By David Shapiro

In the Legislature's view, education reform is more about trained teachers, textbooks and smaller class sizes than governance of the school system.

Put this way, the argument has won support in opinion polls and was used by Democrats to reject Gov. Linda Lingle's call for a public vote to break up the statewide Board of Education into local districts.

But the Legislature's reasoning is misleading, based on a false premise that classroom resources and school governance are separable issues.

Resources don't get to the classroom by magic.

It occurs only when effective governance makes it a priority to train teachers, buy textbooks and reduce class sizes — and builds an organization that makes it happen.

Hawai'i's schools are failing precisely because those who govern education — and continue to hold power under the Legislature's plan — never gave priority to these things.

Instead, their priority has been to grow the Department of Education's central bureaucracy and spend money on improved compensation for school employees.

It's a system that serves itself instead of the community. Constant legislative tinkering reflects the absence of competent governance.

Endless fiddling by ill-qualified legislators in a charged political atmosphere dominated by powerful special interests is no path to better schools.

We need a reliable system that consistently manages schools in a way that causes the right things to happen as a matter of course.

The Republican Lingle isn't the only one who thinks breaking up the ineffective centralized system is the key.

U.S. Rep. Ed Case served in the state House two years ago when his fellow Democrats enthusiastically passed the break-up plan Lingle proposes now — before a Republican was elected governor and the politics changed.

Case says his perspective from Congress only strengthens his conviction that Hawai'i's statewide school system, the only one of its kind in the nation, "does not work today, and cannot be made to work even with the most adroit legislative massaging."

"Voters are owed a basic decision this November on local school boards," he says.

Lingle overstates when she says the Legislature's plan only makes a bad situation worse.

But the Democratic plan falls short of truly reforming the school system by giving the DOE bureaucracy too much wiggle room to preserve its centralized power.

New funding to buy textbooks and reduce class sizes barely dents the problems. The Legislature devotes the bulk of new education dollars to generous pay raises for teachers and administrative staff — some of which haven't even been negotiated yet.

Provisions to allocate more money to students with the greatest need, give principals control of up to 70 percent of the DOE's budget and create community councils to oversee schools give central administrators great discretion in carrying out the changes.

One of the few things Lingle and DOE Superintendent Pat Hamamoto agreed on was that principals should be put on performance contracts to assure accountability, but lawmakers deferred this in the face of union opposition.

It means principals could control up to 70 percent of the education budget with little accountability for the results they produce in terms of improved student achievement.

Education reform is possibly the most important decision we'll make in a generation. As Case says, lawmakers owe voters a say on a matter so vital to Hawai'i's future.

If Democratic legislators insist on rushing to do it their own way without giving other viewpoints fair consideration, it's on them to deliver fast improvement in student performance.

They can expect little patience from a public weary of obstinate politics.

David Shapiro can be reached at dave@volcanicash.net.