THE STATE OF THE UNION:
We are a divided nation. Our daily lives are filled with a generous dose of blame and hate from various factions, politicians and the national media on a wide range of issues, including race, gender, politics, education, the environment, crime, national security, public policy and foreign policy. In spite of all that, the United States of America is still the best place on earth. But that does not mean there is not room for improvement.
NOTE TO PRESIDENT TRUMP
Mr. President, you now have permission from the Supreme Court to dismantle the Federal Department of Education as you promised you would, you have announced that education must get fixed and that you will be personally involved. While all that is good news, do you have a specific plan to achieve nation-wide Academic Excellence that we so desperately need?
This document contains a complete Concept of Operations for a long-range strategic plan to not only transform education but in the process transform America to a dramatically different State of the Union.
There are six key short-hand questions that can briefly describe what a long-range strategic plan is all about; answers to who, what, when, where, why and how? For this particular plan:
- WHO? Every school, every classroom, every student K-12 will be involved.
- WHAT? To be completely engulfed in a Concept off Operations that will create an overwhelming, embracing culture of national academic excellence and in doing so transform America into a culture of Accountability, Respect and Trust.
- WHEN? You can cause the entire country to begin the Execution Phase in 12 months.
- WHERE? In every classroom in the country.
- WHY? Because a Recent Gallop poll reported that 73% of Americans are dissatisfied with K-12 education results. Unlike the Congress, you, Mr. President, listen to the American people and then takes action when necessary. Also, because less than one third of school kids in America are proficient in reading and math.
- HOW? Fix it from the bottom up at zero expense to the taxpayers.
Mr. President, there you have it in a nut-shell; the details are contained in the following pages. You can begin Phase One of the Three-Phased plan tomorrow and execute a year from now. Are you in?
HELP!
I have no way of getting this information to a senior person close to the president. If anyone reading this agrees with the concept and has a contact in the White House, please pass it forward. Thanks.
WHY HAS PRESIDENT TRUMP TAKEN ON EDUCATION REFORM AS A MAJOR ISSUE?
- Recent Gallop poll reported that 73% of Americans are dissatisfied with K-12 education results. Unlike the Congress, President trump listens to the American people and then takes action.
- The National Assessment of Educational Progress, NAEP reports on 4th and 8th grade education proficient level every two years and 12th grade every four years. NEAP is referred to as “the nations report card.” They test all subject areas but let’s use reading and math results as illustrative examples. Since reading is foundational to all subjects; failure to read well keeps students from accessing information and building knowledge across all areas.
- NEAP 2024 report shows that FEWER THAN ONE THIRD OF STUDENTS NATIONWIDE ARE READING AT “PROFICIENT” LEVEL. “Proficient” means consistently understanding written test and interpreting its meaning; that a student has demonstrated competency in applying such knowledge to real-world situations. Stated another way, millions of high school “graduates” every year are functionally illiterate. Throughout the U.S. 20% of high school graduates are unable to pass the test to enter the U.S. military.
HOW BAD IS THE “BELOW-PROFICIENCY” ISSUE?
PRE-COVID NAEP REPORT CARD: In 2019 NAEP tested 150,600 grade 4 students, 143,100 grade 8, and 26,700 grade 12 students and reported the findings. Here is a summary pulled from a very large comprehensive report:
READING: The assessment measures reading comprehension by asking students to read selected grade-appropriate materials and answer questions based on what they have read.
Grade 4 Grade 8 Grade 12
NOT proficient: 59% 66% 76%
MATHEMATICS: The assessment measures both mathematics knowledge and the students’ ability to apply their knowledge in problem-solving situations.
Grade 4 Grade 8 Grade 12
NOT proficient: 65% 66% 63%
Other subjects were even worse. For high school seniors 88% NOT proficient in history, 77% NOT proficient in writing ability and 78% NOT proficient in science.
If we had to put a grade on this NAEP finding, it’s clearly an “F”. Any other organization with those results would be out of business; but unfortunately, it is consistent with government-run operations.
MORE BAD NEWS
- According to ELEVATE USA, on average, over a million students drop out of high school in the U.S. every year; that’s 5-6,000 every school day thereby creating a linkage to a life of crime and/or welfare. The U.S. high school dropouts commit about 75% of the crimes. About 75% of prison inmates do not have a high school diploma.
- “Dropout factories” refer to high schools with less than 60 percent graduating seniors when compared to the number of freshmen. Of the 26,727 public and private high schools in America, almost 2,000 graduate less than 60% of their students. Those dropout factories account for over 50% of the students who leave school every year. One in six U.S. students attend a dropout factory. One in three minority students (32%) attend a dropout factory compared to 8% of white students.
- Habitually, when concern over education achievement reaches a critical point, we, the federal and/or state governments, throw money at the problem, and/or increase the number of bureaucrats involved and/or publish more regulations. This has not, is not, will not fix the problem. President Biden’s Dept of Education budget requests were $79.2 billion, FY 2023 and $90 billion, FY 2024
- High school graduation rates vary by state from 82% to 96%. But that does not necessarily tell the whole story because it is a fact that some states have lowered the standards for graduation in order to achieve a higher number.
- More snapshots that illustrate the problems in government-run public schools:
Providence, RI: Only 5% of eighth graders are proficient in math.
Newark, NJ: 21% proficiency in math.
North Carolina: From NAEP 2022 testing, 68% of North Carolina’s fourth-graders were not proficient in reding.
Wisconsin: Black American eighth graders perform only slightly better than white fourth graders in reading and math.
In 2021, multiple California school districts dropped D and F grades calling it, “competency-based learning.” Learning? really?
Schools across the country are banning homework. More psychobabble reasoning.
Oregon Governor Kate Brown quietly signed a bill on July 14, 2020 that suspends a requirement for Oregon students to demonstrate reading, writing and math proficiency in order to receive a diploma.
And so it goes across the country. A recent survey found that 20% of American adults cannot name even one of the three branches of government.
Average U.S. annual spending per public school student was over $14,000 in 2023. That is about 34% higher than the average of the other 37 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries. Currently our number one “solution” to improving education results in the U.S. is for the feds and states to throw money at the problem. It’s not working.
UNIONS AND EDUCATION
Before moving forward with solutions, some thoughts about Unions: They are a bigger part of the problem than the solution. They are going forward with their own campaign against President Trump and the 73% of Americans who know that we are currently suffering through an existing education crisis. National education unions are stifling education innovation and should have zero input or influence on education policy and practices.
The two largest teachers’ unions are the National Education Association, NEA, with over 3 million members and the American Federation of Teachers, AFT, with about 1.7 million members. Both are left-wing Democrat activists. In fiscal year 2022 NEA directed over $50 million to candidates, 98.96% to left wing democrats; ATF spent about $47 million, 99.9% to Democrats.
About 70% of all teachers are union members.
Here is a classic example of political overreach by teachers’ unions. During Covid, the Los Angeles Teachers’ Union, as a payoff for agreeing to let teachers back into the classrooms made the following demands: defunding the police, single-payer government-provided health care, full funding for housing California homeless, shutdown of publicly funded privately operated charter schools, payment for all of this with a 1% wealth tax, a 3% income surtax on millionaires and increased property taxes on businesses. Pathetic, unprecedented and completely out of their lane.
UNIONS AND CHARTER SCHOOLS
Forty-five states have laws that allow public charter schools which are publicly funded and tuition-free but differ from traditional public schools. Charters generally have more operational flexibility. One reason is unionization; 70% of traditional public-school teachers but only 11% of teachers in charters belong to a teachers’ union.
Study results from the Center for Research on Educational Outcomes (CREDO) has researched charter performance since 2000. The 2023 results from 1.8 million students in 6,200 charter schools revealed a “remarkable advantage over traditional public schools” particularly in reading and math and their statistical advantage is growing every year. The advantage is even more dramatic for Black and Hispanic students. Why? Generally, teachers are encouraged to experiment with fresh and innovative ways to reach and teach students.
Virtually every teachers’ union and many of their almost exclusively Democrat supporters vehemently oppose charter schools. Why? Most public charter teachers do not unionize and therefore teachers’ unions do not benefit from them paying dues that increasingly go towards their political priorities.
NEA and AFT have for years, and increasingly so, feel threatened by the superior academic achievements of charter schools over government public schools. Therefore, their published conclusions and so-called “studies” easy reek of error, distortion, untruth, politics ands self-interest and should be discounted by real studies such as CREDO mentioned above.
With that background, let’s launch a new way forward for education in America.
CONCEPT OF OPERATIONS FOR IMPROVING RACE RELATIONS
AND EDUCATION, INSTITUTIONALIZING A NEW CULTURE
AND THEREBY TRANSFORMING AMERICA
PART ONE (of two parts) CAMPAIGN HOME ROOM
A Concept of Operation is a valuable tool in the strategic planning process. It provides the opportunity to clearly and concisely express intent in a story-board format.
We have a crisis of character in this country that is underpinned by a culture of blame and hate. A telling statement attributed de Tocqueville, 1829, “America is great because it is good; when it ceases to be good it will cease to be great”. Making America good again is the path to making it great again.
But, first things first. It is necessary to define the problems with race relations and education in America because the problems have not yet been adequately articulated and those who look for solutions without first defining the problem, are usually looking in the wrong places. There are five problems:
PROBLEM # 1, RACE RELATIONS AND EDUCATION ARE STUCK:
There is no definitive measure of where we are with respect to race relations in this country. But, events over the past couple years tell us it is not good. In the absence of data to tell us otherwise we can assume we are at least stuck and not getting any better.
Our world rankings in education tells us we are also stuck in a place we do not want to be. Across the country, millions of teens drop out of school or graduate functionally illiterate each year. A solution is in this concept of operations.
PROBLEM # 2, HAS TO DO WITH THE EXISTING CULTURE:
Culture is a powerful and pervasive force in every organization and every organization, no matter how large or small, has a culture. Culture is an organization’s personality; caring, hateful, fast, energetic, visionary, risk-taking, vengeful.
A culture of blame and hatred has overtaken our country in politics, bureaucracies, business and society as a whole. Race relations and our education system have also taken on a culture of blame. A culture of blame is so powerful and polarizing that it provides no hope of moving forward until we supplant it with something positive. It’s in this concept of operations.
PROBLEM #3, IS ABOUT WHAT KIDS LEARN:
Babies are not born bigoted, disrespecting or hateful. While growing up they learn it at home, in school, on the playground and on the street. We simply have to change what they learn. It’s in this concept of operations.
PROBLEM #4, TOP-DOWN PROGRAMS DO NOT WORK:
The federal government cannot successfully run things; for example, Amtrak, the Post Office, Veterans Administration, the IRS, Federal Housing, all disasters. Since the Federal Government established the Department of Education in 1979, we have seen one failed program after another as each succeeding administration tries to fix education from the top down with hundreds of billions of dollars and tens of thousands of bureaucrats. We have to change the way the Federal Government works big problems with more decentralized decision making and execution. It’s in this concept of operations.
PROBLEM # 5, STUDENTS GET BEHIND
Google tells us that every school day 5,000 T0 6,000 students across this country drop out of school and statistically become a life-time drain and strain on society. Others are allowed to slip through the system and graduate but are actually functionally illiterate.
Looking at my state, North Carolina, as an example, five students enter the ninth grade. One will drop out and not graduate. The four graduates decide to take the test to enter the military. One is determined to be functionally illiterate and fails the test. Why do they drop out and why do they graduate functionally illiterate? Because they got behind.
They got behind a little bit in fourth grade, more in the fifth, more in sixth. At some point, they are near the bottom of their class, frustrated, embarrassed, ridiculed by their peers and they give up and drop out or get passed on by the system until they “graduate” with no skills and little hope.
Think of it this way, if you had a business and only 50, 60 or 70% of your products were up to standard, would you still be in business? No way. If you were running a private school with these results would anyone be paying the tuition? Absolutely not. Then why should we put up with these results?
A Pentagon report tells us 77% of U.S. young people, ages 17-24, cannot qualify, without a waiver, for entry into the military because of education, physically unfit for duty, drug use or a criminal record. A national disgrace.
There are 190 Military Occupational Specialties in the U.S. Army. Staying with the North Carolina example, 23% of the high school graduates who want to go into the Army cannot find one of the 190 MOS that they can handle and are therefore categorized as functionally illiterate because they lack the cognitive skills to perform the most common of tasks. So how are they going to perform in the local civilian world? Probably not very well.
Inside all this data about drop outs and illiteracy is the base of the problem, they got behind. We have to figure out why and fix it. It’s in this concept of operations.
These five problems have not been properly articulated in this country. The experts talk about, “bringing the community together” to solve race and education problems. But no one seems to be able to describe what coming together means or how it is to be accomplished. Solving these five problems is going to take a long-range strategic plan; a campaign that focuses on the kids.
