Throughout my many careers, I have often been a teacher, a school administrator, a head coach in schools, a full-time college professor, and a head of two college departments.  

I have taught every age group from middle school through high school to colleges and universities, including teaching in public schools, high academic private schools, and private colleges and universities.

In addition, I have taught at various times in all of these grade levels from the 1980’s until the present day, which has allowed me to see the negative changes that have occurred in our educational system throughout these decades.

I have also been an academic director at a high school from 2017- 2019, where I created and operated such an innovative and effective educational program that we were chosen as one of the top 10 Super Schools in the United States.

These educational successes resulted in me being invited by the U.S. Congress in 2018 to travel from Tennessee to Washington DC, to speak on Capitol Hill with the U.S. Congress about our innovative educational programs, and to offer my advice to Congress about what America needed to do for the future of American Education.

As a college professor, I was the head of two Departments in the School of Business and Management, teaching math, business, and sport business management as a professor both in the 1980’s and in the present day.  

In addition, I have been the College Faculty Athletic Advisor where I oversaw all academic aspects of the college athletic program for all athletes in all men’s and women’s sports.  

In this capacity, I reported directly to the College President.

These many years of experience I have had at every education level have allowed me to see firsthand what America’s current educational difficulties are, and how we can solve them.

There are very few American politicians in Washington DC who have any teaching or education administration experience.  Therefore, our government has almost no one with any knowledge or experience, and so they cannot possibly understand what needs to be done to improve our American education system.

In comparison to our Washington politicians, because I have so much teaching and education administration experience at every level from middle school, to high school, to college, then I would be able to greatly improve and fix our American education system that has declined so severely in recent decades.

I have also had 22 years of experience as a head coach, which requires the same skills as teaching, with my teams winning 15 Division Championships, Conference Championships, National Championships, and European Championships.

In America, we have previously had the Number 1 education system in the world, but in recent years our education system has declined to our very low present position of 37th in the world.

America cannot be the Leader of the World if we have a 37th-ranked education system.  

We are the Greatest Country in the history of the World, and so how can we have the 37th-ranked education system?

One thing is for certain.  We are not going to continue to be the Greatest Country in the World if we do not repair, rebuild, and redevelop our education system because Our Children Are Our Future. 

Our challenge with our American Education System has several factors that we need to fix, but once again the truth and the solution lies in between the extreme viewpoints that are being pushed by politicians from both political parties, almost all of whom have no teaching background and so have no personal knowledge to base their opinions or decisions on.  

These are the Components and the Building Blocks that we need to include as we formulate Our American Education Plan:

