EDITORIAL
School transfer woes only first under law
The headline story in Sunday's Advertiser reports on the enormous headache the state school system is about to face as it enters into the early stages of meeting the requirements of President Bush's No Child Left Behind Act.
As Education Writer Jennifer Hiller reported, more than 50,000 Hawai'i public school students will qualify for the right to transfer out of their school into a more appealing public school elsewhere.
While it is doubtful that the numbers of families actually pressing for a transfer will be anything close to the total number eligible, it will still be a huge logistics headache for school officials.
For starters, the state must use special federal dollars targeted at poverty and poor-performing schools to pay for the transportation of migrating students. This will inevitably rob resources from existing programs (such as tutoring in English). And then, how will the state balance the rights of transferring students against the rights of students who are out-of-district under today's district exception lottery program?
But the truly sobering part of all this is that the transfer dilemma is perhaps the easiest part of what is to come under the new rules.
Down the road, if schools continue to fail to perform, much more difficult requirements will trigger in. A school in its second year of failing to improve, for instance, must offer public funds to state-approved "supplemental service" providers chosen by the parents. Think everything from special language tutors to programs such as Sylvan or Kumon.
Going into year three, if the same school again fails to make the grade, school staff must be replaced, curriculum changed and outside experts or managers appointed. In our unionized environment, that will be a challenge.
Finally, in the fourth year, the entire governance of the school can be overturned, including hiring a private contractor to run the school.
Now, no one wants to see matters get to those latter stages. But it is a fact that there are, and have been, schools that fail to make the kind of progress being demanded for year after year after year. In many cases, it isn't the fault of the school or its faculty. Rather, it is the difficulty of trying to offer a quality education in a neighborhood with high levels of poverty, of immigrant families or of transient families.
It is imperative that schools begin working today with parents, local communities, local lawmakers and the Department of Education bureaucracy to prepare for the massive changes on the horizon.
More money will be needed, (and Uncle Sam will not cough up nearly enough to meet all the new requirements), but new approaches will be equally important.
High-performing schools should mentor lower-performing campuses. Communities that see the possibility of the collapse of their local public school must commit fresh new levels of money and support if they do not want that to happen. Quality of teacher standards must be maintained.
New enticements must be found to recruit and keep high-quality teachers and principals in high-poverty, low-performing schools.
Cynics fear the real motivation behind this new program is the gradual elimination of the universal public school system as we know it. Those who believe in public education, and its great promise, must get going now to make sure that does not happen.
