Educational Performance Genetics (EPG) is the division of Organizational Genetics which brings the latest discoveries and developments in optimizing organizational, leader, and employee performance to the academic community. EPG empowers administrators to build and lead teams of teachers that produce extraordinary results. We empower teachers to be better and do better, and have identified a solution to the #1 problem with the American public education system – student performance.
One of the major problems facing America is its public education system. The standard by which all education systems in the world were once measured, is no longer the gold standard in education. Its inability to produce high quality and workplace ready employees is well documented. The everyday challenges public schools face are topping the evening news almost every week. Everyone is frustrated. From parents to teachers to students to administrators to employers to the government. Everyone is frustrated with the inability of America’s public education system to produce the highest quality and workplace ready young adults in the world.
What’s problem? Is it the quality of the facilities? Is it the curriculum? Is it the performance capability of our administrators or teachers? Is it compensation? Is it the shrinking budgets? Is it the lack of commitment and resources on the part of the U.S. Government? Is it the educational handcuffs that have recently been placed on teachers? What is it?
The problem is none of the above. Although all could be improved, the root cause of the problem is the quality of the raw materials the system has to work with, students. In particular there level of life management skills and emotional competencies.
In the 1940’s the United States government and Corporate America launched a series of workplace initiatives that fundamentally altered the parental programming model in America. In particular, it altered the amount of time parents and grandparents spend with their children and grandchildren.
These changes included increasing the percentage of mothers in the workplace, number of hours fathers worked and length of commute, and programs for older employees to retire and pursue the good life in second homes and active adult communities away from their children and grandchildren.
These initiatives altered the basic life management skill and emotional competency programming model in America and resulted in an increase in corporate productivity and the physical quality of life of employees. However, it also resulted in a fundamental shift in the distribution of employees with problematic, incomplete, near to complete and complete sets of life management skills and emotional competencies. This shift resulted in an increase in personal problems which impact performance and the performance of others from 15% to 20% to over 90%.
Coincidently, leaders in the relationship and family counseling community including, Phil McGraw (Dr. Phil), Dr. Laura Slazenger, and Dr. Neil Clark Warren have consistently found over 90% of problems in people’s personal life are a direct result of inadequate and/or unaligned life management skills and emotional competencies. The most significant evidence of this fact lies in the American divorce rate, which has increased from less than 20% in the 1940’s to over 50% in the 1990’s.
Today, while estimates range, the distribution of Americans in the workforce with problematic, incomplete, near to complete and complete sets of life management skills and emotional competencies is 20%, 40%, 30%, and 10%. Conversely, in the 1950’s the estimated percentages were 10%, 10%, 30% and 50%. In just 60 years, the percentage of employees with near to complete to complete sets of life management skills and emotional competencies has declined by over 50% and is continuing to do so.
The education system in America is a process, like any process, the quality of the outputs are a function of a specific set of variables; none more important than the quality of the raw materials entering a process. A company can have the best process in an industry and the best leaders, employees, technology, and environment, but if the quality of the raw material or inputs that go into that process are poor, the end product will be poor. Process quality cannot overcome poor input quality.
The American education system requires students have a near to complete set of life management skills and emotional competencies to achieve its objectives. Unfortunately, 60% of students are not equipped with this level of life management and emotional competencies. So what’s the solution?
The solution is to develop a parallel education system. A system which presents parents and grandparents with an understanding of their role in providing children life management skills and emotional competences. Creating a measurement system to identify levels of life management skills and emotional competences at the ages of 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, and 18. Develop a curriculum for all 90± categories of life management skills and emotional competencies that is specific to geographic regions and void of religious and political bias. Involve everyone in the curriculum development process. Extend the school day one hour. Offer the broadest number of classes each term. Provide students and their parents with two report cards each quarter. One for students level of academic achievement. The other for their level of life management skill and emotional competency development.
I believe in America’s public education system. I am the son of a mother who was teacher and administrator of over 30 years, two step-parents who were teachers for over 40 years, two uncles who were on the Board of Directors of the National Education Association (NEA) and a grandmother who was one of the first women in America to graduate from college in the late 1800’s. I believe the America’s public education system has the potential to produce the most successful, competent, and happy population in the world, as well as, the best workers, managers, executives, and entrepreneurs. But it will not and cannot unless it addresses and resolves the issue of declining life management skills and emotional competencies.
What Education Performance Genetics offers is simply the paradigms, programs, and tools that drive the best performing companies in the world and possible solution to what might just be the # 1 problem in America; the decline of the populations level of life management skills and emotional competencies.
I invite you to explore a free 90 minute introduction Education Performance Genetics. To schedule a presentation email me, Douglas Swallow at Doug@orggenetics.com.
Thank you for your time.
Douglas Swallow