1. We need to work very hard to improve all our schools, and we especially need to focus our efforts on improving our inner-city schools and lower income area schools because our children in those areas are not being given the opportunity to learn and excel. The inadequate education being taught at these schools in hardship areas is not preparing our American children for success in their future careers.  
2. We need to change this so that we can provide a fair and equal opportunity to our children that come from these inner-city, single parent, and lower income areas.  
3. We need to allow students and families the opportunity for school choice everywhere in our Country.  All our students and families should have the right to go to whichever school they Believe can provide them with the best and most complete Education.
4. We are going to work tremendously hard with all our Federal, State, City, County, and Local Education Departments to help to develop the most outstanding public schools that America has ever had.  However, our focused attention on making our public schools outstanding does not mean that we should deny parents and children from attending the school of their choice. 
5. Allowing school choice will create academic competition between our public schools, charter schools, and private schools.  This competition will force all our public schools to work as hard as we possibly can to improve our schools, and as hard as we can to improve our teaching and education methods. 
6. Academic competition between our schools brings about a rising tide in all our schools, and a rising tide lifts everyone.
7. Teachers and school administrators are an outstanding group of people who enter the teaching profession because they want to teach and help children and young people to reach their fullest and maximum potential.
8. Many years ago, into the 1990’s, teachers and parents worked together to help students to learn and reach their fullest potential.  Parents and teachers also worked together to help provide discipline and structure for students so that the students could develop self-discipline that would guide them through their lives.
9. As our American culture became softer in the raising of our young people in the 1990’s, such as with the advent of participation trophies instead of achievement trophies, and with parents becoming more overly protective of their children, then most parents began to no longer support teachers in the teachers’ efforts to teach and impose the necessary discipline on their children.
10. Prior to the 1990’s, a student knew that if they got into trouble with a teacher at school, then the child would be in even more trouble from their parents when they got home from school, because their parents supported the teachers and worked together with the teachers.
11. However, in the 1990’s and 2000’s this changed.  Most parents became so soft and protective in the raising of their children that the parents stopped supporting the teachers, and instead the parents began to defend their children against the teachers even when the parents’ support was not logical or rational.
12. What I found in schools during the 2000’s was that when students had parents who supported the teachers, then the students grew up with discipline and a work ethic that allowed them to become far more successful in their lives after graduation from school.  In contrast, when students had parents who were overly protective, and who always sided with their children on every issue, including against the teachers, then these students struggled when they graduated from school because they had not yet developed the level of work ethic and self-discipline that is necessary to achieve success.  
13. Therefore, students flourished when they had parents who worked in partnership with excellent teachers.
14. In the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, teachers became so frustrated with the parents who always sided with their children against the teachers, and teachers became so frustrated at how school administrators often sided with the parents just to keep the parents happy, that teachers began to see parents as the biggest obstacle in the teachers’ efforts to teach and provide discipline to their students.  As a result, a difficult and unproductive barrier built up between teachers and parents.
15. This divide between parents and teachers occurred in many locations across the United States, but less so in rural areas of America where many rural area parents continue to have a more old school discipline approach where the parents still support the teachers to some degree.  
16. As the barrier grew between teachers and parents, teachers began to try to avoid the input and conflict from parents by teachers trying to teach and make decisions for their students without communicating with parents.
17. However, although teachers are understandably frustrated by the lack of support they have been getting from many parents, it is still wrong for teachers to think they have the right to make decisions for students, instead of allowing the students’ parents to make the decisions for their children.  
18. Teachers care deeply about the children they teach, but they still need to understand that as teachers they are only going to be involved in their students’ lives for a relatively short period of time, such as for a semester, or for a year, or for four years.  However, parents will be in their children’s lives forever.  
19. When a child was one or two years old, and was not feeling well late at night, it was the parents who took care of the child and nursed the child to recover, not the teacher.  
20. Likewise, in the years to come when the student/child is having difficulties in college, or with their future marriage, or work career, or families, the parents will be the people who are there to help their child, while the teachers will have moved on to helping and caring for the next group of students in their classes.
21. Therefore, parents are with a child forever, while a teacher is only there for a very short while, and so the parent should be the person making the decisions for the child, not the teacher.  Unless, of course, there is some very major issue that has put a child at risk in the home.  However, this risk has to be a definite objectively measurable risk such as physical harm, and cannot be a subjective risk that is based upon a difference of opinion between the teacher and the parent.
22. Combining all these factors, the most important element in the solution to improve education in our American schools is the same as with all disagreements, which is finding a way to compromise in the middle.
23. In education, this means for teachers and parents to get back to respecting each other, communicating with each other, understanding each other, and supporting each other.  
24. The role of the President is to work with the schools and education departments to bring about this excellent working relationship between teachers and parents, and by doing this then our education system will greatly improve, and our young people will once again Achieve Excellence academically like America had always achieved in the past until recently.
25. A second component we need to fix in our school systems is very related to this teacher-parent divide.  The grading system in schools has become far too easy on students, and so students are not working as hard, or learning as much, as they used to learn.  This lessening of academic requirements has been caused by two primary factors.  One of these factors is the participation trophy mentality of our current culture that causes teachers and schools to want all our students to receive excellent grades, and the second factor is the desire of the teachers to keep the parents happy because teachers think that if they give a good grade to a student, then the teacher will not have any problems with or interference from the student’s parents. 
26. This obviously shows a reduction in the difficulties of our academic programs, and a weakening of our education system because if students know they can receive an A grade for doing less than A work, then they are not going to be motivated to work harder and develop more knowledge and skills.  
27. Many of our teachers and coaches have also begun to choose to act like friends with their students, instead of acting like disciplined teachers because this is easier and less work for them, and also because having less discipline in their classrooms keeps parents and students from complaining.  However, once again, the results of having less classroom discipline are decreased learning and development for our students.
