Hawaii’s World

By A.A. Smyser

Tuesday, January 12, 1999

---

Raising expectations
for Hawaii schools

CAN a superintendent of education be compared with a pro football coach? I hope so, because I see similarities between our new Hawaii superintendent, Paul LeMahieu, and Bill Parcells, the coach who turned the New York Jets from losers into winners.

The Jets won one game, lost 15 in 1996. Then Parcells took over. In the season just ended they were 12-4, became division champions and could go to the Super Bowl.

Parcells brought in a key player or two but basically worked with players on hand when he came.

He told them he would expect more of them, changed their training camp atmosphere from country club to boot camp, and kept goading them to do their best.

When the Jets took a 27-3 lead by halftime at their 1997 opening game he skipped praise in the locker room. He instead regaled them with tales of predecessor Jet teams blowing such leads. Final score: 41-3.

Whether the record of the nearly 250 Hawaii public schools is as bad as 1-15 can be debated, but there is no question that for at least 30 years we have been giving diplomas to seniors who haven't been educated to anywhere near the limit of their capabilities.

Enter Paul LeMahieu.

I don't know him personally but I have heard him make three public speeches. The Parcells comparison is viable. The most important single thing we need for our schools, he says, is raised expectations.

Student-teacher interaction is key. To get it, we must expect more of everybody, both players and support teams -- students, teachers, principals, staff, parents, the community.

Today he sees great unevenness throughout our system. We need strong measures of accountability based on high standards for all.

To the Honolulu Rotary Club he offered his own list of nine critical issues defining the debate on accountability. I paraphrase:

Match accountability with authority.

Match high standards with serious consequences.

Have a timeline. Don't let patience be an excuse for not performing.

Use multiple measures and multiple indicators of accountability.

In weighing individual vs. group accountability remember that student learning is a group undertaking.

Support success.

Resolve complexity vs. fairness issues with goals simple enough to be understood by all.

Seek equity.

Expect difficulties. Don't consider ideas to be failed ones just because they encounter difficulty.

This is my favorite point of all. He surely will encounter immense inertia in many constituencies. We all must root for him to stay on the course of high expectations matched by measures of accountability. It's the closest thing to a winner voiced around here in a long time.

BILL Parcells revived a couple of teams before he asked for the turn-around job with the New York Jets.

In some ways the Hawaii job is LeMahieu's first time out of the box. He has been researching and writing on the problems of education, winning national high regard in the process.

Now, like Parcells, he has offered to exchange a comfortable job for a tough one. He chose a state he learned to love when he was younger. I hope we all will come to love our Board of Education for choosing him.

---

A.A. Smyser is the contributing editor
and former editor of the the Star-Bulletin
His column runs Tuesday and Thursday.