STRATEGIC PLANNING AND THE EDUCATION ORGANIZATION: Strategic planning is a matter of problem solving and, in its simplest form, is the answers to the questions; who, what, when, where, why and how. Also, strategic planning becomes easier if we can put a frame around the “organization” to gain focus on all the involved parties. For a national campaign to solve the five problems, the Education Organization will consist of the following:
- As of 2025 there were 115,181 schools in the United States; 95,852 public and 19,329 private schools.
- 180 million adults with children under age 18
- About 50 million K-12 students
- 4.5 million teachers
- 2.4 million Home Room volunteers, (more on this later)
- Over 200,000 Superintendents, Principles and Education Board members
That is about 240 million Americans will, in some way, be involved in this campaign.
CAMPAIGNING: A campaign consists of the actions associated with a strategic plan. The actions associated with solving this nation’s race relations and educational problems are contained in this paper and it is called CAMPAIGN HOME ROOM. A campaign is not a project, a simple plan or something that can be launched and satisfied with a couple of speeches or emails. Campaign Home Room is an all-encompassing, long-term effort that will involve the intellect, innovation and energy of tens of millions of Americans over the next couple of generations.
This Concept of Operations to fix the five problems is not a guessing game. The strength of this concept is that there are existing successful models we can lean on and learn from. A concept of operations begins with the Vision and Mission. While improving race relations and educational results could be separate campaigns, in this Concept of Operations they both feed off the same catalyst, Character Education in the Home Room. Therefore, race relations and the education system are combined in the vision and mission statements.
VISION: All strategic planning begins at the end with a clear vision of the end-state. Vision defines where the organization is going. This first step is a must-do because of the truth in the old saying, “if you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.”
The VISION for Campaign Home Room is to significantly reduce racial discord in the United States and institutionalize a deep-seated culture of academic excellence in every school that will raise graduation rates nearer to 100%.
U.S. public high schools recorded a four-year graduation rate of 80 percent for the 2011-12 school year, an all-time high. Graduation rates vary greatly by state and race. Nationwide, black students graduated at a rate of 69 percent; Hispanics graduated at 73 percent; whites graduated at a rate of 86 percent. However bad the actual numbers are, the question remains, how many of the “graduates” are in fact functionally illiterate?
MISSION is a declaration to everyone in the process (all 250 million parents, teachers, students, education administrators and volunteers) of what it is we are all collectively going to do. It is important that the leader issuing the mission statement knows exactly what the “organization” consists of.
The MISSION is to change the culture of education (students, teachers, leaders and parents) in every U.S. school, K-12, and dramatically reduce racial discord by internalizing a culture of ACCOUNTABILITY, TRUST AND RESPECT in the mind and soul of every student, teacher and parent.
INTENT is the most powerful tool available to a leader. A leader who uses intent in strategic planning is letting everyone in the organization inside his or her head. Intent answers who, when and why.
The overall intent of Campaign Home Room is to call upon and optimize the talent in this country to accomplish the above stated mission. This cannot become a political debate or an issue that will become polarized. If it does, the campaign will absolutely fail. For that reason, this campaign will not require federal or state funds to accomplish the mission.
The President of the United States will lead the campaign to keep it on track, seek implementation in every K-12 school and to keep it on a reasonable time-line. The federal Department of Education has a track record of failure. This campaign must be a new and different approach to solving the nation’s education crisis.
The President will work with the fifty Governors, ask them to focus on this campaign every day and visit schools frequently during in-state trips. Decentralized planning and execution will be the responsibility of County and City Boards of Education, Superintendents and school Principals. The intent is to launch this campaign in as many schools as possible at the beginning of the 2026 school year.
Why are we doing this? The pace of improvement in race relations is too slow and disjointed and our high school graduation results are disgusting, disgraceful, unsatisfactory and unbecoming of this great nation.
The keys to success will be to successfully impose a set of values in the mind of every student, K-12, in this country over the entire period of time they are students and to use standards-based instruction, K-12.
STRATEGY
In planning jargon, “Vision” describes where we want to go. “Mission” is what we are all going to do. “Intent” from the leader tells us who, when and why.
The hardest part of any strategic plan is how we are going to proceed; how, in general terms, we are going to get to the end state. Strategy is the long pole in the tent. Without a solid strategy, all we have is empty rhetoric. Unfortunately, many times (particularly by federal bureaucrats) the strategy is left out of the planning process and without the “how” the process just flounders and ultimately fails. The concept of operations, articulated in the following pages, describes how we can and should proceed to achieve the desired end state.
CHANGING CULTURE
As pointed out earlier, culture exists in every organization and it is a powerful and pervasive force.
What does culture have to do with race relations in this country? Everything. Start by thinking of White America and Black America as two different organizations. The one word that describes both of their cultures today is blame. There is nothing positive about a culture of blame. Race relations are stuck in place because blame offers no hope of moving forward. It is unproductive. It results only in finger pointing. Sides become polarized. That is what has happened to White and Black America.
The culture has to change if we are to have any chance of improving race relations. If you attempt to change the culture of any organization, you have to find the answers to these four questions:
First question: Can you describe your culture? It is not easy but the answer is yes you can. It takes honest introspective work, but it is doable.
Second question: Now that you have defined the culture, is it what you want it to be? No. No matter how successful the organization is, we do not live in a perfect world and there is always room for improvement.
Third question: What do you want the culture to be? Now we are looking for commitment throughout the organization; for example, commitment to a culture of accountability, respect and trust.
Final question: How are you going to go about creating and sustaining the culture you want? In this case the answer is in Campaign Home Room.
There is an existing model for a successful organizational culture. Those who have served in the US military know that it is the best racially integrated and most admired organization in this country, (verified for decades in an annual Gallop Poll). Through generations of work the military has become an organization with a culture of accountability, trust and respect.
At this point critics are quick to point out, “That is all well and good for the Military but these are civilians and you can’t just order civilians around like you can the military.” Yes, the military is different. In fact, no two organizations are the same and the way you approach the solution for each organization will differ. But that does not mean the model is wrong or will not work. It can work and that same culture that serves the military and many other organizations can also serve this nation.
As pointed out in Problem # 3, white and black babies are not born hating, disrespecting or blaming each other. They learn it at home, at school, on the playground and on the streets. Youngsters who are committed to youth organizations such as Scouting, The First Tee, Boys and Girls Clubs avoid joining gangs or becoming bigoted because they have developed a positive value base. They have learned accountability; they trust each other and respect authority. But these great programs only touch a fraction of the kids. We have to teach values to every youngster in the United States for generations to come.
