Experts push school reform
| • | School committee members named |
By Derrick DePledge
Advertiser Education Writer
Education experts chosen by Gov. Linda Lingle to drive reform in Hawai'i's public schools told educators and state lawmakers yesterday that schools will not get significantly better unless principals and parents have much more power.
Principals should have greater authority over school budgets, parents should be able to choose the public school their children attend, and the state Board of Education could be replaced by a handful of locally elected school boards and a state oversight board appointed by the governor, the experts suggested.
At a forum at the State Capitol, William Ouchi, a professor of corporate renewal at the University of California at Los Angeles and a Lingle consultant, said Hawai'i public school students consistently perform below students nationally on standardized tests, while parents who can afford it send their children to private schools for a better education.
"There is no good excuse for this to continue,'' said Ouchi, who grew up in Honolulu and graduated from Punahou School, one of the state's top private schools.
The forum was one of two key events yesterday that marked the rollout of a new Lingle campaign intended to build public support for education reforms and to put pressure on lawmakers to enact them.
Although there is consensus among politicians and educators that changes are necessary to improve Hawai'i's struggling public schools, the Legislature did not act on the governor's education reform proposals during the last session.
And yesterday, Lingle announced a new group — Citizens to Achieve Reform in Education — to challenge lawmakers to put the local school board question on the ballot next year and to pass reform legislation.
The governor told her new committee that state Department of Education officials and state lawmakers were left off the panel by design.
"Our effort is about children,'' she said, "not about pleasing stakeholders.''
Ouchi, whose book, "Making Schools Work,'' will be used as a model for Lingle's reform plans, said he anticipates a "ferocious political fight.''
"We're going to need 258 entrepreneurs," he said of public school principals. "We have 258 bureaucrats."
Lawmakers have asked the DOE to prepare a report on weighted per-pupil spending — the foundation of Ouchi's argument — before the next legislative session.
State Rep. Roy Takumi, D-36th (Pearl City, Palisades), chairman of the House Committee on Education, said he is baffled about why Lingle did not invite education leaders in the Legislature to participate in her committee.
"I am disappointed," he said. "It's not about pleasing stakeholders, it's about involving stakeholders.
"It's about putting students first and putting politics last."
The reforms, if they move forward, would be radical.
A new per-pupil formula would link spending to students with the most need, particularly low-income, special-education and immigrant children.
Such a formula could mean that schools that serve students from middle-class and higher-income families could see money diverted to schools in lower-income neighborhoods.
Principals would control larger parts of a school's budget and would have broader authority over staff, curriculum and operational decisions. The DOE, a state oversight board and locally elected school boards would still set standards and enforce accountability, but more decisions would be made locally.
The theory of local control is behind several trends in education, from charter schools that are free to experiment outside district or state regulations to vouchers so parents can send their children to the school of their choice.
"We just have to do our homework,'' said Pat Hamamoto, state schools superintendent. "But every decision we make has to be measured up against whether it will improve student achievement."
The governor's office and the DOE spent $18,000 for Ouchi and educators involved in similar reforms in Edmonton, Seattle and Houston to share their findings at the forum and at briefings for the Board of Education and business leaders.
Shannon Ajifu, a BOE member, said she is open-minded about reform but wary.
"I don't like the way it's been happening," she said of the politics. "I get distressed when the governor keeps sniping at us."
But Laura H. Thielen, the only BOE member invited to serve on Lingle's committee, said she doubts the DOE will back true reform.
"We are failing our students miserably,'' Thielen said, "And it's a fact that's minimized by the Board of Education and the Department of Education."
Reach Derrick DePledge at ddepledge@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8084.
