In my school district, the School Superintendent has just resigned. The Board of Education is now charged with appointing an interim leader and then searching for a permanent replacement. I prepared a memo to the Board members outlining a new and different concept of operations for the superintendent selection process. The data and description of current operations in the memo are real; the name and location of my school district is not; call it Alfa County School System. The memorandum I sent out is as follows.
DATE: 5 December, 2025
MEMORANDUM FOR: Alfa County Board of Education members
SUBJECT: Selection process for a new Superintendent of Schools
PART ONE, THE PROBLEM
“Education is the wellspring from which a nation ascends … or the quagmire into which it sinks. Education is everything.” Michael Russell
The purpose of this memorandum is to suggest a different methodology for selection of a new permanent Alfa County Superintendent of Schools. The content is a dramatic change from the norm.
Academia defined: Webster, “The life, community, or world of teachers, schools and education.” Cambridge Dictionary, “The part of society that is connected with studying and thinking or the activity or the activity or job of studying.”
However one defines academia, my going-in position is that presently, throughout the United States academia is a failed institution.
FACTS BEARING ON THE PROBLEM:
In 2025 a Gallop poll reported that 73% of Americans are dissatisfied with K-12 education results.
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 ACADEMIA 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.
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:
A stunning report published 12 November 2025 by the University of California San Diego, during placement testing found that on math proficiency 61% could not round 374,518 to the nearest one hundred. Rounding is typically taught in 3rd grade.
Providence, RI: Only 5% of eighth graders are proficient in math.
Newark, NJ: 21% proficiency in math.
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.
From NAEP 2022 testing, 68% of North Carolina’s 4th-graders were not proficient in reading
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.
HOW ARE ALFA COUNTY SCHOOLS DOING IN ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE?
Information taken from the 2025-2027 Alfa County Schools Strategic Plan:
“Context ranking for composite Grade Level Proficiency, Alfa County is in 10th place in the State.” Well, 10th place in the state sounds OK, but………In Alfa County schools,
“3rd grade reading Grade Level Proficiency, 58.2%”.
“10th Grade Level Proficiency, 66%.”
“Overall composite Grade Level Proficiency, 62.4%.”
“Math Grade Level Proficiency, 61.4%.”
These few facts beg the question, what are the proficiency levels in other subjects and in all grades in Alfa County schools?
THIS IS OVERALL A PATHETIC ALFA COUNTY SCHOOL PERFORMANCE. This begs another question, are we going to be satisfied with the usual concept for selecting a new Superintendent?
Habitually the Superintendent “selection process” will consist of pulling together a short list of candidates form the academic community, study their training, qualifications, etc. followed by interviews and then make a selection
PART TWO, A SOLUTION?
Whatever process is utilized what are the key elements to look at? For example, a proven leader, an experienced planner, an understanding of organizational culture, standards-based daily operations and a teach/test approach to teaching.
A LEADER DEFINED:
My definition, “A leader is someone who is taking the organization elsewhere.” Because, “an organization must change or die.” Because, “Change is inevitable, progress is optional.”
And: “Being a leader is not a passive activity.”
One can research academia leader training and development all day and the word “limited” keeps showing up. In most cases there is references to “seminars, workshops and mentoring.”
Wouldn’t it be nice to find Superintendent candidates with decades of leadership training and experience?
PLANNING EXPERTISE AT ALL THREE LEVELS, FIRST-LINE LEADERS (Teachers), OPERATIONAL LEADERS (Principals), AND STRATEGIC LEVEL (Superintendent).
I cannot find any academia reference to training for planners at any of the three levels.
UNDERSTANDING THE IMPORTANCE OF CULTURE IN AN ORGANIZATION.
Culture is a powerful and pervasive FORCE in every organization. By “organization” I mean everything from a small team of individuals to the largest of organizations to even the United States as a whole. The “power” in culture can be positive or negative. The culture can be especially defined and nurtured or exist by happenstance. Culture is a force-multiplier. I have never heard any comments from anyone about the daily operational culture of the Alfa school organization.
STANDARDS-BASED OPERATIONS THROUGHOUT THE ORGANIZATION.
This implies that everything that happens in academia is a defined task and for every task there is a well-defined standard. I believe at best it is hit-and miss concept in academia.
TEACH/TEST, TEACH/TEST OPERATIONS.
It is a fact of life that some students get behind. It is also a fact that if not “fixed” they will likely get further behind and eventually hopelessly behind to the point that they give up and drop out of school by the thousands every school day. A continuously used teach/test methodology will quickly identify who needs help now. While I am certain it must exist In some schools, I cannot find any reference to this teaching methodology throughout academia.
CONCLUSIONS TO THIS POINT
A school district is a large organization with thousands of players. Alfa County School System has over 13,000 enrollment and about 1,800 staff.
Generally speaking, in the natural course of events, an individual in academia moving from teacher, to principal to consideration for selection to superintendent has received little or no training in how to lead a large organization.
There are sources other than academia to seek candidate for Alfa County School Superintendent who may be better qualified.
