State schools earn mixed report card

By Derrick DePledge
Advertiser Education Writer

Hawai'i's public schools earned better grades for standards and accountability and school climate, but slipped on improving teacher quality and student spending, according to an annual report card from Education Week.

Gov. Linda Lingle has proposed splitting the state Department of Education into seven local districts with locally elected school boards, to bring education decisions closer to local communities. The governor, along with key Democrats and many in the education community, also favors moving to a new student spending formula that would base spending on student need rather than enrollment.

The state received its lowest grade, a D+, for improving teacher quality, down from a C- last year. The paper found that Hawai'i does not expect teachers to have student teaching experience or coursework in the subjects they intend to teach, although teachers must pass subject and skills tests to get licensed.

The state also does not require performance assessments for teachers to earn continuing licenses and does not have written professional development standards, according to the paper. It also claimed teacher salaries, when adjusted for the state's high cost of living, were the lowest in the nation in 2002.

Joan Husted, executive director of the Hawai'i State Teachers Association, said the cost of living is among the main reasons cited by teachers who leave the DOE after a few years in the classroom.

"We have to get teacher salaries up if we ever want to get local kids to come back home to teach and to fill all of our classrooms with well-qualified teachers," she said.

Data sometimes old

Education Week, a newspaper widely read by educators and policy-makers, has released the national analysis of school performance, "Quality Counts," for eight years. Data is collected from the most recent comparable national statistics, which can be several years old.

For example, the report card gives Hawai'i a C for adequacy of resources, down from a B- last year, finding that the state ranked 40th of the 50 states and District of Columbia in student spending in the 2000-2001 school year, when Hawai'i spent $6,614 per pupil. That figure that does not include spending on computers, school buses, school construction, debt interest or any other items that last more than one year.

Lingle and the DOE have clashed over school spending in the school reform debate, offering competing numbers for how much the state spends on students and whether it is adequate. The Education Week ranking, likely to be referenced widely in the education community, illustrates how the numbers can vary depending on who's counting.

A financial report by consultants to Lingle found that the state spent $10,422 per student in the 2002-2003 school year when spending by all state departments was taken into account. The DOE countered that it spent $8,375 per student last school year, excluding capital costs and debt service.

Lingle's report claimed that the DOE spent $8,361 per student in the 2001-2002 school year, excluding capital costs and debt service. The consultants, using their own calculations, ranked that spending as 15th in the nation. The DOE countered that it spent $7,626 per student during that school year.

The DOE argued that the governor's report was distorted partly because calculations differed from those routinely used to compare states by the National Center for Education Statistics, the primary source for Education Week's figures.

The Lingle administration believes its report better reflects the actual amount the state spends on education.

Standards get a 'C'

Greg Knudsen, a DOE spokesman, said it was encouraging that Hawai'i's standards and accountability grade improved from a D+ to a C+. State student assessment tests, taken each spring, are aligned to the state's academic standards and are used to determine whether schools meet the annual goals of the federal No Child Left Behind law.

Education Week found, however, that the state suffered from a lack of clear, specific standards or tests that match them in some subjects and grades.

"We're out of the D range," Knudsen said. "But we would expect to see that grade increase even more."

Special education praised

Education Week took a detailed look at special education, with a national poll of teachers that found 84 percent believed most special-education students should not be expected to meet the same academic standards as other students.

Hawai'i was found to be one of seven states that require individualized education plans for special-education students to address state academic standards, and the report singled out the state for its efforts to recruit and retain special-education teachers. The DOE has been under federal court order since 1994 to improve its treatment of mentally and physically disabled students.

A DOE report to the federal government on its compliance with the No Child Left Behind law showed major disparities between the scores of special-education students and others on state assessment tests.

Reach Derrick DePledge at ddepledge@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8084.

Correction: Education Week found that Hawai'i is one of seven states that require individualized education plans for special-education students to address state academic standards. A previous version of this story had different information.