By Jennifer Hiller
Advertiser Education Writer

With the federal No Child Left Behind law pressuring schools to make dramatic improvements on standardized test score performance in the next several years, 'Aiea High School Principal Mike Tokioka is concerned with a different kind of measure: What happened at his school last week?

He's peering at an index and frowning.

Even though Tokioka's index tells him that he averaged 130 percent overall on his campus goals, he's not happy with the amount of classroom visits he's making. And he doesn't like the number of tardies on campus.

Tokioka is six weeks into The Hawai'i Educational Performance System, a business-model program for schools.

Schools tally data on indicators that they have chosen as influencing student performance. 'Aiea High tracks measures such as tardies, discipline and the number of times each week that Tokioka spends observing a class for at least 20 minutes.

"My goal is to get the tardies down to zero, of course," Tokioka said. "The goal isn't to look good on the index. If I wanted to make myself look good, my goal for classroom visits would be one and tardies would be 1,000. There's no point of that."

The Hawai'i Educational Performance System was initiated by Mark Hunter, a Tampa-based banker and school volunteer, and state Rep. Mark Takai, D-34th (Waimalu, Newtown, Pearl City), who met Hunter at an education conference and asked him to work with some Hawai'i schools.

Hunter likens the system to a sports team looking at its statistics during the game instead of afterward.

Schools send him their weekly data every Friday, and by Monday he e-mails them a report on how their campus is doing. The weekly results are compared against the school's goals in much the same way a business would look at daily or weekly receipts. Schools know immediately which areas are problems or successes, and can change their focus or procedures to keep improving.

Hunter comes to Hawai'i several times a year — at his own expense — to meet with school officials and help them retool their goals.

His efforts earned him a governor's award for outstanding service in education a few weeks ago.

Hunter says the program is simple. He and Takai say it makes more sense to break things into weekly chunks than to look at the long-term goal, which, for most schools, is their performance on a yearly standardized test. Good performance on a weekly basis means schools will likely do better on the yearly tests, they say.

'Aiea High is one of several Hawai'i schools that have gotten involved in the project this school year.

The free program also was pitched this week to all schools on Moloka'i, and last week to schools as far apart as Maui's Hana High and Elementary and O'ahu's Lehua Elementary.

"Schools are in a high-stakes ballgame," Takai said. "The problem is that they don't have a game plan, or that there's one game a year."

Tokioka and other principals hope that by focusing on the daily and weekly details — from reducing tardies to increasing the amount of time they spend in the classroom — that their school's yearly performance will improve, too.

Then the idea behind No Child Left Behind won't be so overwhelming.

Reach Jennifer hiller at jhiller@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8084.