Student achievement must be the measure
By Mitch D'Olier
The actual or perceived condition of Hawai'i's public schools (K-12) is both our state's biggest social injustice and biggest business problem.
Advertiser library photo
Make no mistake about it: Education system redesign is needed, and needed now.
Alo Salausa, 3, left, and Latoya Stapleton, 4, read before midday nap in the Pre-Plus early education program at Wahiawa Elementary School.
I have been blessed over the past two years to work for the family of Harold Castle, with 25 percent of my time devoted to a foundation he established in 1962, the Harold K.L. Castle Foundation, which recently decided to undertake a proactive effort in public-education reform and enhancement. I am also blessed, I think, to be chairman of the Hawai'i Business Roundtable, an organization that has focused on education reform since 1988.
In these capacities, I have had the privilege of engaging in conversations with a number of national educational leaders who have shaped my views and provided a framework for my thoughts.
Not all the news is bad.
Professor Tony Wagner, co-director of the Harvard Graduate School of Education Change Leadership Group, pointed out that we have a public education system nationwide that was designed for a time when children needed to take the summer off to pick crops and work on the farm, and where less than 10 percent of the school-age population graduated from high school.
We have entered the 21st century with a knowledge-based economy in which our youth are required to read, write and compute, but we are operating an education system designed for a different time.
Dr. Wagner urges that involved groups (teachers, principals, parents, citizens and politicians) not get angry with one another over public-education reform, as systemic redesign is required nationwide to meet the challenge of 21st-century realities for education.
Dr. William G. Ouchi, in his recently published book "Making Schools Work: A Revolutionary Plan to Get Your Children the
Education They Need," makes the happy observation that "(t)here's nothing wrong with the students or the teachers, and most (though not all) school systems already have enough money to do the job well."
Gov. Linda Lingle's senior adviser for education, professor Randall Roth, notes "we are convinced that students in Hawai'i are capable of performing at a much higher level and ... that we have excellent teachers. ... "
Dr. Stephen R. Portch, chancellor of the University of Georgia education system, who came to Hawai'i to advise our state's P-20 Task Force, convinced me that all school reform must be tested against whether an action would increase measurable student achievement.
Wagner also advises that actions taken now for public-school redesign be part of a 20-year process to create institutions and systems that provide education appropriate for the 21st century.
Against this background, we should consider some surprising things that affect measurable student achievement.
Leadership matters
My friend/teacher Randy Moore notes that, in almost every case, superior schools in Hawai'i can be attributed to leadership from a current or past school principal.
On the basis of a series of interviews in public schools, Moore noted that successful principals share a common characteristic — namely, their total commitment to the success of their students, teachers and the school.
They know the resources available to them are inadequate. They know they are hampered by union contract provisions that are not in the best interests of the schools. They know the governance of the school system is fractured and flawed, and other workings in the state bureaucracy, all within both the Department of Education and the Department of Accounting & General Services, are not responsive to the individual schools' needs.
Nevertheless, they plow on.
The National Governors Association Center for Best Practices brief of Sept. 12, 2003, concluded that "school leaders exert a powerful if indirect influence on teaching quality and student learning." The report notes that "schools of the 21st century will require a new kind of principal ... one whose main responsibility will be defined in terms of instructional leadership that focuses on strengthening teaching and learning."
The report suggests three primary modes of leadership promote student learning:
• Principal as entrepreneur: Leaders focus on instructional improvement and student learning while protecting teachers from intrusions from the outside environment.
• Principal as organizer: Principals bring to the school innovative individuals, ideas, programs and instructional strategies that improve teaching ... and also engage teachers, parents and community members as collaborators and leaders in school improvement efforts.
• Principal as instructional leader: Effective school leaders build data-driven professional communities that hold individuals accountable for student learning and instructional improvement.
The report also recommends the removal of barriers for talented individuals to enter the principal and vice principal professions, and the development of alternative principal preparation programs.
The importance of principal leadership in school-turnaround efforts was highlighted in a recent study undertaken for the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation.
After noting that strong administrative leadership is among the most tangible and indispensable characteristics of effective schools, and that principals who are free to use their financial and curricular resources are associated with successful schools, the article notes that good school-level leadership is a common thread found in successful school turnarounds.
