Posted on: Wednesday, December 17, 2003

EDITORIAL
Education panel paints only part of picture

That special committee appointed by Gov. Linda Lingle to look into education reform proposals has done a solid job of diagnosing many of the ills that plague the current system.

It has done a less thorough job of outlining, with specifics, how Lingle's proposal for a series of local elected school boards amounts to a cure for those ills.

Unless those specifics come forward, this report is likely to suffer the fate of most other well-meaning reports on the Hawai'i public school system. Which is to say, largely ignored.

The report, from an advisory committee called Citizens Achieving Reform in Education (CARE), makes a powerful point: Almost every study into the failings of the public school system in Hawai'i has encouraged more autonomy for those who run our schools and more local, that is, community, input into their operations.

The logical and inevitable input of such observations, the CARE report concludes, is locally elected school boards.

But there is little empirical evidence in the report to suggest this is the right answer. Indeed, across the country the response to struggling schools has been to move away from local control to a more standardized, equitable, central administrative system.

All this is to say that no particular system of governance is the magic bullet for improved student performance.

The CARE report does put its finger on one aspect of public education in Hawai'i that has plagued reformers for decades. That is the absurd system in which the governor, the Legislature, the school board, individual schools and even the unions have a direct voice in how our schools should be run.

"So long as responsibility is diffused, no one can be held accountable," the report says. "When accountability roles are ambiguous, the quest for quality, let alone excellence, is frustrated."

If that is true, how would adding seven or more locally elected school boards lessen the diffusion of responsibility?

It has become clear that individual schools, teachers and school administrators need more autonomy to teach in ways that work best for the students in their charge. That reform, including granting principals far more authority to set policy and manage budgets, is possible within the current system.

It will take political will to make this happen, however.

The Legislature must get out of the business of imposing mandates on schools and pork barreling school spending.

The governor's office (and here we are not pointing fingers at the Lingle administration particularly) must get out of the business of setting educational policy.

The Board of Education must return to its true mission, which is setting long-term goals and standards for our statewide system, while letting individual school administrators decide how they will meet those goals and standards.

The Department of Education must release its grip on the "power" it has accumulated over the years and recognize its job is to be a centralized, efficient service provider for the schools.

The unions must realize that job rights and seniority cannot always trump the decisions of educators and administrators.

And the community, meaning everyone from parents to local business leaders, must work through existing mechanisms such as Parent-Teacher Associations and the School-Community-Based Management system to make sure that their voice is heard.