Educational Decree
Here's the full version of a commentary by Board of Education Chairman Garrett Toguchi that appeared in Sunday's Honolulu Advertiser.
Education is everyone’s business
By Garrett Toguchi
Public education emerged as a dominant issue in the 2010 State Legislature, largely because of furloughs created by an unprecedented, nearly half-a-billion dollar budget cut to Hawaii’s schools.
The furloughs have kept students and educators out of classrooms, understandably sparking community uproar. Unfortunately, some critics want to take advantage of the furlough discontent to push for unproven legislation disguised as education reform: Senate Bills 2570, 2571 and House Bills 2376 and 2377.
Those measures would let the governor appoint Board of Education members without public involvement, taking away people’s right to be candidates for the BOE or to elect and hold members accountable.
Instead of representing parents, students and educators, appointed BOE members would have just one constituent: the governor who selects the member to office and unilaterally controls the educational agenda and budget. This would politicize education, silence the public’s voice, and eliminate the independent advocacy of a nonpartisan BOE.
Lost would be the advocacy that allowed the elected BOE to stand up against Governor Lingle’s directive to furlough teachers for 36 days annually in a budget-balancing move focused on dollars, not children.
The BOE urged lawmakers and the governor to prioritize education, warning that shortchanging students – Hawaii’s future leaders and workforce – jeopardizes the prosperity of our state. However, Governor Lingle imposed on schools the same roughly 14 percent restriction given to all state agencies, making it clear education was not a priority.
Instead of furloughing schools three days monthly, as the governor sought, the BOE protected instructional days by reducing funds for part-time jobs and supplies, closing a school, eliminating hundreds of positions and leaving vacancies unfilled.
The BOE, the Education Department, the Hawaii State Teachers Association and Governor Lingle then agreed to 17 annual furloughs to absorb a $473 million cut without resorting to mass layoffs and larger class sizes – actions that would have lowered educational quality instead of quantity, while increasing the unemployment line and the economic burden on our state.
Secondly, there is no indication the governance model of school boards correlate with educational quality, which is the underlying goal of true education reform.
The Maryland Association of School Boards, which represents elected and appointed boards, concluded “there is no evidence” that either structure “is more effective or accountable.” Eight of the bottom ten states in the Quality Counts 2010 national educational ranking have appointed school boards.
Meanwhile, critics ignore that student achievement and teacher quality in Hawaii has been modestly but steadily improving:
• Since 2003, reading proficiency in the Hawaii State Assessment rose to 65 percent from 41 percent. Math proficiency jumped to 44 percent from 20 percent. The 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress placed Hawaii among the country’s leaders in gains in 4th-grade math from 2000 to 2009, and in 8th-grade math from 2007 to 2009.
• Statewide, the percentage of highly-qualified teachers reached 72.9 percent in the 2008-09 school year, up from 68.8 percent the year before. The number of Hawaii teachers obtaining National Board Certification grew by 75 percent between 2006 and 2008, outpacing the 54 percent national increase.
• The ACT Assessment scores of Hawaii's college-bound public and private school students has exceeded or met the national average for nine consecutive years. More than 1,000 students from 45 public schools have pledged to complete a new BOE Recognition Diploma, which will better prepare them for college and a career through challenging courses in math, science, writing, and a senior project.
• Last year, 2,412 public school students were awarded a combined $52.7 million in scholarships, up from 1,898 students who received $39 million in 2005.
Hawaii’s education system, as well as the nation’s, must continue to change for the better so students can compete globally. But to discount Hawaii’s gains by labeling the system “broken” is a disservice to hard-working students, teachers, and administrators, as well as counterproductive if we are genuinely interested in reproducing success.
The challenge is to accelerate academic growth and spread it to every school.
Ask any educator, and they will tell you that improvements happen when the system is supported with adequate resources, facilities, a rigorous curriculum, effective leaders and teachers, as well as community involvement. Therefore, contrary to those wanting educational accountability to rest solely on the governor, all decision-makers and stakeholders must be held responsible, including the BOE, the Superintendent, the Legislature, parents and students, because they all play a role in ensuring all students graduates on time, ready for college and a career.
In order for us to collaborate and achieve results, it is also imperative that we clear up misconceptions, specifically regarding the DOE’s $1.7 billion budget, which critics love to inflate and equate to a bureaucracy.
If by bureaucracy, they mean responsibilities, they are right. But they are wrong if they believe students aren’t being served.
In recent years, the state, and the federal government’s No Child Left Behind Law, shifted many duties, along with millions of dollars, to the DOE, including testing, student transportation, special education, and employee benefits. Some examples:
• In 2001, some $200 million was added to the DOE’s budget for health, pension, social security, and other employee expenses. These funds comprised more than $500 million of the DOE’s budget by 2006, before being correctly moved back to the Budget and Finance Department this fiscal year.
