Posted on: Friday, May 30, 2003

School improvement plan needs assistance

State education officials will have to be pleased that they have passed a major milestone in their effort to comply with the new federal No Child Left Behind education law.

The U.S. Department of Education has approved an "accountability" plan developed for our statewide public school system. The plan sets out in detail how the state will hold individual schools accountable for improving test scores and hitting other benchmarks detailed in the law.

The important thing is that Hawai'i chose to develop a plan that does not lower existing standards. Some states have concluded the only way to achieve compliance with the law is to set reasonably low standards that most schools can hit.

Now, it is an open argument whether Hawai'i's standards are high enough, clear enough or complete enough. Many argue they require improvement.

But in the first go-around, Hawai'i is at least ready to hold every school accountable for the standards it has created. And this is no small thing. Because schools that fail to hit the mark on standards face a wide variety of sanctions and changes under the federal law, ranging from loss of federal money to complete restructuring.

Now that an accountability plan is in place, there is much work to do. There is no way many of our schools are going to make the progress demanded under the federal law without extra help, extra money and extra attention.

Lawmakers will be asked for additional money to help the system raise the qualifications of teachers and other school workers, improve testing and offer special outreach to students with extra needs, such as non-English-speaking youngsters.

That help should be provided. Otherwise, setting in place an ambitious improvement and accountability program adds up to nothing more than a hoax on parents who have put their trust in public schools.