Posted on: Tuesday, August 20, 2002

EDITORIAL
Education 'reform' is more than governance

In this political season, it is common to hear candidates offer "cures" for what ails our public education system. Usually, the cure focuses on governance and administration. That is, there are proposals to break up the single statewide school system, to give local schools or school complexes autonomy and the like.

What is less often discussed is the more difficult challenge of classroom learning — actually conveying knowledge and education to children.

This is a challenge that will exist no matter what governance system we create or what ratio of bureaucrat to teacher we achieve.

All this was driven home in a Sunday story by Education Writer Jennifer Hiller, who reported that more than half of all public school children bring at least one form of educational disadvantage with them into the classroom.

More than half.

That means that more than half the students in any classroom are less than fully prepared to learn, either because they lack English language skills, have special-education needs or come from poverty backgrounds.

Bringing these students up to speed is an absolute obligation of the public school system, but it comes at a cost. Services to these youngsters are generally much more expensive than teaching ready-to learn students. That means resources that might otherwise be directed at upgrading the overall quality of public education are drained away at this necessary but difficult task.

Hawai'i knows how to educate children who enter school out of poverty, unable to speak English or otherwise disadvantaged. Many of these students catch up with their peers and go on to great success.

But the work is not easy. As the political debate over public education continues this year, candidates should be pressed to offer more than yet another way to organize the way in which are schools are managed.

They must be ready to say, in concrete terms, how they would help our teachers in the classroom, where the real challenge of public education awaits.