The student drop-out rate across the United States (5,000- 6,000 per school day) is a national disgrace. In order to change the dismal educational results, we have to change the culture of the students; the culture of how teachers think about standards; the culture of leadership among education administrators; and the culture of parental involvement in the education of their children. This is a tall order but the good news is that we can use the Campaign Home Room program, retired military personnel and other volunteers as the catalysts for this program as well as that of improving race relations.
HOME ROOM
Reinstitute Home Room in every school. Home Room is a forgotten piece of Americana. Home Room is the center of gravity for this campaign. A center of gravity can be a place, person, thing or circumstance. Once defined the center of gravity is CENTRAL to the success.
The first 20-30 minutes of every school day in every school, K-12, will be Home Room. The subject matter will be:
ACCOUNTAILITY CITIZENSHIP COMMITMENT
COMPASSION COURAGE OF CONVICTIONS COURTESY
CONFIDENCE GRATITUDE HEALTHY HABITS
HONESTY HONOR HUMILITY
INTEGRITY JUDGMENT LEADERSHIP
MORALITY PERSEVERANCE PUNCTUALITY
RESPECT RESPONSIBILITY SELF-RESPECT
SELFLESS SERVICE SPORTSMANSHIP TRUST.
CREATING A DEEP-SEATED LIFE-LONG CULTURE OF ACCOUNTABILITY, RESPECT AND TRUST
That is, teach and talk about values. Call it the Character Curriculum. There will need to be three versions of the curriculum; elementary K-5, middle school 6-8 and high school 9-12. For example, as students mature, they will be conducting community services individually or as a group and reporting out in Home Room.
CREATE A GANG
Structure each Home Room with a cross section of the class population. For example, visualize a school that has 60 new kindergarten students entering school in August. Create each Home Room group with a mix of gender and race. During the following 13 years, some youngsters will move away and some new ones will come in; but for the most part that Home Room group will stay together until graduation. That is a critical part of the power of the Home Room concept.
In many large schools a student may not even know all of their classmates but they sure will know their Home Room mates. They will get to know them like brothers and sisters. They will have deep feelings and respect for their Home Room mates. Over time Home Rooms will have names, mascots, tee-shirts, a website, competition with other Home Rooms, an unshakable identity, peer pressure and peer support. “I have your back” will become an unspoken pledge from each to all. The Home Room will become a powerful game changer, a force-multiplier and it is free.
In this day and age of peer pressure to join a gang the Home Room can, from kindergarten on, provide an alternative. For every student, their Home Room can become their “gang” throughout their elementary and secondary education years. Every student in the United States will have a small group they can identify with and turn to for peer support.
Bullying has always been a problem for youngsters and seemingly more so today with the availability of social media. Home Room will bring bullying to its knees in two different ways. First of all, every student will now know that their Home Room gang has their back. The students will look after each other and protect one another.
By their very nature, bullies do not respect others or authority. With respect imprinted on the soul of every youngster and emphasized day after day, year after year throughout their student careers, it is doubtful that bullying will even be a mentionable problem in the future.
Truancy is an enormous problem in this country and is the super highway to dropping out of school. With the bond built among a group of Home Room kids over the years it will not be easy to bring one’s self to skip school. Accountability will become a powerful way of life for every student.
Home Room does not require funding. Personnel on the educational payroll will not lead or teach Home Room. It will be done by volunteers and we will need a lot of them. If the average size Home Room is students, we will have about 2.5 million Home Room classes in session every school day. Hang on, this is doable.
Just imagine the impact Campaign Home Room can have with about 50 million youngsters standing before the flag, reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and having a substantive discussion about one of the subjects in the Character Curriculum every school day and then adjourning to their class rooms to live/be/do/demonstrate those values. How powerful is that?
How do we find and train 2.5 million volunteers? The essence of this campaign is decentralized execution. Each individual school Principal will be responsible for finding a handful of volunteers and that should not be a problem. For example, there are approximately 10,000 Baby Boomers retiring per day and many are looking for something interesting, meaningful, and challenging to do in retirement.
Also, the Principal can tap in to local organizations and churches for help: Kiwanis, Lions Club, Chamber of Commerce, VFW, American Legion, AARP, Shriners, Country Clubs, etc. Get them to sponsor a school and provide all the Home Room instructors. Easy to do and retirees bring a wealth of knowledge and experience for the mentoring of youngsters.
A personal note: a few years I gave an abbreviated version of Campaign Home Room to about 75 folks at a Wednesday church supper with a follow-on Q and A. About 10 days later the Paster called to thank me and said there was a lot of church talk about Home Room and if it happens here, he said, “I have over 300 volunteers to teach.” Yes, 2.5 million is easily within the are of the possible.
Additionally, there are almost two million retired military men and women across the country. They all have three things in common: they are proven leaders, they are teachers and they have spent their professional lives in a fully integrated and value-based organization in which they operated daily immersed in a culture of ACCOUNTABILITY, TRUST AND RESPECT. They have the perfect skill set to administer the Home Room Character Curriculum.
Teachers and administrators should be seated in the back of the room observing the Home Room instruction/discussion. Why? The power of the program is that the students will take the values from the Home Room to the classroom if they are prompted all day to do so. More on this in a few minutes when we discuss Proof of Concept.
With respect to improving race relations, our children are currently learning hate and disrespect. This campaign will supplant that with a positive curriculum of accountability, trust and respect taught and discussed in Home Room and carried forward to the classroom, playground, sports field, streets and home.
High school graduation rates: Our kids are currently falling behind because of the lack of standards from grade to grade and because they do not have the positive reinforcement that will come from the Home Room Character Curriculum. Having one’s soul imprinted with the values of accountability, courage, punctuality and perseverance for years and years will dissuade that student from falling behind.
Additionally, over the years the bond with one’s Home Room will become so strong that the student thinking about dropping out of school will not want to face and disappoint their Home Room gang. “I will keep up and I will not give up” will become their mantra. When times get tough their Home Room friends will provide the necessary support system.
EDUCATION WITHOUT STANDARDS IS A FAILED SYSTEM; EDUCATION WITHOUT ACCOUNTABILITY IS A FAILED SYSTEM. WE HAVE A FAILED SYSTEM
PART TWO, EDUCATION STANDARDS
The above narrative and statistics are designed to do two things. One is to impress on you the length and breadth of the overall education crisis. And secondly to begin to identify and then define problems. If we cannot articulate the problem, there is no solution.
