Origin of HSe4Metrics
Founded in 2000
The genesis of what would become the HSe4Metrics platform innovation dates to 1974, when General Electric asked Vernon A. Baker Jr. to volunteer to work with parents and K–12 students.
Baker—an industrial engineer—continued meeting with parents of K–12 students and younger learners for decades. In April 2000, he founded the first iteration of HSe4Metrics, an online, free-access platform designed to support and elevate K–12 student performance nationwide.
The essence of the HSe4Metrics platform is entrepreneurial—with the support of ordinary parents. This explainer site keeps the use of bureaucratic and ubiquitous education-program acronyms to a minimum, with exceptions including the frequently used National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).
From the outset, the platform was intended to be collaborative, with parents playing active roles. The platform’s final name would be determined later, perhaps by a funding sponsor.
At the time of the 2000 founding, Baker was leading his own residential development firm
Activities included acquiring land for subdivisions, developing it, and installing roads and infrastructure—primarily in the Richmond, Virginia region, while expanding into more distant counties.
An entrepreneurial solution
In an unrelated field—K-12 student performance—Baker had long been working with parents on a societal innovation intended to transform K-12 student performance. The objective was a solution that would leave America’s teachers and the K-12 system free to teach. That solution would come to be known as the HSe4Metrics platform.
Although it was a busy time, Baker continued—as he had for decades—to informally interview parents of K–12 students and younger children.
Even before the formal HSe4Metrics founding in 2000 came a new concern: the potential for a nationwide movement toward computers in the classroom. Parents became increasingly concerned that teachers might be left with less time to teach core material. Instead, these parents believed that a fully separate and independent venue—outside the K–12 classroom—was the place for such computer- and internet-based activity. Precious traditional teaching time in the classroom must remain sacrosanct.
Having been involved with the HSe4Metrics platform innovation for years, representatives of these parents met with the DOE, just down the hall from the Secretary, to present their K–12 student performance concerns—and the HSe4Metrics platform as a computer-based, increasingly online, outside-the-classroom solution.
(However, this meeting was well before the launch of Facebook, which would dramatically demonstrate the online power of social media—the same mass-participation phenomenon HSe4Metrics explained to harness K–12 student performance. Facebook simply removed any further need to explain the term “social media” or its power.)
Harness it
At the DOE meeting, despite not being able to convince the official about the potential power of social media and the urgent need to harness it for K-12 student performance, parents then presented the HSe4Metrics platform operation in detail, and presented assurances and core requests that they had for the platform:
- Free access for all. To ensure that no family is left behind, the platform must remain free-access at all times—regardless of its substantial implementation, testing, and operational costs.
- Active parental involvement. Parents must have the right to personally and actively participate in the platform’s operations in real time—as the platform is designed to enable.
- A lifeline for K–12 performance. The platform must serve as a lifeline for student performance—regardless of where a student’s school ranks on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scale.
- Increase the minimum threshold goal for the HSe4Metrics platform. Minimum NAEP proficiency should not be viewed by anyone as the platform’s aspirational endpoint. Regarding NAEP assessments, the minimum threshold goal for HSe4Metrics should be set substantially higher—potentially at the top NAEP decile. The higher threshold would support a broader system of hard-number metrics. (Subject to implementation and testing, future empirical evidence may confirm that such performance is achievable for perhaps 80% to 90% or more of the nation’s K–12 students when supported—fully independent and in parallel—by the HSe4Metrics platform throughout the K–12 years and earlier.)
- Independent. The platform must be fully independent from the public K–12 school system. The school system could teach exactly as in the past. In parallel, and as a potentially transformative platform for K–12 schooling nationwide, the HSe4Metrics platform would provide a fully independent, computer- and internet-based platform—as parents presented to the DOE official.
- Hard numbers. No guessing. No speculation. K–12 student performance results across a wide range of metrics must be continuously verified by hard numbers—both at scale and at the individual student level.
The highest performers and the lowest
Fundamental to the platform: It is not just about the lowest performers. Without an innovation such as the HSe4Metrics platform, even the highest-performing students may leave much of their potential on the table during their K–12 years—a strategic period that can never be replaced.
- The opportunity could also be offered to be exciting for the U.S. Department of Education. Through sponsorship, the DOE could lead—and potentially become the national hero HSe4Metrics believes it was always meant to be.
