DOE struggles to comply with school transfer law

By Jennifer Hiller
Advertiser Education Writer

With more than 50,000 Hawai'i students qualifying to transfer to a limited number of spaces at better schools this fall, Department of Education officials face an uphill battle in meeting the new requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act.

School Superintendent Pat Hamamoto wants Hawai'i schools to be places where children want to stay. Advertiser library photo

Not only will it undo the state's current system of geographic exceptions, which relies on lotteries to determine who will get transfers if more students apply than can be accommodated on one campus, but it will bring enormous pressure on the Department of Education to improve campuses that aren't meeting academic standards — and do it quickly to avoid further sanctions.

With classes starting in three weeks for many schools, the DOE is rushing to create a brochure to give parents of those estimated 50,000 students information on how the transfer system will work and how to apply for it. Officials are meeting in committee to try to figure out how the DOE will provide bus service to those students who switch schools.

But they are also waiting for word from the state Attorney General's office and the U.S. Department of Education on whether students who already attend a non-neighborhood school on a geographic exception can stay there, or if they should be bumped from their adopted campus by lower-income students.

"They're supposed to be able to stay there until they graduate from that school," said Katherine Kawaguchi, the assistant superintendent who has been overseeing compliance with No Child Left Behind. "We don't know what the impact of this law will be for all of those GE kids."

State Superintendent Pat Hamamoto said that at the least, Hawai'i for the first time will have to rank-order students who want to move to a different campus. Students with the worst academic performance from poor families will have the highest priority to move to a higher-performing school.

But while that system will allow some students to move out of the so-called failing schools, it is bound to leave behind thousands.

The federal law does not require districts to create space in better-performing schools, and many Hawai'i campuses are already crowded.

"You cannot have an entire exodus of one school to another," Kawaguchi said. "We know the basic requirements, but we need to set up the parameters that will make it doable. I'm hoping that people don't see the No Child Left Behind Act as a way of bailing out from a school. It should be a way to bring people together. I hope they say that they don't want to leave their community."

Hamamoto said the bigger challenge is to improve neighborhood schools so that student achievement goes up.

"My position has always been how do we make our school of choice?" Hamamoto said. "We want to make our schools places that kids want to stay."

The entire school system will be affected as some students take advantage of the right to transfer, Kawaguchi said.

"It won't just be those few kids moving over," Kawaguchi said. "It will affect all kids. At what point do we actually move teachers to different campuses because of the population changes? We have to do the projections and make sure the move is as smooth as possible. We have to look at teachers' areas of expertise and take that into account."

The DOE will receive about $63 million in federal money this year, $38,639,219 of which is for high-poverty schools known as Title I. That's about $8 million more than last year to help the schools meet the new requirements in No Child Left Behind, but it will probably fall short of what the DOE will have to spend on the transportation, testing and data crunching required by the law.

Paul Ban, Title I specialist at the DOE, said Title I tries to maximize federal dollars sent to a state by focusing on a group of children who are academically at-risk. Poverty is a major risk factor for poor performance in school.

"The idea behind Title I is that if you have a critical mass of kids from poverty then the federal government believes the dollars would be used to raise the achievement of a group," Ban said.

A school is considered to be Title I if at least 45 percent of its students qualify for the federal free- and reduced-lunch program.

The Bush administration announced last week that as many as 3.5 million students in roughly 8,600 failing public schools nationwide will have the right to transfer in the fall.

Those numbers, based on reports submitted by states to the federal Department of Education, reflect the schools that have failed to meet state academic standards for at least two consecutive years.

To determine progress, the district looks at scores from the Stanford Achievement Test, school attendance and another factor, such as discipline, the school itself wants to track. To determine progress next year, the DOE also will consider results of the new Hawai'i-based standardized test.

But some schools that haven't met state standards do well on other measures.

'Anuenue School, the Hawaiian immersion campus in Palolo Valley, is on the state's list of schools that have failed to meet requirements for two years in a row.

But the campus is a National Blue Ribbon School and has received a six-year accreditation from the Western Association of Schools and Colleges.

Principal Charles Naumu said that with such a small campus — the graduating class this year was seven — 'Anuenue School can have wild swings every year on schoolwide data because of the performance of a handful of students.

"The intent of the law is good," Naumu said. "The application of it is where the questions will come. We're trying to do the best we can when they come to school to perpetuate the Hawaiian language and improve their academics. Sometimes quantitative data is fine, but there's also qualitative data that goes more to the heart of what a school is."

Ban said that as standardized test scores come in each fall, schools may find themselves moving on and off the list of "failing" campuses.

"The innies and outies may change," Ban said.

That could affect stability for some kids, he said. Once neighborhood schools improve, the district has no obligation to provide bus service to move a child to a different campus.

"According to the law, let's say I insist that I want my child transported somewhere else," Ban said. "What if the original school improves and I can't manage the transportation? I'm going to have to yank my kid back to the neighborhood school."

If campuses fail to improve, No Child Left Behind requires increasing levels of reform that Hawai'i schools may have to provide starting next year: private tutoring for students, replacing staff members or adopting a new curriculum and reconstituting a school and having to set up a new governance structure, such as re-opening as a charter school.

"I hope that parents will work with their schools to help improve the schools," Ban said. "I don't see any purpose in demoralizing and wiping out a school itself. If we try to reconstitute a school and get rid of the teachers, I mean, get real. We have problems hiring teachers in the remote areas as it is."

There are social issues, as well, that come with moving students to a campus in a different part of the island.

"When they get home, who do they play with?" Ban asked. "How do they participate in after-school activities?"

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