28. By improving the relationships between teachers and parents, and by making a conscious effort to discontinue our participation trophy mentality, then we will create an education system where our children learn more, have improved self-discipline, are motivated to work harder, and reach higher levels of academic achievement.
29. In addition, we need to focus our attention on improving the Lives and the careers of our teachers.  
30. We need to pay our teachers more by creating ways to financially motivate them, not by just increasing their salaries a small amount every year like the current system does, but instead by rewarding teachers financially when the teachers and professors put in additional work to improve themselves.  Such as through continuing teacher education courses that further develop their teaching skills.
31. We also need to financially reward our teachers when the academic performances of their students improve, and reward our teachers again financially when their students achieve high grades on standardized tests.  
32. Teachers and professors who work hard to develop their teaching skills should be financially rewarded for their efforts, and teachers who have high-achieving students should be financially rewarded.  
33. By us providing these financial rewards, then we will be motivating our teachers to become even better teachers and professors than they currently are, which will greatly benefit our school academic standards and the academic growth of our students.
34. If we look at most career fields, the performance of a worker can be measured and rewarded, and these measurements serve as motivation for the worker to strive for excellence.  This is true no matter whether the worker is a coach, or a business owner, or a business manager, or an athlete, or a salesperson, etc.  
35. However, in education, the only direct measurements for a teacher and a professor are the grades that their students receive in class.  Since teachers and professors choose what grades to give on their own, then the teachers and professors are motivated to give better grades to their students than their students should have received because awarding good grades makes the teacher or professor appear to have done a good job at teaching the education material.
36. The teachers and professors have full control over the grades they give to their students, and so the teachers and professors are providing themselves with their only teaching performance measurement.  This is why we need to financially reward teachers whose students do well on the standardized tests, because these tests provide objective measurements, and are not subjective grades given by the teachers themselves.  
37. Our public-school teachers and professors are currently being paid almost solely based upon the number of years they have taught, and their salaries are allowed to only go up very marginally with each year that they teach.  This system is completely unfair in many ways.  
38. Why should a very inspired and great young teacher be paid far less salary than an older teacher who is just putting in time without making much effort?  Young and great teachers often cannot afford to enter the teaching profession because they would make very low salaries in their early years of teaching.  This is not fair, and it is causing our schools to lose tens of thousands of great young teachers who, if they stayed in the teaching profession, would be able to raise the standards of our education system for our students.
39. Likewise, why should a tremendous teacher who has taught for ten years, and who gives absolute maximum effort in his or her classroom for the students, be paid a lower salary than an average or below average teacher who does not put much effort in, but who has taught for fifteen years?  
40. This is not fair, and the result is that many tremendous teachers become demotivated and leave teaching because they are not being rewarded for their complete commitment and outstanding work.  
41. Therefore, our current public school education system does not reward teacher excellence, and instead only rewards longevity no matter how good or bad a teacher is.  Our teacher payment structure rewards the lowest common denominator, instead of rewarding excellence.  
42. Would it be fair if a student who did A work was given a C grade, while a student who did C or D work was given an A grade just because they were a year older?  This would not be fair for the students, and it is not fair for our teachers, either.
43. When our public-school system does not reward excellence in teaching, and instead only pays salaries based on how many years a teacher has been there, then it should not surprise anyone when many teachers decide to focus on doing just enough work to keep their jobs, just enough work so they can make a little bit more money next year than they did this year, and just enough work so they can survive enough years to receive a pension.     
44. Some teachers might think it is not fair for them to be judged by the performances of their students.  However, school coaches and college coaches are always evaluated and judged by the performances of their student/athletes, business managers are always evaluated and judged by the performances of their employees, and sales managers are always evaluated and judged by the sales performances of their employees, and so there is no reason that teachers and professors cannot be evaluated in the same way.  
45. It is correct that a great teacher, who works as hard as he or she possibly can, might occasionally have a year of low-performing students.  That happens in coaching, also. 
46. However, over a period of years, this random occurrence will balance itself out because there will also be some years when a teacher will randomly have a group of outstanding students.  
47. As a result, over a period of time the Great Teachers will prove themselves to be outstanding teachers, and these Great Teachers will become recognized for their excellent work.    
48. However, as great as teachers and professors are, the system should not allow teachers and professors to lock-in employment security by obtaining tenure.  Once they obtain tenure, then it is almost impossible for a school system or a college to dismiss them or replace them if they begin to do a bad or ineffective job.  Having tenure allows them the option to begin to slack off on their teaching without having a risk of being replaced, and this results in students not learning as much as they should.  
49. Some teachers and professors who have gained tenure also choose to begin to push their own ideologies onto students because they know how secure they are in their jobs.
50. There are many young teachers and young professors who are trying to break into the profession, and who would do a better job at teaching than some of the tenured teachers and professors.  However, there are often no available open positions for the younger teachers because the tenured teachers and professors, some of whom have lost a significant amount of their motivation to teach, still hold these positions.
51. If we are going to improve our American Education System, then we need to find ways to create more positions for these younger teachers and professors.  
52. Our Wonderful teachers and professors entered the teaching profession because they wanted to make a positive difference in the Lives of Our Young People.  
53. However, our current system, as it is, wears out many of our teachers, which causes a large number of our teachers to go into a pension survival mode.  They do not even realize they have entered this pension survival mode because most of the teachers around them are in survival mode, too.  In fact, this survival mode is so prevalent that it has become systemic in many of our school systems.  
54. I was very fortunate to work in an outstanding school system in Elizabethton, Tennessee, where our teachers and administrators worked very hard, and as a result, together we were chosen as one of the Top 10 Super Schools in the United States.  However, most school systems do not have such hard-working and dedicated teachers and administrators as we did.
55. All of us in any career field need to be motivated in order for us to be able to achieve our highest level of performance, and teachers and professors are no different than any of us.
56. Therefore, we need to adjust our educational system so that our system motivates teachers and professors to continue to strive for improved excellence, and as they strive and attain this excellence then they will receive an increased salary and increased financial benefits.
57. By making these motivational adjustments, along with improving the relationships between parents and teachers through increased Communication, better Understanding, and increased Respect, then America will once again have the Greatest Education System in the World.

