Vernon A. Baker Jr founded HSeverywhere.com, Inc. (better known as HSe4Metrics or HSe), registering it with the Commonwealth of Virginia State Corporation Commission (the SCC) on April 18, 2000, after years of working with parents.
24 years later, on August 22, 2024, HSe4Metrics became a nonprofit 501(c)(3).
Vernon Baker
During the HSe4Metrics founding.
During the founding of the HSe4Metrics organization in 2000, Vernon Baker, an engineer, was developing (as the owner) residential subdivisions in counties abutting Richmond, Virginia, and was launching other types of residential development projects in two distant Virginia counties.
Simultaneously, Baker began to meet with parents of K-12-age students (and the parents of kids years before kindergarten age), to discuss the K-12 project referred to today as the HSe4Metrics social media app.
Parents of pre-K-12 students (and younger kids) quickly recognized the HSe social media app as a potential lifeline for their children’s performance during the K-12 years, regardless of where their kids and their schools found themselves on the NAEP scale, whether the highest in the nation or the lowest.
Parents were adamant that there was no young person who did not stand to profoundly benefit from the free-access HSe4Metrics social media app.
However, the startling roadblock was finding a funding source for the web app.
Yes, 50% of the nation’s K-12 students could not read, write, or do math, but finding funding for the HSe social media app was far more difficult than funding a basic multimillion-dollar subdivision development.
Another issue: Baker’s time to seek funding for the web app was curtailed by his real estate development obligations.
Volunteers and parents took over the task of seeking funding.
Although banks would readily loan money to Baker for real estate developments, they appeared to have a zero comfort level and no interest in a K-12 innovation or in K-12 discussions about U.S. students. Moreover, bankers quickly determined that the web app was free-access and not intended to make a penny from its users; it thus had no financial engine. (This was before social media apps such as Facebook became a public phenomenon.)
Putting banks aside, parents and volunteers decided on a more likely source to fund the HSe social media app: publicly-traded, top-ranking corporations. Any such giant corporation could apply to be the funding sponsor of the HSe4Metrics social media app. (Stressing “innovation,” Jamie Dimon 20 years later would describe corporate responsibility as a societal-good obligation to bring major societal advances via innovation.) Only true innovation, he explained to his fellow corporations, had the power to expedite instances of sudden societal advances that otherwise incrementally might take decades. He urged Corporate America to find an innovation AND THEN BE WILLING TO TAKE THE RISK TO IMPLEMENT IT.)
Parents and HSe4Metrics volunteers were being turned away by Corporate America as if without a second thought beginning two decades before Dimon’s letter.
24 (lost) years rolled by for K-12 students.
They completed their K-12 years unable to read, write, or do math.
From HSe4metrics’s April 2000 founding until the end of the 2023-2024 school year, 50% of all K-12 students graduated from high school unable to read, write, or do math at minimum NAEP proficiency. (Congress had passed the NAEP Act in 1969.)
That’s two 12-year cycles of the first through the twelfth grades—a cruel misuse of human capital. (The 2024-2025 school year is expected to be a repeat.)
NAEP and Big Media told the story over and over during those devastating 24 years NAPE results were published. Every two years, upon seeing the latest, sickening NAEP results, Big Media expressed shock and demanded accountability. But neither rhetorical response nor additional government programs ever led to improvement in NAEP results (other than perhaps an occasional blip that did not last, or perhaps great excitement about a slight increase within the margin of error.)
Only powerful year after year of multipoint jumps in NAEP results would end the tragedy. The nation got nothing. At the end of those 24 years, 50% of all high school graduates were unable to read, write, or do math at NAEP proficiency.
An early overlap and a fateful decision.
- The No Child Left Behind Act was enacted by Congress in 2001 and signed into law by President George W. Bush on January 8, 2002. Well before Bush’s 2002 signature, HSe4Metrics had been founded and working with parents years before the founding.
- With that background, and upon reviewing the No Child Left Behind Act, HSe4Metrics pleaded with the U.S. Department of Education NOT to impose the NCLB footprint on the nation’s K-12 system, especially if not implemented on a limited and controlled phase-in basis.
- Unlike the unobtrusive and independent HSe4Metrics social media app, NCLB portended the possibility of chaotic disruption to the nation’s K-12 system.
However, HSe4Metrics’ early-2000s messages to the U.S. Department of Education to postpone NCLB were discounted.
- NCLB was implemented. Across the nation K-12 learning disruption began.
