COMMENTARY
Appropriate flexibility, financing can help public schools succeed

By Ed Case

Representing Hawai'i in Washington provides the gift, and curse, of perspective. The view from 5,000 miles away reveals strengths and weaknesses less evident from the home trenches. Equally invaluable is the opportunity to compare notes with colleagues from every corner of our country.

CASE

We all know better. It'll take basic change on all fronts to pull this off. Focusing on K-12 public education, I see these as the two foundations of that change.

Federal: Our federal government's effect on Hawai'i education is huge. Federal law sets countrywide standards, federal regulations and programs implement, and federal appropriations pay. At least in concept.

One such law — 2001's bipartisan No Child Left Behind Act — is rightfully today's poster child for all the promise and failure of federal involvement. The law's bargain was simple: we will all, through our federal government, expect more of public education, and we will all, through that government, pay to get there.

Unquestionably a good and needed law, that has soured on two counts.

First, it does not allow sufficient flexibility to accommodate individual state and local characteristics. For example, the law says teachers must be "highly certified" in the courses they teach, meaning degrees and certification in those subjects. But match that laudable goal against reality in a small school like Laupahoehoe, where scarce teachers cross-teach extensively, or Hawaiian-immersion schools like Ke Kula Ni'ihau O Kekaha, where Hawaiian-language fluency is the prerequisite, and the one-size-fits-all model just doesn't fit.

Second, reflecting Washington's denial of crippling budget deficits, The No Child Left Behind Act is today an immense unfinanced federal mandate. For the current fiscal year, this law set federal compliance costs at $32 billion, but the current administration only asked for $22 billion. For the upcoming year, the figures are $34 billion and $25 billion, respectively. The message is simple: We don't mind requiring it, but we can't afford it all, so you, states and localities, make up the difference.

I and many like-minded colleagues have fought for greater local flexibility, not just with this law but with other federal education mandates. We have also fought for full financing of No Child Left Behind and other unfinanced mandates such as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

Our reply message: Require what you will pay for, pay for what you require. Thus far, these efforts have produced some gestures to increased flexibility and additional money, but only a sea of change in current Washington thinking will deliver appropriate federal education assistance.

State: My current perspective has only strengthened my conviction that Hawai'i's education governance structure, the only one of its kind in our country, is our main state/local obstacle to sustainable, high-quality education. That model (not statewide financing, which works, but statewide Board of Education/Department of Education control), if it ever really did work, does not work today, and cannot be made to work even with the most adroit legislative massaging.

It is inescapable that local school districts by and large are doing better because they facilitate the community involvement our current governance discourages, just as is the fact that not one of my congressional colleagues, from the most liberal Democrat to the most conservative Republican, wants to change local education governance to our statewide model. Voters are owed a basic decision this November on local school boards.

Today's perfect microcosm of all that is right and wrong with Hawai'i public education is our embattled charter schools.

Last year I took Susan Sclafani, counselor to the U.S. secretary of education, to see an amazing school: the Big Island's Kanu o ka 'Aina. This fledgling Native Hawaiian charter institution, led by its irrepressible principal Ku Kahakulau, suffers from federal inflexibility and underfunding, and remote, impassive and underfinanced state governance (not to mention lack of facilities, supplies and other basics). It succeeds despite adversity because it has achieved the sine qua non: total community involvement.

But we had to wonder: What if Kanu functioned under realistic federal and state expectations, with appropriate flexibility and financing? What if most decisions affecting it were made in its back yard, with its community? What if all our schools got all of the above?

That's the breadth of change worth fighting for.

U.S. Rep. Ed Case, D-Hawai'i, is a member of the subcommittee on education reform and the Committee on Education and the Work Force.