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Education expert
lauds isle strategy
on standards
'Hawaii is doing the right thing,
By Crystal Kua
developing standards ... having
lots of people involved'
Star-BulletinThe visitor standing behind Ryan Sanehira's chair marveled at the computer mastery exhibited by the seventh grader at Mililani Middle School.
"He's photographing everyone here and we're going to run it back in 26 seconds -- with music," the man said yesterday, sounding like a play-by-play announcer. "This level of sophistication, this is normally what you find in a high school, not in a middle school."
While Sanehira clicked away at his digital creation, he probably didn't realize that he was also helping experts devise a future test.
That's because the visitor, Mark Musick, heads a national panel which oversees a testing program used by most states -- including Hawaii -- to gauge how well fourth- and eighth-grade students are doing in subjects such as math, science, reading and writing, compared to their peers from other parts of the country and the nation as a whole.
Musick is chairman of the National Assessment Governing Board. He and 21 members of the board are meeting in Honolulu through this weekend to discuss issues relating to the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
The board sets policy for NAEP, nicknamed the Nation's Report Card, and its responsibilities include selecting the subject areas to be tested, approving all tests, and taking actions to improve the national assessment if needed. The Hawaii Board of Education chairman, Mitsugi Nakashima, is on the assessment board.
Eighth-graders at Millilani Middle School took the NAEP science and math tests last month.
Hawaii hasn't done well in recent tests. In the 1998 reading and writing tests, results of which were released last year, Hawaii placed last in reading and 26th in writing among the 39 states that took the tests.
As the governing board meets in Hawaii during the same time state schools Superintendent Paul LeMahieu is devising a test to measure how well public school students are meeting recently revised academic standards, Musick said the state could be on the road to improvement and NAEP can be of great help.
"When you get your test results from your students on your test and on the national assessment test, you need to be courageous and open and put both of those on the table and see if they're both telling you the same thing," he said.
"I think Hawaii is doing the right thing, developing standards, arguing about them, discussing them, having lots of people involved in what they should be.
"And where NAEP can help is as you argue about them, try to agree about things, see what NAEP has to say and see what other states have to say."
The board toured Mililani Mauka Elementary and Mililani Middle School yesterday to see how those schools use technology in their lessons.
He said it helps the board when it goes around the country visiting schools and talking to administrators, teachers, students and others.
After observing Sanehira in action, Musick said he was impressed. "The technology at this school clearly shows that they could do an eighth-grade math assessment."
