Posted on: Sunday, December 5, 2004

VOICES OF EDUCATION

By Randy Hitz

This is the latest in a series of "Voices of Education" articles prepared by various "front-line" participants in education in Hawai'i who hope to drive the conversation on education reform beyond political and bureaucratic policy-makers.

Contributors to this series include preschool through college educators who seek to identify areas of consensus within the profession and then to inform policy-makers on their ideas. For more information online, go to: www.hawaii.edu/voice.

There is a lot of talk these days about how polarized the American public is, and it certainly appears that way at times.

Yet when I look at trends in education policy, I see some major areas of consensus which could form the basis for progress in reinventing education in Hawai'i and the nation.

The most significant federal education legislation in the last 30 years is the No Child Left Behind Act. Despite rhetoric of the recent campaign season, there's actually important agreement among policy-makers with regard to this legislation. It passed Congress with large majorities of members from both parties voting for it.

The major tenets of the law have strong support from both major political parties.

These are: All students must be educated at higher levels, teachers are key to improving education, and educators must be held accountable for the achievement results of their students.

It may seem obvious that all students must be well-educated, but the fact is, as a society we have never committed ourselves to this. We have historically marginalized the education of minority students, students with disabilities and students from poor families. At the turn of the 20th century, we tolerated a 10 percent high school completion rate. By mid 20th century, we tolerated a 50 percent high school completion rate. Today, the completion rate is much higher, and standards for completion are also higher, yet we are appropriately intolerant of a high school completion or equivalency rate of over eighty-five percent. We realize that in today's complex and increasingly global competitive society, we need to educate more people and at higher levels. This new challenge will require a great deal of our best talent and a greater proportion of our financial resources.

Teachers are key to quality education. This sounds like common sense, but it was as recently as the late 1960s that a widely quoted national study promoted the idea that teaching did not make much of a difference. Today, we have volumes of research that refute this. Good teaching does, in fact, make a positive difference in student achievement. That means we must do a better job of recruiting good teachers, pay them appropriately, and provide a working environment that promotes their success. Teacher education has long been short-changed by many universities and has been used as a "cash cow" to pay for more expensive professional programs. Teacher pay continues to be very low compared to that in other professions that require similar levels of education. Working conditions for teachers are notoriously poor.

The accountability movement in education is here to stay. Educators and many policy-makers have strong reservations about using standardized test scores as the primary or sole measure of school success. Now that President Bush has been elected to a second term, the emphasis on testing will likely become even greater. The use of tests will continue to be debated, but regardless of how we hold schools and educators accountable, the movement to do so will be continued. Education is too high a priority to leave without clear goals and clear, effective assessments.

I don't mean to diminish the serious differences of opinions about No Child Left Behind. There is a lot of debate about how best to hold schools accountable, how to measure student and school success, what the qualification of teachers should be, and how to assess teacher effectiveness. But there is little or no debate about the basic tenets of this federal legislation.

Hawai'i's Act 51, the landmark legislation that passed last spring, also contains major tenets upon which consensus was built and which compliment the tenets of No Child Left Behind.

These include: Teachers and principals are key to improving education, more education decisions (and resources) should be at the school level, more community involvement, and an education system organized to allow for clear lines of authority and accountability.

Again, there was considerable debate about the details of these. That debate will and should continue. But it is significant that we have consensus in these areas. There will be changes in education policy in Hawai'i as elements of Act 51 are refined. Similarly, Congress will make some adjustments in No Child Left Behind. But the direction of education reinvention is well established.

Accountability is perhaps the most fundamental area of overlap between Act 51 and No Child Left Behind, and that is a good thing. After all, we owe it to students, parents and taxpayers to show that we are making progress in improving education for all students.

We must also do a better job of holding policy-makers accountable for providing the resources necessary for educators and students to succeed. Congress has never fulfilled its promise to fund education for special-needs students, and Congress has yet to allocate the promised resources for No Child Left Behind.

Randy Hitz is dean of the College of Education at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa.