The nation’s K-12 teachers are not at fault. In fact, the U.S. public K-12 system, along with its teachers, is regarded by other top industrialized nations as the best in the world. The global community recognizes the system’s remarkable ability to prepare a diverse range of students for success in U.S. colleges and universities.

And COVID did not cause the lost 50%. NAEP assessments conducted before COVID-19 had already revealed that roughly 50% of U.S. students were unable to read, write, or perform math at grade level.

A “forever” K–12 failure by the states. NAEP shows that the states lose roughly 50% of all their K–12 students—unable to read or do math. Caveat: The states that do great on NAEP may be abysmal at cap-rate, thus jeopardizing students for a lifetime.

A “forever” K-12 failure by the federal government, which created a  new agency. Click this U.S. Department of Education link to see why it was a failure and three simple steps to fix it. 

Salvage it! As one of the federal agencies, the DOE–if fixed–is strategically positioned to be an unparalleled K–12 asset. Fix it and team is with the HSe4Metrics platform innovation. 

The U.S. Department of Education (DOE), created nearly 17 years after President Kennedy’s assassination, ignored Kennedy’s urgent call to improve nationwide K–12 student performance. Click this  John F. Kennedy link for his vision. In terms of Kennedy’s focus, the important-sounding U.S. Department of Education was “delinquent” from day one of its creation—Kennedy might have considered the DOE’s founding legislation inexcusable.

If its dramatic failure of leadership can be corrected—as urged by HSe4Metrics at this site’s U.S. Department of Education link—the DOE could quickly become a non-intrusive K-12 force multiplier for the national success of public K–12 education, including assessing and funding large-scale innovations virtually impossible for any single state, or even a coalition of states, to achieve. (HSe4Metrics would consult at no cost.)

Theoretically, any of the federal agencies—whether the DOE, the Department of Labor (DOL), or any of the 15 cabinet-level executive departments or 100-or-so independent agencies, such as the National Science Foundation—could serve as the sponsor of the HSe4Metrics platform. But other than the DOE, none would have the K–12 student performance metric as its sole focus; rather, K–12 student performance would be secondary—the makings of a fatal distraction to the mission of fixing national K-12 results.

In sum, the sole focus of the sponsoring agency should be K–12 student performance.

In fact, only innovation can make that possible. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon advocates for the pursuit of societal innovation to solve the unsolvable—innovation that serves the public good, distinct from industry-focused efforts. The HSe4Metrics platform represents such an opportunity, and results can be verified with hard-number metrics.

Keep in mind, the untapped population required for massive workforce transformation already exists—the nation’s abandoned bottom 50% of students repeatedly identified by NAEP assessments, along with those barely above minimum proficiency.

CAVEAT: IN INNOVATION, SUCCESS IS NOT GUARANTEED. As Dimon cautions, the outcomes of innovation remain “unknowable” until tested through implementation.

Because the operational, implementation, and cloud costs of the HSe4Metrics platform may be significant—even if a rounding error compared to the resulting GDP gains—and because access for students and parents to the platform must be free, a sponsor with a vested interest is needed, whether federal or corporate. The national benefit would be shared by all.

For example, if the Department of Education (DOE) were the sponsor, the Department of Labor (DOL) would stand to benefit profoundly as the HSe4Metrics innovation puts the nation on a measured, hard-number trajectory to double its homegrown workforce—a workforce sufficiently educated during K–12 to be industry-trainable for manufacturing—including precision jobs from ships to chips.

Moreover, every federal agency and top-tier corporation has an obligation to support societal innovation.

A non-violent board game, Go is played not with checkers but with a simple cupful of stones.

Whereas checkers is an aggressive game—built on attacking and destroying one’s opponent—Go is passive. The object of Go is to gradually surround an opponent and end their control—without firing a single shot.

For thousands of years in China, Go has cultivated what HSe4Metrics calls a “Go culture”—surround, take control, and repeat the process across the entire board until the game is won.

At the Go Culture link, see how this ancient mindset helps explain China’s massive naval buildup—designed not necessarily for hard warfare, but to add yet another layer to its scheme of surrounding and increasingly dominating more of the world—including, as it has openly put the world on notice, the United States.