Kapolei is a great community. On my drive out here this morning to speak to the Kapolei Rotary Club about Hawaii's education system, I noticed how clean and new everything looks, including Kapolei High School. This school is the result of the collaborative efforts of a 30-member Task Force using the document, Breaking Ranks: Changing an American Institution. That study found that "piecemeal change may lead to some positive results; however, what is needed is not more tinkering, but systemic reform."

The Department of Education also had great demographics to work with in Kapolei. This city is a family community with incomes averaging over $65,000 per year, the majority of residents are college educated, and poverty levels are low at around 5 percent. Only about 1 percent of Kapolei High School students are considered to have English as a second language and the percentage of special education students is below the state average at less than 10 percent.

Kapolei High School is an example of what the Department of Education could accomplish statewide if it had control of nearly all the resources at its disposal, i.e., $90 million to build this school alone and presumably the "best research" and "best minds" to design a school "second to none."

According to a 2003 survey, the majority of Kapolei’s High School teachers believe they are doing an exceptional good job of providing quality student support, while about two-thirds are satisfied in their jobs. At the same time, only about one-third of Kapolei High School students are satisfied with the school; two-thirds feel that the staff doesn’t display professionalism and less than half think they are receiving quality support. Only 18 percent of the parents even bothered to turn in the survey. But of those, about two-thirds felt satisfied with the school. So whose perception is accurate?

Kapolei High School opened in 2000 and the first results of the 2002 Hawaii Content and Performance Standards assessment revealed only 47 percent of Kapolei’s 10th graders met grade level reading standards while only 13 percent met math reading standards. The SAT results showed one out of every three students is not performing at grade level in English and Math.

One might excuse these scores by saying that it is a new school and it takes awhile to work the "bugs" out of the system. However, in 2003, Kapolei High Schools scores dropped to 31 percent proficiency in reading and 8 percent proficiency in math. This school, along with all other high schools in Hawaii, failed to meet Adequate Yearly Progress under federal No Child Left Behind Act. They met the state target of 30 percent reading proficiency and 10 percent math proficiency by dropping special education and English as Second Language students from the results, and only 90 percent of the students were tested.

Paying for Failure

Dr. William Ouchi of UCLA’s Anderson School of Management and Dr. Bruce Cooper of Fordham University completed a fiscal study of Hawaii’s schools in 2002 and found Hawaii is spending $10,422 per student annually. That equates to expenditures of $261,000 per classroom and $14 million a year at Kapolei High School alone. Why then are 8 students out of every 10, statewide, not able to complete their math at grade level? Why are 6 out of every 10 students not reading at grade level? Why do taxpayers continue to pay almost $2 billion per year for the DOE’s failure to ensure that the 3 Rs -- so critical to individual success in today’s society -- are taught?

Perhaps the Kapolei parent survey return rate at a dismal 18 percent is indicative of a dismissive attitude among parents. They see the pretty campus; their children are in air-conditioned rooms; they think everything is fine. They do not understand the foundation is faltering and the odds their children will be among those who fail to meet performance standards is essentially guaranteed.

The lesson of Kapolei's education system is money is not the reason for non-performance in Hawaii’s schools, nor are parent education, income and family background influence the resources available to a child. These factors are not core determinants of a child’s academic success, but could help the child, so long as the core curriculum and qualified teachers, are not missing.

Reinventing Education

Department of Education Superintendent Pat Hamamoto testified to the state Legislature this year that the public school system is "broken, obsolete" and needs to be "reinvented."

The Democratic Party complied and passed Act 51, "The Reinventing Education Act of 2004", after bucking Gov. Lingle’s call for decentralization and local oversight of public school fiscal and academic performance.

Act 51 essentially throws more money at the exact same system that fails the majority of Hawaii’s public school children today. "Reform" means to remake by removing defects; "reinvent" means to start over, as in "reinventing the wheel."

For example, the law will not result in any changes to Board of Education policies beyond eliminating the School Community Based Management councils which will now be replaced with the School Community Councils. Union contracts still will control decisions made at all levels.

Despite much talk about revamping Department of Education expenditures, the law only calls for a committee to discuss and report on replacing the state-controlled staff allotment system with a "weighted student formula" or per pupil funding based on the needs of the child this year.

Most of the law does not go into effect until 2006 and is "subject to change upon further notice."

Parents and community members must decide now if they will accept only cosmetic changes to the school system allowing children to continue to fall through the cracks.

Sources:

http://www.greaterexpectations.org/briefing_papers/BreakingRanks.html

http://arch.k12.hi.us/pdf/ssir/2003/Leeward/SSIR292.pdf

Originally published on HawaiiReporter.com on 8/26/04.