Every August a fifth-grade teacher should have a reasonable expectation that his or her new students will have achieved what is expected of a fourth-grade graduate. Without specified standards for end of year grade four, some students will inevitably pass on to the fifth grade deficient in math, for example. Once behind, it is more likely that they will fall further behind each succeeding year until such time, usually in high school, that student will feel so hopelessly behind they will take the only alternative they foresee……DROP OUT OF SCHOOL AND STATISTICALLY BECOME A BURDEN ON SOCIETY
What is the main reason students get poor grades? Why do they fail end-of-grade tests? Why do they drop out? Why do they graduate high school functionally illiterate? The shortest, simplest answer is, at some point THEY GOT BEHIND. Once behind they could not catch up and as they moved on to more complex material in the next grade they got even further behind.
One simple explanation for why they got behind is a lack of specific achievement standards in schools. The truth; organizations without standards are failed organizations. Our current education organization is a pathetically failed organization. A simple fix is coming later on.
If you look at enough of the NAEP proficiency test results one thing will jump off the page. That is, if the proficiency levels are bad in 4th grade they are going to be worse in 8th grade and too often also worse from 8th to 12th.
Once behind, grades continue to get worse, students get frustrated, harassed, ridiculed and get to the point that dropping out looks like a good solution and put school in the rear-view mirror.
Historical precedent: Following the Vietnam War the US Army lost its way for a short period of time. Leadership and readiness were in question. Every honest evaluation indicated the Army was not as good as it should/could/must be. Through the use of, and emphasis on, carefully defined standards for every individual as well as collective standards for every leader at every level from a team to a corps, the Army clearly defined the end-state for every individual and unit on a specified time line. It is very easy to compare the US Army of 1975, in size and importance, to the nation’s education system today. It took an all-encompassing campaign and a generation to fix the Army but the achieved end state was a masterpiece.
The campaign to fix the Army in the 1970’s and 80’s was successful because the identification of, and emphasis on, standards was underpinned by total adherence to the character trait of accountability. Every individual soldier and every leader was held accountable for being able to perform every assigned task to a defined standard. No different than what we can foresee for students, teachers, Principals, Superintendents, and parents in the United States Educational Organization.
Applying standards and accountability to education makes the teaching game-plan simple to define. It begins with the identification of an end state standard for a particular time period. For example, there should be a standard for the end of first semester fourth grade math. Given that standard the teacher will then develop a week-by-week lesson plan to achieve that end standard with every student. Teach to a standard, then test. Teach to the next level, then test again. And so it goes week after week for 13 years, K-12. The concept is simple and there will be no need for hundreds of pages of regulations, frequent recurring reports, no need for legions of bureaucrats providing oversight and requirements for national testing.
How do we establish the standards? It is not difficult; it can be done quickly and does not require any bureaucrats, regulations or tax dollars to do it. Here are the steps to take, for example at the State level, led by the Governor.
The governor will set up a one-month session during Phase 1 of the campaign. He will invite selected teachers and Principals to a working session to establish education standards.
- On day one there will be a meeting of three experienced outstanding Kindergarten teachers and three equally outstanding elementary school Principles. Their task is to define what every Kindergarten student should achieve by school year end; that is, the end state standard. Having done that, they will then outline, in general terms, what to achieve during each of the six-week intervals on the way to the end state. That’s it, they are done. The kindergarten standards are set. Every elementary school Principal and kindergarten teacher in the state will then work to achieve that standard.
- Three especially selected first-grade teachers and three elementary Principles will have set in and observed the day-one session with the kindergarten teachers and will have a clear understanding of what the students will have achieved upon graduation from kindergarten. Then on day two, they will follow the same scenario to define the standards for end of year, first grade.
- This scenario will be repeated through grade five so that in just six days the elementary standards can be set for K-5.
- The middle school standards for individual subjects (math, science, English, history, etc.) will be worked the same way, each beginning by understanding the end state from the previous grade.
- The standards for high school will be determined using the same procedures.
- This work should be easily accomplished within 4-6 weeks. Contrast this with a scenario if the federal or state Department of Education was tasked to define the standards. There would undoubtedly be a contract let for a comprehensive multi-year study that would cost tens of millions of dollars and would result in a thousand-page document of bureaucratic nonsense. That is just the way big government does business, making them habitually part of the problem rather than part of the solution.
- In all likelihood, this standards selection process will need to be repeated in two or three years. The reason is that when students of all ages are subjected, day-in and day-out, to character training and discussion of commitment, confidence, perseverance, punctuality, responsibility and self-respect they are going to change. They will absolutely become better students. They will be more attentive. They will develop a greater appetite for knowledge. In other words, we will need to raise the bar; increase the degree of difficulty of the standards. The United States will no longer be ranked 20th, 30th or 40th in education in the world.
TEACH/TEST TECHNIQUE
In order to achieve the standards every year, every class, every teacher the teaching methodology is a simple one; teach/test, teach/test, teach/test. In any other system, how are you going to know when a student gets behind? Remember, THE SOLUTION TO THE DROP-OUT PROBLEM IS TO NOT LET STUDENTS GET BEHIND.
In the teach-then-test scenario, every Thursday should be quiz day. If a student performs poorly on the quiz, they need an immediate fix because at that point they have fallen behind and what follows during the next week’s instruction will be even more difficult to understand and the student will fall further behind. At that point the student may have just pulled onto the drop-out-of-school super highway. A student who does poorly on the Thursday quiz needs to work the weekend to catch up. That’s where changing the culture of parental involvement and student attitude fits into the equation.
The first parent/teacher conference cannot be after the first 6 or 9 weeks of class. That meeting needs to take place the week before the semester begins to lay out the “contract.” The teacher teaches and tests. The teacher informs the parents and student immediately when the student falls behind. The student and the parents have the weekend to catch up. A lazy student will soon realize that studying on weekends is a lot worse than putting forth the effort during school days. And so it goes for every teacher, every student and every parent week after week, K-12. Simple and effective. But without the verbal contract among the three, teaching to standards is just another catch phrase.
The weekly quiz regime is of course followed by more comprehensive testing at the 6 or 9-week periods and at the end of each semester. A failing student at semester’s end should enter an intense 1 or 2-week period of instruction and then be retested. Summer school for students who have fallen behind should become the norm.
LEADERSHIP IN EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS
Having competent leaders in our school system is of course very important. All great leaders have developed a skill-set over years of study, mentoring and experience. Unfortunately, many teachers rarely have the opportunity to develop these important leadership skills. It does not mean they are not good teachers but it does mean they may lack the skills to be effective when promoted into positions of leadership such as Principals or Superintendents.
There is a source for educational leaders that is being ignored. Annually the Defense Department retires thousands of men and women who have just finished 20-25 years of service, are looking for a second career and all have four things in common.
1) They are proven leaders.
