Societal innovation has the power to drive breathtaking, rapid change.
The opposite is the slow, barely measurable change that, for decades, has left tens of millions of young people in K-12 unable to reach minimum NAEP proficiency in reading, writing, and math.
This K-12 disaster repeats itself in the United States every year.
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Nonetheless, U.S. public K–12 education is arguably the best in the world—a windfall in the eyes of the world.
The public K-12-education “windfall” awaits the little girl shown chasing the balloon. While this powerful windfall is a key driver of quality of life and socioeconomic success, it’s far from enough. After all, 50% of all U.S. K-12 students cannot read, write, or do math at minimum NAEP proficiency.
On the other hand, 50% of all K–12–age young people in the United States ride the windfall to advantage, achieving widely varying levels of success. Even that upper 50%, however, is capable of far greater performance, beginning during their K–12 years.
What can be done to help the beautiful young girl with the balloon not only avoid the fate of the struggling 50% but also excel?
For the tormented NAEP 50%—the "have-nots"—the windfall has never worked for them, as tens of millions of K–12-age young people sink to the bottom.
National wealth has been deprived of the socioeconomic potential of this immense cohort of human capital—a loss that could easily total trillions.
The solution lies in bold societal innovation.
In contrast, Big Government initiatives like the ill-conceived and disastrous No Child Left Behind Act have failed to provide any real answers. NCLB undermined K-12 student performance for a decade, discouraged teachers, and squandered hundreds of billions of dollars at the local, state, and federal levels. And as for NCLB’s measurable results? There are none.
Corporate America can come to the rescue. A societal innovation that calls for publicly traded corporations to do their due diligence and consider sponsorship is the HSe4Metrics K-12 platform.
Innovation that is not implemented holds no value.
As Jamie Dimon emphasizes, there must be the courage to test societal innovation, but the only true test is through implementation. Whether the cost is $30 million or $300 million, the process of implementation and operation can be expensive (and in the case of CEO Jamie Dimon, think $30 billion).
Dimon advocates for action; he advocates for implementation.
Hard-number results.
The HSe4Metrics K-12 platform is a societal innovation, not yet implemented and tested, designed to significantly improve the hard-number metrics performance of the ill-fated 50% of U.S. K-12 students highlighted by NAEP, and to repeat the process across a wide range of other K-12 metrics.
Further, of landmark importance, the K-12 platform promises to bring the same relative improvement to the cohorts above the bottom 50% and well into the top 10%.