Posted on: Tuesday, June 15, 2004

Schools chief says change is 'doable'

By Derrick DePledge
Advertiser Education Writer

State schools Superintendent Pat Hamamoto challenged school administrators yesterday to accept change, warning that the days of paying lip service to academic performance standards are over.

"We must do better," Hamamoto told hundreds of Hawai'i school leaders at the superintendent's annual leadership conference at Hilton Hawaiian Village.

In unusually blunt terms, Hamamoto said too many students are below proficiency and asked educators to commit to getting incremental gains in student achievement by next school year. The superintendent said the degree of success will depend on their attitude.

Hamamoto asked school administrators to improve reading proficiency by at least 10 percent among third-, fifth-, eighth- and 10th-graders, the students who are taking the standardized tests that count under the federal No Child Left Behind law. She also asked for an increase of 15 percent in the number of ninth-graders who move on to 10th grade and the number of seniors who graduate.

"Is this doable?" she asked. "I'm convinced it is."

The state Department of Education is just starting to implement an education-reform package approved this year by the Legislature. The reform law creates a new student spending formula based on student need instead of school enrollment, and establishes new school community councils at every school.

Outside the department, some have questioned whether the DOE is able, or willing, to change, and the tone and content of Hamamoto's speech yesterday reinforced her message that the statewide school system supports reform.

Gov. Linda Lingle and other Republicans have dismissed the Legislature's education package as "fake reform" after her proposal to break up the DOE into local school districts with elected school boards failed.

Education reform likely will be an issue in school board and legislative elections in November, so each step in the DOE's progress will be closely watched.

"They have made an art form out of political spin," state Senate Minority Leader Fred Hemmings, R-25th (Kailua, Waimanalo, Hawai'i Kai), said of Democrats who control the Legislature. "It's a fraud."

State Rep. Roy Takumi, D-34th (Pearl City, Palisades), the chairman of the House Education Committee, said it is Republicans who are playing politics.

"She doesn't sound like a person who is just hanging on to power or just trying to preserve the status quo," Takumi said of Hamamoto.

With the political stakes so high, and some predicting failure, both sides are sensitive to public relations.

Some members of the school board, for instance, are trying to avoid using the word "reform" in board documents because, as one board member said, "It's the governor's word."

"It sounds trite, but it's a critical thing," said Breene Harimoto, the board's chairman, explaining that "reform" has a negative connotation among some at the DOE, while "renewal" or "reinvent" are more positive.

Inside the department and at many schools, tension and anxiety are high.

Along with the new spending formula and school councils, schools also have to figure out how to meet the demands of the No Child Left Behind law, which requires all students to be proficient in core subjects by 2014. The DOE also is moving to a new report card to align student grades to the standards-based descriptions of performance used to meet the law, as well as adopting other guidelines.

"I'm both excited and apprehensive because we're making a jump into the unknown," said Lucia Stewart, the principal at Kapi'olani Elementary School in Hilo. "We need to help our kids. What we've been doing is not enough."

Hamamoto chose yesterday — as sort of a summer homework assignment for school administrators — to issue her new, if modest, challenge for next school year. She said the academic gains she wants translate into just five more third-graders at a school reaching proficiency, for example, and nine more ninth-graders moving on to 10th grade or three more seniors graduating from each high school.

Mitch D'Olier, the chairman of the Hawai'i Business Roundtable, who has been an influential voice in the reform debate, said there is a chance for real change at public schools during the next decade.

William Ouchi, a University of California at Los Angeles professor and a key education consultant to Lingle, said local school boards would have been an "extra guarantee" that the DOE would change. But he also said that local boards or specifying that principals control 70 percent of school spending — or 90 percent, as Lingle wanted — was not absolutely necessary.

"You cannot legislatively order decentralization," Ouchi said. "All you can do is create the conditions for decentralization and it is up to the DOE and the BOE to make it happen."

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