- And the opportunity could be transformative for the financial metrics of a major corporation acting as the HSe4Metrics sponsor. As a function of the platform’s success, measured by hard-number metrics and witnessed by parents, the sponsorship could generate extraordinary public appreciation, customer loyalty, and financial value for the corporate sponsor—translation: potential record-setting results for the corporation and its shareholders. (Click Sponsor.)
Vernon Baker has personally funded all platform-related costs, accepting no compensation or outside contributions. (An exception: A U.S. law firm, well within the nation’s top 100 as ranked by Vault, is providing pro bono assistance with the potential conversion of HSe4Metrics into a private foundation. HSe4Metrics is currently delaying the conversion as it awaits a federal agency determination regarding whether such a conversion would be necessary, whereas a commercial sponsor might prefer the current organizational structure.)
Major funding
The HSe4Metrics roadblock: major funding. Perhaps a bargain on a federal or giant-corporate scale, the funding required for platform implementation, testing, and cloud costs is nevertheless astronomically greater than a lone citizen’s budget (see “The cost of the HSe4Metrics platform” below). This funding requirement has led Baker, parents, and volunteers—primarily a parent-led effort—to reach out to federal agencies, education and political leaders, and major publicly traded corporations, seeking sponsorship or help securing a sponsor for the free-access platform innovation.
Twenty-six years since its founding, funding for the HSe4Metrics platform innovation has not been secured. The purpose of this explainer website—with Baker shown in a homepage slide with a happy member of the alpha generation (perhaps too late for generation Z), is to help secure funding. Baker remains ready to implement and test the HSe4Metrics innovation.
Silence
In the early 2000s, HSe4Metrics presented to the U.S. Department of Education—to an official several doors down the hall from the Secretary. HSe4Metrics needed support, and its parents believed the nation needed a new approach to K–12 student performance. But following the presentation, HSe4Metrics heard nothing more from the DOE.
In that silence, by the mid-2000s, relentless and astonishing advances in computers and the internet were engulfing much of daily life in America. In K–12 education, some parents watched this technological transformation with skepticism. They worried that schools might increasingly divert students’ classroom time from mastering core K–12 fundamentals to computer- and internet-based activities—from desktop computers and interactive whiteboards to laptops and other technologies.
Meanwhile, NAEP results were exposed by the media
NAEP continued to document what was generously described as a mixed national student-performance picture—rather than point it out as a formidable national obstacle affecting not only low-performing students, but ultimately the nation as a whole.
Softening the actual results by phrasing as mixed with statistically significant gains in some subjects and age groups misses the HSe4Metrics view that a legitimate change-agent system is needed to lift the whole of K-12 student performance. More bluntly put, small, incremental improvement may be a lifetime penalty for the vast percentage of low-performing students in that squandered cohort–and for their future families and the nation. Urgently needed instead are multipoint gains from one testing cycle to the next.
For a poorly performing student, an incremental gain may sound uplifting but in actuality is consuming another irreplaceable portion of the K–12 years with solemn future consequences. Incremental improvement is not the objective. Transformative nationwide gains are.
Points difficult for parents to convey to the DOE before the historic Facebook launch
First. Difficult to convey was the power of social media—this being before the 2004 launch of Facebook would help make “social media” a household term—or that the HSe4Metrics platform would be positioned for immediate and ubiquitous voluntary participation by the vast K–12 student demographic from day one of its launch, for reasons addressed at the parents-DOE meeting. (This HSe4Metrics explainer site presents much of the same information—yet with proprietary details intentionally limited so as not to compromise an ultimate sponsor’s investment.)
Second. Likewise conveyed: Like any true innovation, the success—or failure—of the HSe4Metrics platform would remain unknowable until it was implemented, and implementation and testing would require funding.
Third. The DOE was requested to advocate for HSe4Metrics by performing its due diligence and by asking other federal agencies, Congress, and the commercial sector to do the same.
Overview of the two K–12 cycles beginning in the early 2000s, as Congress and the DOE spent years on NCLB and ESSA—as if unaware of two developments unfolding around them: internally, the diversion of classroom time; and externally, the unharnessed strategic opportunity of social media—while HSe4Metrics parents watched in disbelief from the sidelines.
Finding a funding sponsor for the HSe4Metrics platform—a goal of parents and volunteers—is a central objective of this explainer site. (To expedite implementation and testing, Congress could fund the HSe4Metrics platform and, armed with hard-number results, subsequently consider legislative changes to the DOE.)