2) They have years of experience teaching and training.
3) They all understand standards and have spent two decades living up to those standards.
4) And perhaps most importantly, they have served in a totally integrated inter-racial environment with an overarching value base of ACCOUNTABILITY, RESPECT AND TRUST.
What more could one ask for in a person to lead and mentor teachers and students? Every state should remove all obstacles that restrict retired military personnel from applying for and moving directly into leadership positions in our school system.
TEMPLATE BEST PRACTICES:
This concept of operations provides the basics for Home Room operations. But we all know that after implementation there will be a plethora of new good ideas. Home Rooms will have names, T-shirts and competition with other Home Rooms. Community service may become a traditional Home Room activity for high school students. Some schools will reward outstanding high school seniors by having them partner with the Home Room volunteers to teach and discuss the Character Curriculum. Some schools will use the best and brightest high school students to tutor struggling students whose parents are unable or incapable of tutoring their children. The list goes on and on and is only limited by imagination.
At some point, perhaps in the sixth grade, a Home Room student will suggest to her mates that they challenge the other Home Rooms to a grade-point-average competition. At that juncture, that school just reached the Promised Land.
Innovation has been the lifeblood of this nation since its inception. Whatever Home Room function is found to work in one community must be templated and shared. Each Governor should have a Campaign Home Room website set up to publish innovative ideas and best practices. The website will serve as the vehicle to rapidly spread the word to other school leaders.
MAXIMUM CENTRALIZED PLANNING, MAXIMUM DECENTRALIZED EXECUTION
Since the establishment of the federal Department of Education in 1979 there has been program after program passed down to the states and counties by the federal government. Additionally, every presidential candidate since then has campaigned on a pledge to improve education. It has not and will not happen as long as the process is so politicized and frequently changed. POLICY DRIVEN, TOP-DOWN SOLUTIONS OVERSEEN BY MASSES OF BUREAUCRATS HAS NOT WORKED IN THE PAST AND WILL NOT WORK GOING FORWARD.
For Campaign Home Room, centralized planning will be led by the President and Governors; details to follow. Maximum decentralized execution is from the County/City Board of Education Chairperson on down through the Superintendent to the school Principals. There is no requirement for thick pamphlets dictating rules, regulations and reporting requirements; this concept of operations is the basic plan.
Maximum centralized planning with maximum centralized regulation is a loser, especially for education. Maximum centralized planning, maximum decentralized execution is a proven model because it pushes the decision-making down closest to the point of execution.
With decentralized execution of Campaign Home Room, the local county/city populace will soon come to understand that the accountable officers, the Superintendent and the School Principals, are right there in their community and are not some nameless, faceless bureaucrat in Washington DC. The Superintendent and the local school Principal can be approached, talked to and debated. What happens next is that the Superintendents who are weak leaders and the Principals who can’t plan will be replaced by leaders who can and will deliver high school graduates in greater numbers and those who do graduate will have the cognitive skills necessary to be productive citizens.
NOW TO THE CENTRAL QUESTION, WILL THIS WORK?
That is the question that challenges every new concept of operation. There will be naysayers, organizations that cannot cope with change, a natural fear of the unknown, etc.
But what can remove that doubt is an example concept that provides the ever-valuable proof of concept. Thankfully we have one, a good one that deals specifically with the issue of character building.
THE FIRST TEE, PROOF OF CONCEPT
The First Tee is a national non-profit organization devoted to teaching their Nine Core Values (respect, honesty, integrity, sportsmanship, confidence, responsibility, perseverance, courtesy and judgment), Nine Healthy Habits all while learning and participating in the game of golf.
The First Tee Mission Statement, “We enable kids to build the strength of character that empowers them through a lifetime of new challenges. By seamlessly integrating the game of golf with a life-skills curriculum, we create learning experiences that build inner strength, self-confidence and resilience that kids can carry to everything they do.” Spending a few years with The First Tee is transformative.
The First Tee is a proven model for character development for the past 28 years and is now active in 1,300 youth-serving locations in the U.S. In so doing, The First Tee has transformed the lives of millions of students in terms of their academic achievements, their respect for their teachers and becoming model young citizens. The First Tee is a non-profit organization that relies on tens of thousands of willing and dedicated volunteers who teach values, the game of golf and most importantly do not rely at all on government or unions.
The First Tee sanctioned a four-year study in 2005 to determine the effectiveness of their character training program. In each of the four years of the study, 100% of the participating students identified school as the setting in which character training transferred positively into better school work.
When a student transfers 100% of what they understand about confidence, responsibility and perseverance into their classroom work, they do not get behind and they do not drop out.
73% of The First Tee participants were retained from year one to year four of the research. This retention rate is impressive given the average dropout rate per year is about 50% in other youth organizations.
- Year one of the study they discovered that character training impacts the lives of students quickly. They found there was a positive life skill transfer to school work (100%), a job (35%), friends (60%), activities (30%), family (85%) and sports (70%).
- Year two: After the second year The First Tee participants were compared to youth in after-school activities without a life skills curriculum. The First Tee youth scored higher than the comparison group on use of general life skills including goal-setting, taking initiative and managing their emotions, as well as on most measures of transferring life skills and demonstrating positive character traits. These differences between The First Tee youth and the comparison group were statistically significant
- Year three: 73% reported high confidence in their ability to do well academically.
- Year four: In each of the four years of the study, 100% of The First Tee participants identified school as a setting in which the character training transferred positively.
The first conclusion from the study is that character training has worked dramatically for the past 28 years. We do not need to debate whether or not the Campaign Home Room concept will be successful, we do not need a trial balloon, and we do not need billions of dollars, we just need to execute, now.
LAUNCHING CAMPAIGN HOME ROOM IN THREE PHASES
- Phase One is the beginning of Academic Excellence across the U.S. Now that President Trump has the authority to begin dismantling of the failed Department of Education the selling of Campaign Home Room could happen in the next few weeks.
The senior leader of any large organization will spend quality time early on building consensus for a long-range strategic plan. He can best do this by having all the Governors assemble in the middle of the country (Kansas City). He will explain the entire concept of operations and encourage them to look into their masses of education bureaucrat’s, regulations and huge education budgets that are not and cannot create sustained academic excellence. Explain the advantages and rewards from decentralized execution at the local levels.
- Phase Two will begin when the Governors return home and last until Phase Three which will begin during the August 2026 beginning school year.
During Phase Two the Governors will:
Sell the concept for Campaign Home Room and the resulting sustained Academic Excellence instruction to the public.
Organize and define the specific academic standards to be assigned to every end-of-year subject taught.
