EDITORIAL
Education sans borders more than just theory

We're encouraged to see that Hawai'i's guardians of education are actually moving ahead with plans for a seamless system from pre-school beyond college.

Clearly, balkanized education isn't working well:

"We have been attempting individual solutions for a problem that does not recognize the boundaries we've drawn," says University of Hawai'i President Evan Dobelle.

So let's take a crack at education without borders.

As we've mentioned before, the P-16 education initiative has been adopted in several states and makes a lot of sense in the Islands, where it's dubbed the "Hawai'i P-20 Initiative."

The integrated learning system has made a difference in states where public schools ranked low in academic achievement, and businesses were forced to recruit employees from out of state.

Indeed, it was the business community in Georgia that spurred the creation of its P-16 initiative. And we expect our business community to partner in Hawai'i's effort.

UH, the state Department of Education and the Good Beginnings Alliance is poised to establish a council, which would oversee P-20 efforts.

The composition of that council is key to the success of the program. If this is a turning point in Hawai'i's public education — and we hope it is — our best and brightest will have to get involved.

And by that, we include our next governor.