such things. Most people just cannot do it. Does that make sense to you all?
THE SIMPLE FACT IS THAT THE ACT WENT NOWHERE DURING DR. MCINTYRE'S FIRST YEAR. BUT A HIGHER BUDGET WAS APPROVED WITHOUT ANY ACT GOALS THAT ARE MEANINGFUL. $375 MILLION OF OUR HARD-EARNED TAX DOLLARS WERE APPROVED WITHOUT ANY PLAN PRESENTED FIRST AND WITHOUT ANY COMMITMENT TO ACHIEVING AN ACT TARGET THAT IS HIGH ENOUGH. DO YOU THINK THAT AFTER ALL THIS, IT WILL PRODUCE SIGNIFICANTLY BETTER ACT RESULTS DURING THE 2010 SCHOOL YEAR? I HAVE SERIOUS DOUBTS. CONSIDER SERIOUSLY VOTING FOR DIFFERENT BOE MEMBERS. MAYBE NEW PEOPLE WILL DO BETTER. WE NOW KNOW THAT THE EXISTING BOE MEMBERS DID NOT DO BETTER, WITH THE EXCEPTION OF SPENDING MORE MONEY. THAT IS NOT WHAT WE NEED!
The above picture represents the actual ACT scores by Knox County high school, the county, the state and the USA. Overall, there isn't any significant change in what the Knox County School System has achieved. A common complaint from area employers is that most high school graduates cannot communicate in English properly and cannot do simple math. Our county average is 21.8, and it was 21.9 in 2008.
I think that a very easy conclusion we can draw from this is the fact that any ACT average below 22 is far from the kind of improvement we need. When we look at the top ten countries of the 33 countries that are better than us in math at the high school level, I am estimating that their OECD-PISA score equivalent in average composite ACT score is between 28 and 31. That's pretty far ahead of 22 that neither Knox County, nor Tennessee, nor the USA is achieving today. Our economic competition is not within the USA. Our competitors are foreign companies from the top performing countries, whose products you see all over the place in our country as imports, in almost every industry. We are losing our own market to foreign competitors in 111 of 114 key industries, because our high school education output has become so poor. The gap in knowledge between our high school graduates and the knowledge needed in the first year to do well at a university, has grown bigger and bigger for several decades, to the point where today we are simply unable to graduate enough scientists and engineers to make competitive products. It is all due to our primary and secondary education failing us, while we paid enormous tax dollars every year for the education they provided. This is not the schools' fault. As I explained before, those who managed districts, state and federal education departments, purposefully dumbed down the tests and the amount that we require our children to learn. WE PAID for it and THEY DID IT.
A chart with numbers is difficult to understand. Let me show you what these results look like in a graph-chart. Remember that the real objective was to get the ACT scores to shoot up much higher, and not just hang around between 17 and 22. Farragut and Bearden High Schools clearly understand this message, and show much better performance. Naturally, you will hear a lot of excuses from the education system about why most of our schools are not doing well. One excuse will be not enough money, while, we as a country are the fourth largest education spenders per student, delivering the 34th math result.
On the left side of the above chart you see the ACT score scale. Along the bottom, you see each of the ten years I am showing. Each color represents a different high school, and all Knox County high schools are represented. There is a color key for the high schools just under the title of the graph. You can see that some high schools produce very low ACT numbers. Most of these children will be looking forward to a worsening life, as future jobs will require more education. Most will probably become unemployed within ten years, unless they start studying very hard. A few high schools are doing well. Not as well as our top ten international competitors, but well enough to produce mostly successful people for the future. Then we have most of our high schools between these two extremes, under a 22 ACT score. Unless these children study a lot harder, too many of them will also become unsuccessful, poor and unemployed as future technologies accelerate ahead. And they will accelerate at a very high rate, like you have never seen before. Parents and teachers, there is no more room for allowing your children and students to slack off. Your expectation for our students and children are way too low. You have to become much more demanding and insist that they do much better quality work and work much harder. Otherwise they will have such a terrible life that you cannot even imagine today. Robots will do their work 24/7, without complaining, and they will be out, because the companies will not be able to pay for employees whose English is poor, whose math skills are poor, whose education is low, and who complain about hard work, and do a poor quality job. Most of what we produce out of high schools today are exactly that to date. It is time to sober up: parents, teachers, and especially the administrators within our education departments and districts.