So principal leadership is connected to student achievement and turnaround of low-performing schools.
Early childhood education
Approximately half of Hawai'i's children enter kindergarten "school ready." As I mentioned, Dr. Stephen Portch counseled that the best investment a foundation could make in public education was in early childhood, where student gains could be greatest.
He also noted that a child who enters first grade without knowing colors and numbers probably will not go to college.
As was the case with leadership, research on early childhood education strengthens my resolve. Preschool's newest supporter is an economist, Arthur Rolnick, the head of research at the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank. He
concludes "a good preschool is economic development, offering a 12 percent annual return after inflation."
The community
In my idealized view of public education "long ago and faraway" in "small-kid time," communities were engaged in their schools, participated in their activities, provided financial and volunteer support — in fact, communities and schools were inseparable.
In Hawai'i 2004, communities are not allowed in school because of legalisms such as liability risk and lack of supervision. It is the rare case in which communities regularly gather at public schools, and students are allowed to stay and play on school grounds, as I did growing up.
Part of reconnecting communities with schools is listening to communities on issues of public education. One of the blessings of my volunteer role as chairman of the Hawai'i Business Roundtable has been to work on a collaboration between the roundtable and Pacific Resource Partnership (itself a collaboration between organized contractors and the Carpenters Union) on a project known as The People's Pulse.
The idea behind The People's Pulse is to poll the community on public issues and share community views with government, business and labor decision-makers.
The spring 2003 issue of The People's Pulse showed significant interest in raising the quality of education in Hawai'i and supporting principal leadership:
"Residents clearly favor decentralization, including more authority for principals. ... This is reflected in support for change in school governance and shifting the authority for decision-making from the Department of Education (DOE) to individual school principals."
Finally, the poll indicated that more transparent funding based on weighted student counts is preferred to the DOE or Legislature allocating individual school budgets, as is currently done.
Following Tony Wagner's urging for a deep understanding of the state's educational problems, the summer 2003 issue of The People's Pulse focused on what residents perceive as the problem with education.
The bad news: "Hawai'i's residents (whether parents of children in K-12 or not) rate public schools poorly, with a mean score of 5.3 on a 10-point scale. Ratings for neighborhood public schools were only marginally higher than for state schools overall."
It had generally been thought that Hawai'i residents had higher views of their own schools than of the system generally.
Local focus
Against this backdrop comes an interesting book written by a "local boy" now teaching at UCLA's Anderson School of Business. Dr. William G. Ouchi's "Making Schools Work" concerns leadership and management of public education. It weaves together several themes surrounding school redesign that have come to my attention in my volunteer and non-volunteer capacities.
William Ouchi's "Seven Keys to Success" for public schools: 1. Every principal is an entrepreneur. Rule-bound administrators are replaced by empowered, customer-driven managers. 2. Every school controls its own budget. This is a journey from 5 percent budget control to more than 90 percent, as is the case at Waimea Middle School. 3. Everyone is accountable for student performance and budgets. Accountability here means openness, so that everyone from parents to teachers to the community gets regular, understandable and credible accounts of what is going on in the school. These categories matter most: student performance, budget performance and customer satisfaction. 4. Everyone delegates authority to those below. 5. There is a burning focus on student achievement. The proposal isn't about decentralization; the decentralization is a means to the end of increased student achievement, with the principal as chief education leader. 6. Every school is a community of learners. This is a vision for schools reaching out through principal leaders to communities to learn what the community wants and needs, and to create a plan to meet the needs. 7. Families have real choices among a variety of schools. This allows transfer within the public school system — with first dibs to neighborhood kids — which is an important component of student-weighted funding and which measures school success by an ability to attract students (customers).
Ouchi's book proposes a burning focus on student achievement, as did Dr. Portch. The centerpiece of the book is leadership — Randy Moore's theme in 1997, confirmed by research to increase student achievement. Ouchi's proposal for empowerment of principals is equivalent to the proposal that received overwhelming community support in The People's Pulse surveys.
