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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Sunday, April 27, 2003

FOCUS
Overcoming the school reform stalemate

By Mary Anne Raywid
Adjunct professor at UH and professor emerita at Hofstra

Several weeks ago, professor William Ouchi of UCLA introduced a new dimension into the school-reform discussion in Hawai'i by showing how school systems where principals exert considerable control over staffing, curriculum, materials selection and professional development seem to end up with higher student achievement.

Most of her third-graders knew the answer to teacher Patricia Cullen's question at August Ahrens Elementary School.

Advertiser library photo • Sept. 4, 2002

The idea taken from his findings was that we consider a new system in Hawai'i to finance public schools, in effect turning over fiscal management to school principals. Each would receive a sum determined by a weighted formula to run the school.

There would be a standard sum for regular students, an additional sum for non-English speakers, an additional sum for those from low-income families, etc.

Such an arrangement, Ouchi argued, has served in Edmonton, Canada, in Seattle and in Houston to boost student achievement by giving individual schools a great deal more control over their own budgets — and incidentally, their own decisions over many other matters.

Could such a system solve a lot of our problems as well?

It appears Ouchi thought so, or he wouldn't have talked so widely about it on his recent visit. The House of Representatives must have thought so, in view of a bill it passed last week.

And the newspapers make it sound as though the schools superintendent and governor and unions all think so; on the basis of a letter to the editor, at least one Board of Education member agrees with them.

But there appears to have been a lot less discussion of the nonbudgetary powers that also were bestowed on principals in those model cities.

School reform, though obviously much needed here, has been at such a stalemate that the new arrangement might well be a good idea to try. In fact, it may be the only way to get any reform passed!

I'm concerned, though, that we may lack the history and traditions and the full package necessary to make it work.

Ouchi's findings, and the recommendations drawn from them, involve both fiscal arrangements and decentralizing governance. They suggest that by handing over to schools a budget according to a weighted formula, and by letting schools handle their own staffing, curriculum and materials selection and their own professional development, we will get higher student achievement.

It's not a bad message, and lots of people have no difficulty accepting it. But Hawai'i has had a hard time making school-based management work. And a large number of observers would say that despite its nominal existence since 1989, school-based management has yet to happen here.

Given the kind of history and tradition that manages, in one way or another, to squelch school-based management, is Ouchi's weighted fiscal formula likely to bring it off? Will the Legislature and BOE, the Department of Education and the HSTA and the HGEA let it happen? If not, is the fiscal plan alone likely to prove a magic bullet to improve achievement?

Fiscal control enough?

Carol Nagasako's third-graders at Manoa Elementary School work on their art project showing seven figures from various perspectives.

Advertiser library photo • Nov. 14, 2002

We know the considerable power of the purse. But what about that power without the power to control staffing, curriculum, materials and professional development? If the BOE and DOE do not relinquish control of those matters to individual schools, can the power of the purse offset the lack?

There's another matter tied to the package in Edmonton, Seattle and Houston: Families have the right to choose the school their children will attend. Will that be part of the arrangement here? Or is that something we find out only after the law has been passed? I've been strongly in favor of public school choice for a number of years. But I think it works only under certain conditions, including prominently a policy that promotes deliberate diversification.

Is that to be pursued?

Tenure at risk

I have a rather different concern, too, about whether Ouchi's weighted student formula could accomplish the things some of us envision in reading his study. It would pass along considerable power to principals, boosting them into real CEOs.

According to teacher and parent reports, Hawai'i has some first-rate principals. But there are some who already behave autocratically. It would seem imperative that as principals are further empowered, that they, too, be held accountable — including to those they are charged with leading.

Under such circumstances, permanent tenure as a school principal would have to go, and a vote of confidence from teachers and parents should be one criterion of satisfactory performance.

(Requiring that they be removed from a union seems a lot less necessary — and perhaps less reasonable — than the performance contract requirement with a vote-of-confidence provision.)

There is always more than one way to accomplish a given purpose. If the aim is decentralizing school control, we can consider local, semi-autonomous boards and districts to operate schools, or some system whereby individual schools can, in effect, run themselves.

If the aim, on the other hand, is to strengthen central school control, we can keep a single board and district and set up multiple regional offices — complexes — all responsible to a single authority.