Should the Board of Education continue to have statewide responsibility? Should its members be elected or appointed?

[Peter Kay]

Inspired by "Time for a Tune Up", by Jon M. Van Dyke, Honolulu Advertiser, May 18

[Crystal]

Mahalo so very much for this. Simply and yet grandly awesome.

[Peter Kay]

OK, you are the "chosen ones". Are you ready to go to the next level? Lets actually revise Article X!

I created a separate "pbwiki" (like Wikipedia but easier to edit) site with the whole constitution (see link @ top bar). For Article X, specifically, we have this:

The original Article X page, which is protected from changes.

A "revised Article X" page, which can be edited by any registered pbwiki user.

The idea being that you folks discussed the issue here and actually proposed changes. Now lets actually perform those edits using pbwiki until we're 100% happy with the results.

Wanna play? Here's all you need to do:

1. Go to the pbwiki contact page and fill it out. Make a note that this is for Article X.

2. I'll get your message, then send you an invite to the site.

3. Sign up and you can start editing the revised page.

When we're done, we will have essentially completed a genuine ConCon activity. Very cool.

I'm standing by, hoping you'll join me in this grand experiment.

[Peter Kay]

Oh..one more thing: when you sign up on pbwiki, use the same identity/name you have here so that for example the JK we know and love here is the same JK over there.

Hopefully as we grow we can figure out a way to integrate the two different systems, but for now we'll have to live w/ 2 different systems to log into.

[Marty]

I agree with almost all of this except for number of districts. I would recommend districts: two districts for the County of Hawaii, one for the Hilo side and one for Kona side; one district for Maui County, including Lanai, Molokai; one for Kauai County, including Niihau; four districts for Honolulu County, Honolulu, West Oahu, Central Oahu and Windward Oahu.
For the State Board of Regents, one representive from each district and State Superintendent of Education, appointed by Governor and approved by Senate.

[Al Beeman]

I really like the number of districts and the way they are allocated. However I do not think there should be a State Superintendent of Education at all. Regents should be appointed and removed by their respective Districts. The Regents can elect their own head from amongst the Regents if they really feel they need one. The state bureaucracy has already proven that it needs to get out of the education business, its only role should be auditing funds allocated to each district by the Legislature.

[Rick M.]

Wait a minute! Why is a disabled child worth more than a regular child?

This is the kind of thing that got us into the educational mess to begin with.

All our resources are going to those who can use them the least. And our regular and bright kids are being ignored and short-changed.

[Rick M.]

I agree with your changes to section 2 and 3. I like your style. Specific. Real.

[Rick M.]

It occurs to me that just in case we don't get the Constitutional Convention, we should draft this as a stand alone amendment and see if we can get someone in the Legislature to introduce it.

Also, it seems to me we could draft a law directing the Superintendent to establish local school boards which can be done outside the constitution and just passed legislatively.

Let's get started on a 3-pronged attack, right now!

[jk]

Rick, A disabled child is not worth more than a regular child. But it's just a simple fact of life that more resources are needed to teach a disabled child. We live in a society that placed a high priority on making an appropriate education available to all children.

[John Mussack]

Aloha Rick & jk!
I would like to see both of you learn a little more about disabilities. First of all, Rick, disabled children are just as bright as non-disabled children, except for the small percentage who are in the category of mentally retarded. About half a percent of Hawaii's students are labeled retarded, while about 12-15% have some other kind of disability. Rick, have you never heard of Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, or Leonardo da Vinci? They all had learning disabilities. What about the most prominent scientist of our day, Stephen Hawking, who is too disabled even to talk, or President Franklin Roosevelt, who used a wheelchair, or New York Governor David Paterson, who is blind? Don't you think any of them were bright?

Jk, your heart is in the right place. However, I think you, too, are a victim of the education establishment's propaganda. In most cases, it does not require any greater expenditure of resources to educate a child with a disability. All that it does require is flexibility and common sense. The DOE could easily be obeying the special education laws without any more expenditure of money, any more effort, or any more personnel, in most cases. But the DOE wants you and Rick to think that it will cost a lot more money before they can obey those pesky laws. All the DOE is really afraid of, however, is being told what to do.

Please don't fall for the DOE's propaganda. Find out what disabilities are all about, and don't give in to uninformed stereotypes.

Mahalo!

[Peter Kay]

IMO: While I'm pretty much a "free market" kinda guy myself, I definitely feel that government aid should go to those that truly cannot help themselves. Disabled students are definitely in that category.

I always wondered how schools are coping with having to balance those priorities and often considered if our school system would be better off if there was a school (or two) on Oahu that would exclusively deal with disabled children.

[Curtis Muraoka]

Long winded reply:

Successful School Restructuring (I’m about to rain on some parades, so apologies in advance…)
A five-year study by University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers found that structural school reform works only under certain conditions:
1. Students must be engaged in activities that build on prior knowledge and allow them to apply that knowledge to new situations.
2. Students must use disciplined inquiry.
3. School activities must have value beyond school.
In their report, "Successful School Restructuring," the researchers at Wisconsin's Center on Organization and Restructuring of Schools found that even innovative school improvements, such as portfolio assessment and shared decision making, are less effective without accompanying meaningful student assignments based on deep inquiry. Researchers analyzed data from more than 1,500 elementary, middle, and high schools and conducted field studies in forty-four schools in sixteen states between 1990 and 1995. (Source: Edutopia—George Lucas Educational Foundation, 2001)
In other words:
1) Reform must be student centered, and involve applied knowledge (projects).
2) Reform must be student centered, and use guided inquiry (open-ended, long-term projects).
3) Reform must be student centered in the context of their families, communities and personal interests (place-based, real-world projects).

