Gathering Places
Gathering Places
THE PRIMARY PROBLEM with our public school system is the chronic mismanagement of the Department of Education. Here are four initiatives that would serve as a catalyst for effective educational reform: ABC’s of
education reform>> Audits: Hawaii's children and their teachers are burdened with a bureaucracy that can spend over a billion dollars each year with zero accountability. For years, our state auditor, Marion Higa, has exposed deficiencies in allocation and expenditures within the DOE But nothing has been done. Nobody seems accountable for the recommendations or the criticisms of our auditor.
There needs to be accountability based on her findings and actions taken to ensure that our classrooms are appropriately supplied and maintained to promote a conducive learning environment for our children.
Continuing audits should follow up with a management audit of the DOE that would identify each individual on the payroll and his or her function as it relates to educating our children.
Finally, state leaders should demand an audit of school facilities to assure that each school is allotted the proper provisions so that our children can be effectively educated.
>> Accountability: This requires a logical, clear, and direct scope and sequence at each grade level that delineates what children are required to learn in each critical discipline. Performance standards fall short of implementing a cohesive or sequential academic paradigm that can be quantified. Currently, most of Hawaii's Performance Standards are lumped into large clusters for grades K-3, 4-5, 6-8, and 9-12.
Trying to implement standards in this form is futile, with inherent duplications and omissions. Performance standards should be mandated at each grade level and students tested yearly based on those standards.
The Board of Education and the DOE also need to develop accountability standards for parents and students. It is difficult to educate a student to a standard when the child does not come to school adequately prepared to learn. If the student chooses not to do his or her class work and homework, or is continually disruptive, at some point the responsibility of learning must shift from the teacher to the student and parent.
>> Discipline: The power of proper discipline in many of Hawaii's public schools has been taken out of the hands of educators. Irresponsible behavior has become socially acceptable and encourages a lack of individual responsibility.
We diminish our children's future by allowing a sense of compassion to cater to a few who are manipulating a system and the people who represent it. The needs of these few are eclipsing the needs of the majority. It appears that equity has become a forgotten factor in our public schools.
>> Salary: Like it or not, we are competing with other states for the best teachers and we are losing. Every day, 55 classes are taught by unqualified individuals, 69 classes are not offered, and 149 classes are currently being taught by a substitute because there are enough qualified teachers.
The state of Nevada pays junior teachers nearly $40,000 a year. Hawaii should be in the same league. Education will never improve in Hawaii if increasing numbers of teachers are unqualified and schools are understaffed.
D. Perry Alexander is an elementary school teacher.