Platform funding must enable free access for America’s K–12 students, younger children, and families—the following costs would be borne by a funding sponsor:
- Startup and annual operations could exceed $70 million annually, plus marketing—a moderate cost relative to the vast potential benefit to the funding sponsor.
- If demand surges and success scales broadly, cloud infrastructure costs could ultimately reach billions per year—for the funding sponsor, “the higher, the better” (click the Cloud link).
The goal of the HSe4Metrics platform extends far beyond a single metric such as NAEP. A national imperative must be that all K–12 students with the capacity achieve at the top NAEP decile. With the HSe4Metrics platform—and with NAEP assessments serving as verification—a substantial portion of students currently below minimum proficiency could perform at far higher levels.
Beyond NAEP, the HSe4Metrics goal is to drive success across a wide range of hard-number metrics outcomes, building a totality of skills and performance required to thrive in modern society.
Conversely, the status quo yields unrealized potential, lower workforce productivity, and diminished national competitiveness.
For the United States, decades of underperforming K–12 outcomes are reflected not only in individual socioeconomic consequences, but also in trillions of dollars in Gross Domestic Product arguably forfeited—output that a more collaborative, more fully educated population might otherwise have generated.
Failure by parents. Many parents—try as they might—have been unable to improve their children’s K–12 performance, even in foundational reading and writing, as reflected in NAEP results. Other parents—perhaps unaware of the extent—face similar challenges across the broader range of K–12 metrics. Ultimately, it is the totality of performance that shapes lifetime outcomes.
Failure by the states. K–12 student performance across the states—on average—has long been in crisis. This reality came into sharper focus in the early 1960s, when John F. Kennedy took office. He was assassinated before he could advance a re-legislated federal hub to work with the independent states to drive K–12 student performance.
Failure by the U.S. Department of Education (DOE). Seventeen years after Kennedy’s death, the K–12 performance challenge remained unresolved. In response, the federal government created the DOE. However, the Department has struggled to drive measurable nationwide gains in student performance.
Failure by K–12 students themselves. Despite sustained efforts by parents, states, and largely administrative efforts by the DOE, a large share of students has not reached minimum NAEP proficiency.
Innovation as the solution. While innovation results are not knowable until tested, post–HSe4Metrics NAEP assessment data may confirm that in combination with the HSe4Metrics platform, this otherwise forfeited population of underperforming K–12 students possesses the innate capacity to read, write, and perform mathematics at significantly higher levels—and to participate meaningfully in a much broader range of hard-number metrics.
Funding the HSe4Metrics platform is an investment in the nation’s human capital—one that can strengthen the U.S. economy and empower all families and individuals, from the most privileged to the most marginalized.
The creation of the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) should have been a turning point—an opportunity to advance the John F. Kennedy vision to place all students, including the disenfranchised, on a stronger path to K-12 student performance success.
Instead, the DOE was established primarily as an administrative body. Rather than becoming an engine of sustained improvement in K–12 student performance, it has largely managed programs, collected data, and added layers of process and compliance—with substantial spending but limited, uneven gains in nationwide K–12 outcomes.
The Department’s founding legislation can be rewritten.
In the hands of Congress—acting on a bipartisan basis—and a receptive president, the U.S. Department of Education (click the link) can be restructured to serve as a change agent for national K–12 student performance. The Department has that potential.
The dual focus of this explainer site is to re-legislate the DOE—centered on innovation—and, potentially, to implement the free-access HSe4Metrics platform.
The HSe4Metrics platform—at a relatively low initial cost in the range of $70 million, before cloud costs scale—can serve as the DOE’s first major innovation effort.
One minute, 50 seconds followed by 18 seconds directed to parents
A two-minute video provided by a volunteer—highly recommended by parents
Early brain development. Infancy and the years before kindergarten represent a once-in-a-lifetime period of brain development. How do external stimuli shape foundational traits like intellectual energy and cognitive capacity?
The bottom 50%. For decades, as if destined from birth, half of K–12 students fall to the NAEP bottom. HSe4Metrics’ free-access online platform offers a societal innovation to rewrite that future—unlocking a human capital gold rush for the United States.
The top 10%. NAEP is far from the only key metric. Even the top 10% of students risk falling short of their full K–12—and lifetime—potential.
Students in the middle. With the HSe4Metrics platform, students between the top 10% and the bottom 50% could rise to compete with the top performers.
Key code 210