- At the end of the roughly 13-year NCLB fiasco that ensued, 50% of K-12 graduates still could not read, write, or do math at minimum NAEP proficiency.
- Ultimately, NCLB was replaced by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which essentially returned to the status before NCLB.
Now for the biggest showstopper!
The U.S. public K-12 education system is already the best in the world. It is a WINDFALL OPPORTUNITY and from the third-party perspective of other countries is a motivating reason for families across the world to move to the U.S.!
True, before families arrive in the U.S., they tend to pre-select communities where a K-12 school is exceptional—on the other hand, it’s no secret to them that within the SAME community (and therefore the SAME public K-12 system), there may be a school that is a top national performer and another whose students overwhelmingly fail to achieve minimum NAEP proficiency.
The issue is capitalization rate.
- The K-12 school system itself (including its amazing teachers) is a windfall opportunity that generates top-performing K-12 graduates across the nation.
- HOWEVER, THE CAPITALIZATION RATE FOR THE STUDENTS, AS NOTED, IS THE ISSUE, EVEN FOR SCHOOLS IN THE SAME COMMUNITY SHARING THE SAME SCHOOL BOARD AND ADMINISTRATOR.
- Whereas the top-performing school is fed primarily by a well-prepared incoming pool of students, the lower-performing school is not.
- The difference is the cap rate.
- The student body at the under-performing school demonstrates a hideous cap rate of lost opportunity. Those students are missing the public K-12 education windfall. Cap rate is the only real difference; otherwise, the treasure trove of students’ and their inherent and unique abilities may be much the same at the two schools. (This situation cannot be blamed on teachers or the quality of teachers. Some of the best teachers, upon seeing the essence of the cap rate results—although cap rate may be a term that they may never considered in this context—may have opted out, no matter how much those teachers may have wanted to be there and make a difference.)
Potential sponsors: In supporting the U.S. K-12 system, and its students, parents, and teachers, do your due diligence to determine your sponsorship interest.
- Is there a reasonable prospect that the web app will help 10s upon 10s of millions of K-12-age young people achieve hard-number metrics results performance that they would not have otherwise?
- Is the annual cost to support the web app a reasonable societal investment for your company and your shareholders?
- If doubling as a marketing strategy, is the $30 to $40 million annual operations cost in the realm of a marketing strategy? What about in terms of ROI?
As they witnessed the tragedy of NCLB (left to do damage for 13 years), heroic HSe4Metrics volunteers continued to seek a corporate sponsor for the HSe social media app.
However, not trained for the task, the intrepid volunteers and parents lacked the background, network of contacts, and experience to connect with decision-makers at those massive, bureaucratic organizations.
A new strategy was needed for contacting America’s giant corporations: Hire a presentation team to meet with the nation’s largest corporations to find a HSe4Metrics social media app sponsor.
2024 strategy change:
Convert HSe4Metrics to a 501(c)(3), do a limited fundraising campaign, and hire a professional presentation team.
(One of the nation’s top-100 law firms did the 501(c)(3) conversion pro bono.)
Snap your fingers and donate to help hire the presentation team.
In considering making a donation,
here is a brief video that parents and students
invite you to watch.
A quick 13-second video: "Now it's our turn."
- YOUR limited role: Please review this HSe website; then, if you agree, please donate.
- Past efforts by HSe volunteers and parents to contact Corporate America and government agencies were easily brushed aside.
- The dynamic has changed: With this 501(c)(3) fundraising effort, YOU can snap your fingers and donate to hire a professional presentation team composed of trained experts to make presentations to Corporate America and perhaps to such agencies such as the U.S. Department of Education and the National Institutes of Health.
End date for the limited fundraising goal.
- At the moment, without the help of donors like YOU, all that the HSe4Metrics social media app can do is blink (like the HSe logo to the left).
- America’s K-12 young people and kids years before kindergarten desperately need the free-access HSe social media app. Let’s make it happen.
- With YOUR donations, an all-star presentation team will be hired to help procure a sponsor.
- To hire and pay the costs of the presentation team, the target amount of this limited fundraising campaign is $700,000.
- If $700,000 proves to be insufficient, HSe4Metrics may choose to end the campaign or extend it.
- This website will provide progress updates.
- Only one sponsor acceptable to HSe4Metrics will be selected.
- In safeguarding the disposition of 501(c)(3) donations, the donations are subject to Federal law and the Virginia State Corporation Commission.