It is the job of our President to create the foundation and infrastructure that will bring about these great improvements in our American Education System, and then it is the job of our President to coordinate and work with our Federal and State Education Departments, and with our Teachers’ Unions.  

We have not had a President, or a presidential candidate, who has had any experience in teaching, school administration, and coaching, and so we have not had anyone in the White House who has had the knowledge or the experience to fix the problems and create the solutions for our Education System.

Therefore, we need to either find a President as soon as possible who has this experience, or we need to choose a Vice-President or White House cabinet member who has these capabilities.

I cannot imagine any greater job than to have the opportunity to work with our Children, our Teachers, our Professors, and our School Administrators to build Our American Children Into Achieving Their Innate Greatness.

As we look at and see what needs to be done to make Our American Education System into the best in the World, we also see that there is not anyone in our current government of the United States who has the educational capabilities, or the necessary teaching and school administration knowledge, to rebuild our American Education System back to Greatness.

When Our Alliance and Our Movement gain a position in our government, then we will take the very underperforming education system that we currently have in America, and work with America’s best teachers, best education administrators, best education departments, most outstanding educational scholars, and most passionate teachers’ unions to Build For You the Greatest Education System that America has ever had, and the Greatest Education System in the World.

So that America and Our Children will again become the Greatest Leaders of Our World. 

Because Our Goal, as Always, is to LET US BUILD AN INCREDIBLE WORLD FOR OUR CHILDREN.

It is letters like this that we want all our students to be able to write about their School and Education experiences.

Nathan Watt, an exceptional award-winning soccer player and coach who came to Lees-McRae College from England, wrote the following about Smith:

    “Terry Smith quickly became not just a favorite teacher of mine, but a mentor and guide for my career aspirations.  

    As someone who struggles with confidence in sport and life in moments, Terry constantly instilled in me confidence, along with a newfound self-belief that I could achieve any of my life goals.  

    Throughout this mentorship period, I was constantly challenged to deliver high quality work and push myself to the very limit.  

    Ever since our paths crossed, Terry has been one of my biggest advocates in life and still to this day is constantly reminding me to seek the highest of goals.  

    Never in my wildest dreams would I ever have envisioned that even though I graduated from Terry’s class over seven years ago, that we would remain in contact to this day and is the only teacher to continue to go out of his way to do so.  

    This is simply testament to the character he showcased during his time as my teacher; he always went above and beyond and still delivers!

    Over the years I developed a wealth of knowledge from Terry, but most importantly about the need to remain humble, determined and hungry for success.

    As a full-time coach and youth director, I constantly utilize many of the life skills he helped instill in me, and for that I am forever grateful.”

Our Movement’s Education Plan will Lift Up All Our Students, and Lift Up Our Entire Education System, so that this kind of letter from Our Students is a regular and normal occurrence, instead of being unique and exceptional.

LET US BUILD A WORLD OF ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE,
PERSONAL PRIDE IN WHO THEY ARE,

SELF-CONFIDENCE, AND THE ACHIEVEMENT OF GREATNESS FOR ALL OF OUR CHILDREN