SHIFTING GEARS IN THIS PAPER
I’m sure you are getting the impression that I am about to suggest a complete re-do when it comes to looking for a new superintendent. You are correct. The new source you should look at is retired military officers in grades Lieutenant Colonel or Colonel.
REASONS WHY
Reason One has to do with skills to lead an organization. (I will reference U.S. Army skills simply because they are the skills I know best.)
At age 22 or 23 a Military Academy or ROTC commissioned officer attends a 3-month Basic Course to learn the skill-set for their Branch (infantry, armor, artillery, intelligence, military police, signal, logistics, aviation, etc.)
They then, as 2nd Lieutenants, move to their first assignment and become a platoon leader at the tactical level. They learn and practice leadership, teaching and planning for about 30 soldiers. Everything that happens in their upward movement over the next 2-3 decades is based purely on merit; constantly moving the best of the best upward.
As Captains, a selected number will command and lead a company of over 100 soldiers. They again will lead, teach, plan and mentor at the tactical level.
Once promoted to major, they will likely serve in various staff positions. As majors the best of the best will be selected for one-year attendance at a military Staff College to prepare to lead, teach and plan at the operational level of warfare.
Upon selection for promotion to lieutenant colonel, the very best will be selected to command a battalion; several hundred soldiers in several company size units.
Upon highly successful completion of battalion command, the best will then be selected to attend the Army War College for one year to prepare to lead, teach and plan at the strategic level.
Upon selection for promotion to Colonel, the very best will also be selected to command a brigade; 3,000 -5,000 soldiers.
That is a meritocracy snap shot of what a candidate for Superintend from the U.S. Army will have accomplished in 20 to 25 years. The best estimate of the number of colonels retiring per year is anywhere from 5-10% of the approximate 3,500 serving now (175-350 individuals).
WHAT SETS THESE COLONELS APART FROM MOST ACADEMICIANS?
ONE they have years of leadership experience at all three levels, tactical, operational and strategic. They know how to “take the organization elsewhere.” They are not overwhelmed by change; change is their norm.
Their leadership is about vision and end-state. Vision is a critical piece of leading any organization.
The Vision statement in the current Alfa County School System strategic plan is, “The First and Best Choice in education with an unwavering commitment to excellence, innovation, and ensuring the development of the leaders of tomorrow.” First, few students have a “choice” as to where they are going to school K-12. Secondly, “developing leaders” is not a viable K-12 task.
What an Army Colonel is going to bring is a more specific vision of an unwavering commitment to academic excellence in every classroom every day where every student learns every task to standard.
TWO, leaders are planners, that’s what they do. Successful planning at any level is an art and can be difficult. The first step in planning is to define the end-state. There is wisdom in an old saying, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.” A Superintendent with a military background will have years of experience as a planner at all three levels, guided by vision and end-state.
THREE, they completely understand the criticality of having a powerful, understandable, operational culture. Culture is a powerful and pervasive force in every organization. While not specifically articulated separately, what comes out of the Army’s beliefs, values, customs and traditions is a culture of ACCOUNTABILITY, TRUST AND RESPECT. It is powerful, it is talked about, it guides training, it demands honesty at every level by everyone.
Every soldier and every leader in the U.S. Army is held “accountable” every day for their ability to work every one of their tasks to standard. It is a powerful and successful culture. It directly supports mission accomplishment which defines readiness which sends a message of deterrence to all of our adversaries. Every colonel in our Army has lived it every day of their merit-based career. Powerful stuff.
FOUR, and perhaps most important, they will implant standards. THIS IS HOW ALFA SCHOOLS CAN RISE ABOVE THE CURRENT PATHETICALLY LOW PROFICIENCY IN ALL SUBJECTS. I don’t see current academia doing this. Let me describe what the U.S. Army operation is and then define how it is adaptable to every school. for every subject, every student, in every classroom every day.
Everything every soldier does is defined as a “task.” For every task there is a defined “condition” (for example doing it at night vs daytime). And for every task there is a “standard.” Tasks are defined for every grade, private through general officer, and for every specialty. That is, everyone has an MOS a Military Occupational Specialty and every soldier has a task list specifically designed for his/her MOS>
There are literally tens of thousands of Army tasks and every task has a standard. Every soldier meets the standard; some find it easy; some find it very difficult but all meet it.
Standards are the 24/7 measuring stick. There is always an answer to the question, “how are we doing?” Any organization can do this. Academia can do this. Task/Condition/Standard is a game-changer and a force multiplier.
OK, academia, where do you get a task list for every grade, every subject? It’s not difficult. The superintendent in Alfa County School System can set it up and activate it in a few weeks. The Governor could/should do it for their whole state.
An organization without standards is a failed organization. The Superintendent should pull together some teams to immediately get to work on standards for every discipline taught in their school system.
What does a “standard” look like for education? A simple example for math is that at some point every student will have memorized for immediate recall, multiplication tables from 1×1 to 12×12. And that point in time will be in the teachers’ lesson plans. For comparison, here is a portion of the North Carolin “Standard for elementary math.” Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them. 2) Reason abstractly and quantitatively. 3) Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others. 4) Model with mathematics. 5) Use appropriate tools strategically.” There is more but you get the picture. How can this type of psychobabble get translated into lesson plans that lead to specific tasks and standards and eventually to student proficiency?