Nowhere is it indicated that kids’ problems can be solved by reorganizing adults’ problems. A business that ignores its clients’ needs doesn’t survive unless it is a monopoly.

I really believe deeply and strongly that if you want to change education, you can’t just set up multiple districts and hope for autonomy to be a panacea—more importantly you also have to sanction and guide curricular change within the whole stakeholder community.

Machiavelli tells us why (and you tell me if he wasn’t a time traveler describing our DOE 500 years ago):
"There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order, this luke warmness arising partly from fear of their adversaries … and partly from the incredulity of mankind, who do not truly believe in anything new until they have had actual experience of it."

This very “incredulity of mankind” is why you cannot just wipe away the BOE, and then cut loose 15 or 42 or however many new districts without first considering curricular models that demonstrate how they might make good use of their autonomy right away.

With luck and visionary leadership, such models toward change may eventually arise spontaneously if districts first set up innovative curricular experiments. Then again, a newly constituted, autonomous district tasked with reinventing the proverbial (curricular) wheel WHILE ALSO managing autonomous governance structures may likely hobble along for a while on its remaining familiar structures before entropy finally sets in.

In the context of Hawaii’s education milieu, one should really take a serious look at charter schools. Although none are perfect, many are highly effective in both pedagogy and governance methods. Many are quite instructive as R&D initiatives that can be replicated in each and every district. Several charter schools are just flat out better than a majority of their DOE peers by any practical measure you care to apply.

Before I go further, I have to say this: Hawaii charter schools are NOT for-profit operations, NOR a bridge to vouchers, NOR a means for religious schools to get public money. Nor are they a threat to the DOE. Those who benefit from preserving the status quo spout obtuse and disingenuous shibai like this about charters all the time. I wish they would simply stop.

Hawaii charters are in fact quite unlike their mainland counterparts. Here in the middle of the sea, they are the very embodiment of democratic grass roots reform, and are among the most successful innovation initiatives occurring in our state government today. Period.

Charters complement DOE programs, providing innovative service to underserved segments of the taxpaying public. They account for 2.4% of public education dollars, yet educate 4.6% of public school children.

Consider: My main concern is that the DOE system itself cannot simply be overturned and reinvented. The energy required to make wholesale changes to a large system is normally what dooms initiatives to failure. The sentiment of simply breaking it apart into a scattering of smaller school districts is just not going to work. I’m sorry if you disagree, but me and Machiavelli are on the same page here.

We do all agree that in order to bring meaningful change to education, community stakeholders need to have meaningful say, so let’s start there. The Constitution already appears to support the notion of grass root initiatives like place-based, community-run schools and/or community focused academies via Article X, Section 4 (“The State shall promote the study of Hawaiian culture, history and language.”). It is clearly implicit to me that this means within every complex there is room for Hawaiian-focused programs in the DOE. In that absence, and where demand dictated, charter schools have arisen.

With that said, I think the DOE should be changed via external forces—market forces, if you will. Change must come from the outside incrementally by setting up autonomous programs with the potential to prove they are effective, and then be used as models to modify the larger system. This is exactly what the Hawaii charter school movement is doing right now. In concept they are kindred spirits with the Castle High School Theatre, established via Ron Bright’s genius and honest sweat. In practice they are akin to Waverider Productions, which took much political will and community support to establish. These and charters are exactly the type of inroads toward Machiavelli’s “incredulity of mankind” that must be encouraged by the tools of government.

A constitutional change that supports such initiatives, both from the DOE side and the community based charter school side, is the most effective avenue toward permanent change.

I think of public transportation as a fair allegory of the DOE/BOE bureaucracy—perhaps very much like an old style locomotive chugging along. The BOE holds as much control as the guy who yells, “All aboard!”, and takes tickets from passengers. No one really thinks he’s in charge of the whole operation, except maybe him. But he CAN hold up the whole rig capriciously if he so chooses.

A Con Con certainly can make meaningful changes without attempting a wholesale gut-and-retrofit.
1. The way the BOE is assembled, and their self-serving nature are big problems that can be fixed by creating an appointed body that puts accountability squarely at the feet of the Governor
2. Its status as exclusive overseer of all public education can also be set aside to make room for unmolested competition from charter schools or other autonomous education initiatives. Big Business allows their R&D to operate unfettered by the engineers and bean-counters over at the main plant—this seems a sound approach for education as well. Let charters, magnet schools, et cetera create reform models for the rest of the system.

The BOE is ineffectual at initiating change. The Governor is insulated from initiating broad education policy. The legislature is often misguided by special interests. The Bureaucracy is resistant. And the Superintendent, beholden to the BOE, is not particularly tasked with revolution and transformation, even amid crisis.

A simple increase in accountability at the top is the way to go. Preserve the state BOE as a body, but place it squarely under the Executive Branch. If schools are junk, the Governor and appointees are directly answerable.

There is indeed room for the idea of locally elected boards of education within the districts, in fact, I totally agree with that as a part of what needs to happen. It preserves voters’ choice, and would serve to greatly enhance local control, while still retaining statewide oversight.