Phase 2 can begin August, 2025 and is one year long. During this phase the County Boards of Education, Superintendents and school Principals will undertake the detailed decentralized planning actions outlined in this Concept of Operations
Energize their State Superintendent and State Board of Education to help in decentralizing all of Campaign Home to the local Boards and Superintendents.
- Phase Three begins with school year 2026-2027,
Phase Three will be the beginning of forever-education every school day Home Room Character Training and every day Standards-based, teach/test, no student gets behind instruction in every classroom in every school in America. The ultimate successful maximum centralized planning (President Trump) and maximum decentralized execution (every classroom in America).
ACCOUNTABLE LEADERS
- PRESIDENT TRUMP will be overall lead. His responsibility is to shape the environment by bringing all the Governors on board and building consensus among all the constituencies involved throughout the nation.
- GOVERNORS will embrace the program; build consensus; clean out the bureaucrats, regulations, and wasteful spending; establish state Standards-Bases instruction specifics; and then quickly decentralize to the local Boards of Education for execution.
- THE STATE BOARDS OF EDUCATION AND SUPERINTENDENTS will actively advocate for state-wide buy-in of Campaign Home Room character training, standards-based instruction an overall culture of academic excellence.
- THE LOCAL BOARDS OF EDUCATION are an important element in the chain from President Trump to an individual classroom but can be a problem. Education is not, or at least should not be political. But is sure is in my district to its detriment. Let’s attack this problem by doing something simple. Prior to elections when printing the local ballots, make a place at the end of the ballot for “Nonaffiliated Positions” such at County Commissioner, Sheriff, Education Board positions, etc.
- COUNTY/CITY SCHOOL SUPERINTENDENTS AND SCHOOL PRINCIPALS. Now we are at the point where the rubber meets the road and in terms of accountability, we can compare what they actually do with what they are supposed to do according to their job descriptions.
- SUPERINTENDENT is the education leader at the operational level. Everything educational that happens or should happen is in his/her range of operations, control and/or authority.
We are an outsider looking in the Superintendent’s operation so we can begin with a first impression by looking at his (It’s my district and I know him) organization diagram. His job description should simply read, “Academic Excellence”. He should use that phrase in everything he says and does. He is the big teacher in a 22-school area of operations.
In dissecting an organization chart the first thing one sees is the boss’s “direct reports”. They are people he sees every day, in constant contact with, the first he goes to when there is an issue, who he leans on for advice and most importantly where his every-day priorities lie. I’m looking at the org chart; his direct reports are his deputies for Community Engagement, Budget, Human Resources, Operations, Academics and Support Services and finally Deputy Secretary.
Is his absolute, irrefutable first priority Academic Excellence? Absolutely not, he does not have time because Human Resources, Community Engagement, Budget and Operations issues are filling up his day.
You might be wondering, are the School Principals even on the org chart? Yes they are, right at the bottom of the chart with zero direct reporting path to their supposed boss, the Superintendent.
Who is at fault? First of all, the Board of Directors who should have approved the org chart in the first place. Secondly, under this new Concept of Operations the State Superintendent could easily and quickly (just a few seconds per chart) look at a collection of the 100 County Superintendents’ charts and have a chat with those whose Academic Excellence priorities are virtually nonexistent.
To achieve Academic Excellence the education leader at the operational level, the Superintendent, should have first and foremost his 22 School Principals as his “direct reports” Noted, 22 is a fairly large number of direct reports for one leader but under the circumstances wherein the subordinates all have identical job descriptions, it is certainly doable. I’m suggesting that any Superintendent who tries to send dual messages to the entire organization; one being this list of direct reports and two trying to prioritize Academic Excellence, will fail, the community will fail and worse case the kids will fail.
- PRINCIPALS are the first line leaders for academic excellence. He/she is all-in every single school day on academic excellence. His/her career lives and dies on standards-based, teach/test, instruction in every classroom, by every teacher, every school day.
For example, a math teacher is striving to have all of her 4th grade kids proficient in selected end of first semester math problems. The problem is, the principal can see she is way behind schedule in November and won’t achieve the desired/required end state. The principal is responsible for knowing this and doing something about it.
How will he know. The principal will require all of his teachers to submit lesson plans that, if adhered to, will get to the required end state. Lesson plans do not have to be daily but there can be a lesson plan for fractions during a specific two-week period, percentages and decimals during another period.
Inevitably some students will get behind. Principals must have a dynamic in-place plan that deals with getting a student caught up; with volunteer tutors for example.
A Principal who isn’t sitting in the back of a classroom for a part of every school day listening to the interchange and checking the lesson plan against what is actually being taught, isn’t responsible enough to achieve a consistent high level of Academic Excellence throughout his/her school.
The Superintendent needs to know if his/her first-line leader Principals are doing this, if they are all about Academic Excellence all day every school day.
- TEACHERS. Now we are at the point of execution. Overall, teachers are accountable for lesson plans that logically lead to the Governors’ end of period standards.
They are responsible for a constant teach/test operation that can immediately identify a student who is behind and then initiate the principal’s in-place plan for catching up.
They are responsible for establishing and maintaining a dynamic student/teacher/parent team effort.
Standards and teach/test: Standards is the only teaching method that makes complete sense because it brings together the accountability of students, teachers, parents and educational leaders. Teachers teach but the question always left hanging is, did the students “get it?” The only way to answer that question is through a continuous regimen of weekly testing. Weekly quiz/test, K-12, provides a pattern of teach/test, that requires everyone (teachers, students, parents and educational leaders) to be continuously engaged and accountable
BOTTOM LINE ON ACCOUNTABILITY
Accountability, from the President to the teacher, is the center of gravity for achieving a national culture of Academic Excellence.
Standards, students with strong character training, lesson plans, teach/test, dealing immediately with Jimmy who is behind; these are not insurmountable obstacle. This is not rocket-science; these things are not hard to plan but when less than one third of our nation’s kids are NOT proficient in math and reading, something is very wrong. We obviously do not have a viable plan in place.
DEFINING CAMPAIGN FAILURE
The four potential enemies of this campaign are politics, the not-invented-here crowd, bureaucratic oversight and impatience.
- POLITICS: If this campaign becomes a Democrat vs Republican political pawn, government intervention will take over and it will crumble and fail. Therefore, each succeeding President and Governor, in turn, must see the long-range value of this program and keep it on track without federal or state funding.
- NOT-INVENTED-HERE: In every campaign, there are those persons and organizations that believe if something was not their idea then it most certainly cannot be of much value. Defeat the not-invented-here crowd with fast action and wide-spread support for the campaign initially by President Trump and the Governors.