The Superintendent could set up a task force for developing tasks and standards for Alfa County Schools. It could work like this:
Three outstanding kindergarten teachers and three elementary school principals meet to define the end-state of the kindergarten year of instruction. They will specify the entirety of the tasks and standards for proficiency. They will lay out the chronologic flow of tasks to be taught and a standard for each. After a couple days of work, they will identify an end state that kindergarten teachers will use to produce their lesson plans for the year. Task/Condition/Standards, it works.
Three selected first-grade teachers will have set in and observed the session with the kindergarten teachers and will have a clear understanding of what the kindergarten end state will have achieved. On the next day they will follow the same scenario to define all of the tasks and standards for end of year, first grade; again, with three 2nd grade teachers listening.
This scenario will be repeated through grade 4 so that in just a couple weeks the elementary student standards can be set for basic training, K-4. Task/Condition/Standards. Recall, NAEP reported that nationally 59% of 4th graders are currently NOT proficient in reading and 65% are NOT proficient in math.
The 5th grade, middle school and high school standards for individual subjects (math, science, English, civics, geography, history, etc.) will be worked in the same manner, each beginning by understanding the end state from the previous grade.
Throughout this exercise do not lose site of the overall objective. It is to end up with a list of specific TASKS that every teacher in every subject in every grade will use as the start point to build their lesson plans for the year. Every student to STANDARD in every task, thereby achieving the desired/required end of year success is the objective. Tasks are not set in concrete. There should be constant dialogue among teachers and the principal to add, delete, alter individual tasks/standards to improve the overall product. Task/condition/standard is a dynamic process. Army Colonels have lived this process every day for a couple of decades. “It” is what leading an organization is all about and is particularly applicable to academia.
FIVE, organizational alignment for action. A year or so ago when I first looked at the Alfa County Schools organization chart, it was a shock. An organization’s org chart tells a story. It defines relationships among key elements and leaders. Importantly it clearly articulates who are the Superintendent’s “direct reports”. It clearly identifies the Superintendent’s priorities.
Look at it from the perspective of the school principals. What they clearly see is the Superintendent, who they believed would/should be their boss, has four direct reports; Operations, Human Resources, Budget and Communications (assumed public relations).
The Superintendent has zero direct reports that relate to the mission, “Alfa County Schools will graduate students with the skills, knowledge, character, critical thinking, and education needed to become proud and successful Americans.”
In this organization chart he school principals find themselves depicted as far away as possible from the Superintendent’s box at the top. Furthermore, they will find themselves, with zero priority, lumped together with Directors and Coordinators for Exceptional Children Services, Curriculum and Instruction, Student Support Services, Special Projects, Grants and Federal Programs, Planning, and Technology all working for two Assistant Superintendents.
This demonstrates that academia leaders may be incapable of drawing a clear, unmistakable, direct relationship between mission (academic excellence) and organizational alignment.
CONCLUSIONS
The U.S. is becoming increasingly more functionally illiterate. Alfa County Schools can/should rise above this crisis.
There is so much wisdom in the old saying, “If we always do what we have always done, we will always get what we always got.”. Change or die. We have to move education to a new and better place. If you are not afraid of where Academia, in general, is headed, you haven’t been paying attention.
The above narrative and statistics are designed to do two things. One is to impress on you, the Alfa County Board of Education, 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.
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 go even further behind.
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.
“Education” is an organization. Organizations have a “product.” The product of education in the U.S. is a high school graduate who is proficient in all areas of study to the extent that they are qualified and capable of extending their education in college or to be fully competitive in the work force.
Organizational underpinnings are what someone sees and feels about an organization. Critical to any organization’s success are foundational elements such as Organizational Structure, Culture, Delegation and Empowerment, Leader Development, Organizing for Action, After-action Review, Character and Dealing with the 21st Century Environment. Understanding them and knowing how to use them are enablers for success. I know from first-hand experience, Army Colonels are steeped in all of this. Is academia equally qualified?
Change the Alfa School mission statement to simply read, “Achieve Academic Excellence in every classroom for every student every day.”
Put “Academic Excellence” on the stationary.
The first question for every single action worked by the Superintendent’s staff must be, how will this help academic excellence?
Academic excellence and the culture of accountability, trust and respect should be discussed in every Superintendent meeting.
Put a big sign on the front door of every school, Academic Excellence Here.
BOTTOM LINE
There are retiring Army Colonels out there. They are about 45 years old, looking for a challenging and rewarding second 20-year career and may be the best thing that could possibly happen to the Alfa County School System. Think about it.
Again, “If we always do what we have always done we will always get what we always got.”
This paper is not about militarizing education, it is about an alternative concept of operations as you, the Board of Education, set about looking for a new Superintendent. Perhaps begin with some new and different criteria; a candidate who is steeped in leadership, planning capabilities, first-hand understanding of the power in an organization’s culture, what tasks and standards mean to the equation for success, and organizational alignment. My sense is that none of these are academia strengths.
Respectfully,
Marv Covault