EDITORIAL
State cannot lag in meeting school law

The saga of the state's scramble to comply with the sweeping changes proposed by President Bush's No Child Left Behind law continues.

The latest chapter, according to Education Writer Jennifer Hiller, focuses on children in rural and Neighbor Island schools.

Under the law, a variety of new requirements comes to bear on schools that fail to make progress toward meeting state standards. There are dozens of such schools around the state, with a concentration in rural and poorer neighborhoods.

Right off the bat, parents with students in such schools can apply for transfers to other, presumably more successful, schools.

But even on heavily populated O'ahu, that is not always an option. And on the Neighbor Islands, transfer is even less of an option. On Moloka'i, for instance, all five public schools fit the criteria of schools "identified for improvement." These students have no place to transfer to.

So the second option becomes publicly financed tutoring. But Hiller reports there is a shortage of trained and available tutors.

There is an immediate need to train and/or recruit tutors and to develop innovative new tutoring programs that will best meet the needs of individual schools.

This will not come easily. But it is still a far less daunting task than what comes next if the school continues to fall short of state standards.

Right on the heels of transfers and tutoring come the first real steps toward an outside takeover of the school. Staff must be replaced, curriculum changed, school years lengthened and even outside administration brought in.

If that doesn't work — and on a short timetable at that — the law envisions complete takeover of the school or even converting to a charter school or hiring a private operator to take over from the state.

Clearly, the state does not want — and can hardly afford — some of these more draconian steps. It is imperative that everyone involved, from parents and teachers, to school administrators, the Department of Education and policymakers at the Legislature, do what it takes to get on track.

We are close to the point where someone else is about to make our decisions for us.

Our experience with federal takeover of our programs for special-needs children (the "Felix" case) should tell us what a complex mess that can be.