Student academic club
faces funding shortfallAcademic Decathlon has helped
motivate some students to excel
HILO >> When Stan Nakanishi was a student at Hilo High School a decade ago, he skipped classes up to three times a week, month after month. But he never missed study sessions with the school's academic decathlon team.
Nakanishi is now a student at Emory University in Georgia completing his doctorate in neuroscience.
"I absolutely believe part of the reason I have the confidence (to obtain a doctorate) came from Academic Decathlon. This is a great program," he said.
He credits it with keeping him from flunking out of high school.
Whether the program will continue to save intelligent but sometimes unmotivated students is now up in the air.
A nationwide program with national competitions, Academic Decathlon has operated in Hawaii public schools for 14 years with the approval and financial aid of the state Department of Education.
This year, the department continued the approval but withdrew the financing.
The exact amount it had been spending was not clear, but people working to revive the program think $50,000 would do the job statewide.
Joanne Swearingen, administrator for the department's gifted-and-talented program, said the problem with the program was that not enough students were benefiting from it.
"Maybe it was because Hilo High School was so good," she said.
The first two years, Waiakea High School in Hilo won statewide. The next 12 years, Hilo High won, and the feeling apparently went around that it was pointless to compete against Hilo.
The Academic Decathlon also lacks the heart-pounding thrill of a basketball or football game. Decathlon teams spend enormous amounts of time studying. Competition consists mostly of taking multiple-choice tests, plus one event structured something like a television quiz show.
But participants talk about the excitement of competition the way ball players do. The feeling is, "Yeah, I can beat you," said doctoral candidate Nakanishi.
There is also a lot of team spirit.
"You're with them as much as you're with your own family," said recent Hilo High graduate Brian Cama, who went from being a C student to an A student during four years in the program.
The change in status of the program could actually make it blossom. The intent is to expand competition to include private schools, said educational consultant Sharyn Hirata, who brought the program to Hilo 14 years ago.
Hilo High team coach Dane Nelson will be moving to the Keaau campus of Kamehameha Schools next year, starting a team there and assuring competition.
Judith Fox-Goldstein, at the University of Hawaii at Hilo, is planning for space at the university for competitions.
Les Martisko, nationwide administrative consultant for the program with homes in Minnesota and on the Big Island, is trying to bring the national competition to Hawaii in 2007.
In the meantime, the Hawaii program is seeking to raise $50,000.