Seven keys to school success
Ouchi believes, along with Dr. Tony Wagner and Randy Moore, that there is nothing wrong with the students or the teachers. He contends: "(I)t's the management of school districts that needs to be changed."
Ouchi's conclusions (see sidebar) are drawn from significant research and his detailed study of school redesign in three North American cities: Seattle; Edmonton, Alberta; and Houston.
Finally, Ouchi sees teachers and principals as the answer and not the problem. He cautions readers: "As you travel down the road to revolution, ... remember to pack your humility. For although you have armed yourself ... with ... knowledge ... you still won't know as much as the teachers and principals know."
I humbly suggest several steps for Hawai'i's schools.
• Empower principals. Give principals authority over management and school budgets. I think we should set a goal of each principal being in charge of 90 percent
of a school's budget. Principals should have authority to select and assign school personnel, repairs and book purchases.
• Money needs to be allocated to schools based on a weighted student formula, a new way to give budgetary control to a principal.
Pioneered in Edmonton over a period of 25 years, it means dollars follow students directly to schools. Students with no disabilities are
assigned less dollars than students with severe disabilities. Poor students are assigned more dollars than students from middle-class families, as poverty is a disability under the weighted student formula system.
• Staff development. Principals need to be tasked with significant new leadership responsibilities and challenges. Before any responsible business assigns a task, it trains the employee for the task. There is a significant staff development piece that needs to be done to prepare principals for this assignment.
Two great models are under way in Hawai'i. One is the Principals Leadership Academy operated by a collaboration of funders with support from the Hawai'i Business Roundtable. A second is a partnership between the University of Hawai'i College of Education and the Hawaii Association of Independent Schools, who have jointly designed a curriculum to train leaders for Hawai'i private schools for the future.
• Staff encouragement. I believe that, given the tools and freed from rules, Hawai'i's teachers, principals and administrators can excel. Principals, teachers and employees of the DOE need to be seen by themselves and by the community as the solution, and not as the problem. Only then will they act to reinforce a decentralized system in a successful way.
• Accountability of principals. With greater authority comes greater responsibility. Principals should, as reinforced by The People's Pulse poll, be placed on three- or four-year performance-based contracts. That would end tenure for principals, but not necessarily remove them from unions.
In fairness, a compensation increase should be part of this package, in recognition of the new accountability system.
Finally, test scores and progress toward "No Child Left Behind" (not necessarily the progress required by the federal act, but some progress) should be factors in principal evaluation. This type of accountability program would drive a system of public education that puts student achievement first.
The foregoing principles would effect monumental change in the Hawai'i public-school system and push control to principals/leaders who can control their own destiny and encourage community involvement.
• Early childhood education. As stated earlier by Dr. Portch, early childhood education cannot be ignored. Action needs to be taken to reduce the gap in school readiness. We need to develop an action plan to take school readiness from 50 percent of students entering public school to 75 percent.
That will take public and private-sector money, and creative use of facilities. It may be the best economic development money our state spends.
• Charter schools. These work, and should be supported. Barriers to the success of charter schools should be eliminated.
• Education governance. What to do about the DOE and multiple school boards? One proposal is that we change from a single unified district into seven school districts and bring decision-making closer to the people.
Portch's caution that every action we take be based on demonstrable change in measurable student achievement gives me pause on the school board question. While research indicates that smaller school districts have higher student achievement than larger school districts, I am not aware of any research that suggests changes in governance affect measurable student achievement.
I do worry, however, about what the DOE should look like after a principal-empowered system is put in place. At a minimum, what is needed is a redesign of the Department of Education.
Happily, there are experts in our business community who have significant knowledge about organizational redesign. Talent and knowledge exist in these organizations to assist with a redesign and re-engineering pro-cess for the DOE. Perhaps such a process would result in multiple school boards; perhaps not. But a redesign effort is needed, and perhaps the business community should provide consultants if governmental commitment is in place.
Significant school redesign is possible and necessary in Hawai'i now. Political and community forces are combining to create an almost historic opportunity.
Just do it!
Mitch D'Olier is president and chief executive officer of the Harold K.L. Castle Foundation and Kane'ohe Ranch Co.