• Also in 2001, night security, busing, and repair and maintenance projects formerly under the Department of Accounting and General Services became the DOE’s responsibility. Those expenses keep rising as energy costs, inflation and salaries go up.
• Expenditures to comply with the Felix Consent Decree climbed to nearly $300 million in 2006 from some $75 million in 1997. Today, $540 million is spent on special education.
These additional tasks and dollars support students through bus transportation, facilities maintenance, special education, and so on. Hawaii’s education budget has grown to pay for added responsibilities, not a bureaucracy.
Today, 94 percent of the DOE’s budget flows to schools, with just six percent going to state administration, which includes a wide range of services such as human resources, federal compliance reports, testing, curriculum planning and analysis, and technology support.
In fact, between 1987 and 1999, Hawaii consistently ranked below the national average in state expenditures on public education and last among the comparable states of Nebraska, Wyoming, Rhode Island, and Delaware, according to data from the National Center on Education Statistics.
U.S. Census figures show that in 2006, Hawaii allocated only 29.5 percent of state expenditures on public education, below the 34.3 percent national average – a figure that does not factor Hawaii’s high living cost.
Today, Hawaii’s schools face additional cuts of as much as $78 million. Districts nationwide have taken drastic actions such as eliminating kindergarten and afterschool programs, discontinuing math and science programs, curtailing special education services, laying off thousands of teachers, and adopting furloughs.
Residents here and in other states have been justifiably concerned with decreasing resources for public schools, and they have rightfully protested.
Investing in education benefits all of us socially and economically by lowering costs to fight crime, drug use, and homelessness, or to help teen parents and provide health care. High school graduates earn about $1 million more over a lifetime than a dropout, contributing just as much more in taxes, according to the U.S. Census.
How to best support students should always be a top priority. It is a must-have conversation regardless of the state’s financial health because public education is as vital to lift us out of a recession as it is to drive and sustain economic growth and diversification.
To truly put children’s interests first, education must be prioritized in both good and bad times to support meaningful initiatives that will lead to better opportunities for all students.
The U.S. Department of Education’s Race to the Top program, which identifies four key reforms, does not suggest an appointed BOE as an ingredient for academic growth. Instead, the largest federal grant contest in our nation’s history rewards states pursuing proven reforms through higher standards, quality assessments, data systems and teacher quality programs – all areas that Hawaii’s Education Department has embarked on.
Proposals to appoint BOE members ignore real educational challenges and solutions while giving people false hope. Hawaii voters know better, having twice soundly rejected legislation to give up their rights through an appointed BOE.
Education is everyone’s business, not just the governor’s, and accountability and responsibility must be shared by all.
I’m pretty sure my laughing was not the appropriate reaction to Professor Umbridge’s announcement of Educational Decree #25, granting her the ability to oversee all disciplinary actions at Hogwarts (and thus bringing an abrupt end to Harry’s Quidditch career).
But I laughed all the same, because the character of Umbridge and her unrelenting reign of terror over Hogwarts has steamrolled unabashadly into absurdest territory. Order of Phoenix, moreso than its predecessors, has presented itself as anything but a children’s book in every way except Umbridge, who seems to be born and bread for the children’s genre. What better way to turn a young audience against a character than to make her an authority figure who abuses her power to such an extreme, it leaves readers reeling at the injustice. One of the greatest frustrations of growing up is running headlong into adults who can render you powerless simply by the fact that they’re adults and you are not.
So while I don’t like Umbridge, I enjoy not liking her. I’m even going to argue that she is the “light” part of this book (if there’s going to be a light part). She’s downright awful, but when compared to the murderous wizards inevitably lurking later in the story, she’s child’s play.
However, there is admittedly a pretty dark tinge to the light parts of Order of the Phoenix. Something should be said for the fact that a teacher carving up a student’s hand is tame when compared to the rest of the book.
But perhaps Umbridge’s greatest offense is not her physical mistreatment of Harry, or the way she wields her power over Hogwarts. I think the most unsettling aspect of this character is how she so effortlessly silences a student who watched his classmate die. And I wonder if that part, which is only a small part of the whole picture, really sinks in with the youngest readers (you know, the ones who probably shouldn’t be reading this book yet), or maybe the fact that Harry can’t play Quiddich anymore is the greatest injustice for them.
Perhaps Umbridge’s impact in the book is actually intensified by the fact that Harry is so annoyingly “woe is me” at this stage. He is convinced everyone and everybody is out to get him (and yes, he may be pretty on track with that, but could he be more angsty about it?), that having a character actually out to get him comes on like gangbusters!
Granted, I’m only about halfway through the book, so all this may change. Umbridge may turn into a murdering lunatic and Harry may turn out to be completely justifed in his frequent emotional breakdowns. I’m only going off what I’ve read already.