I am adding another chart. Even the second chart becomes a bit confusing with all the squiggly lines. Although I am making it look a little more confusing, I am actually simplifying it for you. "Linear Regression" is a method in higher mathematics to provide a very accurate trend line for multi-year results like I am showing on the second chart. The third chart simply adds a straight trend-line in the same color to each school. If you look at these straight lines, you will clearly see how each high school developed over this ten-year period. Such trend-lines are therefore very important and they do not lie. They tell you the "straight" story. No BS. Some schools show a steady increase in ACT scores. Their lines are rising up, as you move more to the right. Most schools are below the ACT 22 line, either rising very little in ten years, or not at all. Such poor results raise a valid question about what on earth are we doing. Ten years is way too long in not producing better results for the huge amount of tax dollars we pay for education. If they cannot improve in a couple of years, it is time for serious changes, or even the act of closing the school that is wasting our hard earned dollars.
Find and look at the straight (Linear Regression) trend lines showing what we have accomplished at each high school during a ten year period. Anything that is under the ACT 22 line and is horizontal or shows a slight increase only, signifies a situation where we are wasting money. Why? Because most students coming from this kind of performance background, simply will not become good enough to earn a good living. They will be mostly unemployed and a drag on society. And the responsibility for this clearly rests on parents, teachers, and school administrators in any district or state or in the nation, because they all chose to dumb down our children until now with extremely low expectations and political agendas.
With the American Diploma Project, we have a chance to improve things. It is virtually impossible to do that unless we can admit where we are and how we got there. And for Heaven's sakes, dispense with stories about how this district wants to maintain the high standards of the TN Diploma Project, because it is in danger of being watered down. That is BS. When TN signed up for the American Diploma Project, it had to agree to abide by its terms to get federal funds. The TN Diploma Project Web site even says that. Just inform the people where we are, what happened on your and your predecessors watch, and how we shall resurrect this bad situation with the help of all parents and all teachers. And you must change your expectations for our children, so that they become competitive.
I will tell you right now why the story about the TN Diploma Project being watered down and why KCS supposedly wrote letters to prevent that. KCS and the BOE never did take ownership for the dumbing down of our children. They always said good things about our scholastic performance when it was anything but that. For this reason the majority of the public thinks that everything is all right with education, so why does this "idiotic TN Diploma Project" wants to increase the load on us parents and our children. Therefore they may raise enough hell against the TN Diploma Project, because they are not being told the truth about how our children were dumbed down to end up with useless high school diplomas. If the public by chance wins such a fight, KCS and the BOE wants evidence that they backed the TN Diploma Project. But so far, they do not want to tell the public what they and their predecessors did. They do not want to admit and lose face. And I must tell you that it indeed takes extraordinary character strength to stand up and admit such things. Most people just cannot do it. Does that make sense to you all?
THE SIMPLE FACT IS THAT THE ACT WENT NOWHERE DURING DR. MCINTYRE'S FIRST YEAR. BUT A HIGHER BUDGET WAS APPROVED WITHOUT ANY ACT GOALS THAT ARE MEANINGFUL. $375 MILLION OF OUR HARD-EARNED TAX DOLLARS WERE APPROVED WITHOUT ANY PLAN PRESENTED FIRST AND WITHOUT ANY COMMITMENT TO ACHIEVING AN ACT TARGET THAT IS HIGH ENOUGH. DO YOU THINK THAT AFTER ALL THIS, IT WILL PRODUCE SIGNIFICANTLY BETTER ACT RESULTS DURING THE 2010 SCHOOL YEAR? I HAVE SERIOUS DOUBTS. CONSIDER SERIOUSLY VOTING FOR DIFFERENT BOE MEMBERS. MAYBE NEW PEOPLE WILL DO BETTER. WE NOW KNOW THAT THE EXISTING BOE MEMBERS DID NOT DO BETTER, WITH THE EXCEPTION OF SPENDING MORE MONEY. THAT IS NOT WHAT WE NEED!
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Heather Marshall on -
Vic,
Again great work! I am very surprised that there is not more discussion on School Matters about how to increase the ACT scores, why we are not seeing a defined increase in ACT scores, when will we see the upward trend, etc....Has the school board made any comments on the most recent information/2009 scores? I thought that increasing ACT scores was one of Mr. McIntyre's goals.
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