- BUREAUCRATIC OVERSIGHT: This is not a program that needs a mass of federal or state regulations, rules and reporting requirements. Keep Campaign Home Room in its simplest form and execute from the County/City Board of Education level down.
- IMPATIENCE: This campaign will certainly yield improvement in the first year but it must be understood that, generally speaking, this is a generational campaign. After one complete 13-year K-12 cycle, the transforming of not only this nation’s education system but of the entire nation will be astounding.
DOLLARS AND SENSE
By doing away with masses of bureaucrats at the federal and all the state levels and all of their regulations and most of their blotted budgets, we will save hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars per year.
And, most importantly, this replacement Concept of Operations that will transform the culture of America through Character Training of every school kid, and educate all of our kids with standards-based academic excellence can all be done without any new spending.
Mr. President to quote you sir, “what the hell do you have to lose?” Absolutely nothing and everything to gain.
CONCLUSIONS
- This campaign can change the nation, from the bottom up, for generations to come and it is at no cost to the taxpayers.
- Character, standards and accountability are an unbeatable combination that will keep youngsters in school until they graduate from high school with the tools to be successful at institutions of higher learning or to begin a successful civilian or military career.
- While passing through one grouping of K-12 young Americans we will have transformed the country from today’s culture of hate and blame to one of accountability, respect and trust.
- The power of the Character Curriculum results in students’ real-world development towards adulthood as illustrated by looking at the role played by the individual Character Curriculum elements:
Students who are ACCOUNTABLE do not resort to hate and blame.
Students who are steeped in COMMITMENT, CONFIDENCE, PERSEVERANCE, PUNCTUALITY and RESPONSIBILITY do not skip school, fall behind or drop out.
Students who are deeply rooted in TRUST AND RESPECT will strike down bullying and are unlikely to become racially bigoted adults. They will believe the famous words of Martin Luther King, “They will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”
Students who are COMPASSIONATE, COURTEOUS, HONORABLE, GOOD CITIZENS and demonstrate the COURAGE OF THEIR CONVICTIONS do not join street gangs.
Students who demonstrate GRATITUDE create a great first impression.
Students who practice HEALTHY HABITS will become more capable adults.
Students who are CONFIDENT in their abilities will impress their leaders and team mates.
Students who have accepted HONESTY, MORALITY and INTEGRITY as their guiding light will likely be life-long upstanding citizens.
Students who understand, live and accept a life of SELFLESS SERVICE are unlikely to become self-serving adults.
Students who have an understanding that there is a lot they don’t yet know and even part of what they believe they know might be incorrect, have the quality of HUMILITY.
Students who understand SELF-RESPECT recognize that they are now better than they used to be and can be counted on in times of temptation because they are MORALLY dependable.
Students with this value base are more likely to exercise good JUDGMENT and become great LEADERS.
Home Room will make every youngster a better student and a better person. On a day-to-day basis for K-12 students, keeping up becomes important and dropping out becomes unthinkable.
- LOOKING AT EDUCATION AS AN ORGANIZATION
Any organization that wants to be successful will have underpinnings that includes some or all of the following.
Take the long view.
Decentralized decision making and execution.
Focused accountability at the point of execution.
Racial integration that emanates from a value base of trust and respect.
A transformational culture of accountability, trust and respect.
BOTTOM LINE
What has been done for the past 45 years by the federal Department of Education (trillions of dollars spent on federal and state programs overseen by thousands of bureaucrats administering thousands of pages of rules, regulations and reporting requirements) has not worked. Education in the U.S. is not only a national disgrace, it is currently a national crisis. This can and must be changed.
Race relations: On 31 August, 2015 black and white protesters marched outside the Minnesota State Fair Grounds. Their chant, “Black lives matter, pigs in a blanket, fry ‘em like bacon.” At other locations, “What do we want? Dead Cops; when do we want them? Now.” This is not what America has been about for most of its history, but it does represent some recent history.
Just for a moment imagine, across this country, 50 million K-12 youngsters in 2.5 million Home Room classes at 8 o’clock every school morning in every school in America standing before the flag, repeating the Pledge of Allegiance and then being mentored by 2.4 million patriots on the subject of character. Campaign Home Room is within the art of the possible and “we the people”, not we the government, can make it happen and transform America.
If goodness, and hence greatness, is to be regained for this country, it will be accomplished one person at a time through character education “We the people”, those first three important words of the U.S. Constitution, we the people have to start over. We have to begin with the kids; little kids. And “we the people” have to work it hard for a generation from the bottom up.
TWO FINAL THOUGHTS
This concept is valid; however, that does not mean all 50 states or all of the county/city boards of education are going to establish academic standards and sign up for Campaign Home Room the first year. Some Governors initially will see this as a Republican issue, politicize it and decline to participate. Initially, some Boards of Education will shy away from change out of fear or ignorance, and they will opt out. Some Superintendents and Principals, initially because they are incompetent, will make a token effort towards Academic Excellence dominance, fail and declare the concepts invalid.
But education is an issue near and dear to the hearts of the millions of parents who have a student in the household. Conversations among family and friends across county and state lines frequently contain questions like: “How are the kids doing in school?” “How are the schools in your area?” “Do the kids have good teachers?”
These conversations will take place millions of times per year and they will be between families whose children are beginning each school day with a dose of character education and those who are not. Character education has an immediate, definable, positive impact on children; particularly on their school work; attitude, perseverance, attention, courtesy and accountability.
The “have” parents will begin to use the word, “transformational” when describing their kids’ educational environment. The “have not” parents will begin to ask, “Why don’t our schools have character education and standards-based academic excellence?” And when they do begin to ask the hard questions, they will not be addressing some nameless bureaucrat in Washington or at their State Capital, they will look to the Superintendent, their kids’ Principal, the Education Board members they voted for and the Governor they elected. Social media will move character education through the nation’s conscience like a raging wild fire.
The positive changes in student behavior resulting directly from character education will manifest themselves early and profoundly. Within a couple years after phase three of Campaign Home Room is initiated, the bottom-up pressure will mount and eventually the whole country will be on board.
Put this mission statement on the front door of every school in the country:
OUR MISSION IS TO PROVIDE A SAFE AND SECURE ENVIRONMENT IN WHICH TO ACHIEVE ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE FOR EVERY STUDENT.
Marvin L. Covault, Lt Gen US Army, retired, is the author of two books, Vision to Execution and Fix the Systems, Transform America as well as the author of a blog, WeThePeopleSpeaking.com