SAT scores tell little about learning

I wonder why anyone persists in using the SAT as a metric to determine how or what students learn in schools. The article in the Aug. 31 Star-Bulletin ("Hawaii below average on SAT") was much ado about nothing.

SAT scores neither predict how students will fare in college nor do they reflect what they have learned or accomplished in school. There is no way to use SAT as a measure of how effective instruction might be. SAT scores being high do not necessarily mean that students are learning more in school, and declining scores do not necessarily reflect less learning.

The unfortunate consequence of pretending that any high-stakes tests are a measure of our effectiveness as educators is that educational issues get oversimplified and sensationalized.

Presumed knowledge is more dangerous than ignorance in this situation. I hope in the future the media engage the public in serious discourse about education without resorting to oversimplification, or sensational headlines. Our students and community deserve better.

Let the band play on at UH football games

People keep missing the point when it comes to Coach June Jones and his recorded music at football games.

I suppose that recorded music is the norm at professional football games. That's fine. However, UH is not a professional team. They are a college team, and college teams have marching bands. It's tradition!

My question is why didn't Jones work with the marching band? The last time that he tried to bring in recorded music, the idea did not fly with them. I'm surprised that they haven't raised a louder ruckus over this. There is no other way to phrase it; Jones is stepping over the band's purpose.

After Saturday's loss to Florida Atlantic, it's obvious that Jones should be more concerned about his team and less concerned about marketing strategies and music.

UH suffers identity crisis under Jones

On top of a loss to little known Florida-Atlantic in Saturday's season opener, UH football fans witnessed another loss at Aloha Stadium; the loss of the band playing "Hawaii Five-0," regarded by many as a great unofficial fight song for all UH sports.

Upon taking over as coach several seasons ago, June Jones did away with the "Five-0" music as the team ran onto the field, but the band continued to play it at various times during the games. Saturday night, new canned music tracks that are more suited for a show at the Polynesian Cultural Center than a Rainbow Warrior football game were unveiled. For the first time in more than 30 years, "Five-0" was not played during a UH game. A band member told me afterward, they've been instructed by Jones to never play it while he's on the sideline. How silly and sad is that?

First, Jones arbitrarily drops the name "Rainbow" from Rainbow Warriors, drops the rainbow image from the logo and changes it to an "H" that looks like it's been run over by a truck, adds black and silver to the school's official colors of green and white, and now he bans the uplifting "Hawaii Five-0" music. I greatly respect what Jones has done with the program on the field, but are no traditions established before the Jones era worth preserving? Apparently not, in the coach's mind.

Where is Athletic Director Herman Frazier while all these traditions are being dumped? What a chaotic mess college sports would be if across the country, all new coaches were allowed to arbitrarily change the team's name, logo, colors and music associated with the team. Why has it been allowed to happen at UH?

Windward shoppers wants a big-box store

When I lived in Makaha, I would have been happy when the new Home Depot decided to open up a new store eight minutes driving time closer to me than the Pearl City store. Now that I live in in Punaluu, I find it somewhat frustrating that all three stores on this 40-mile-wide island are all more than an hour's drive from me and my home remodeling business.

So now Wal-Mart is planning a store that will save Waianae Coast residents four whole minutes from driving all the way to the store in Kunia. Are they planning to close that store?

You want to reduce traffic on the H-1? Put some of these stores on the Kaneohe side. I'm sure the hundreds of thousands of Windward residents would enjoy not facing the traffic. Hello Lowe's Home Improvement Center? Are you listening?

Hawaii needs to guard against invasive plants

Before foreigners arrived in Hawaii, plant species found their way to Hawaii at the rate of one species every 50,000 years. In the last 200 years, more than 4,600 species of plants have been introduced to our island home.

If our state can be so conscientious in regulating what animal species are brought into Hawaii, why aren't we regulating harmful plant species as well? New Zealand does. While the United States has been focusing on homeland security, New Zealand has created biosecurity: strict limitations on animals, forest products and plants that enter their island.

Hawaii needs to follow this innovator in conservation. Otherwise, native species such as koa, mamake and mamane, won't have a chance to survive. More than 900 of these plant species were recently sown at Kilauea by an inter-school service retreat. Don't let the hardwork of these teens go to waste. Educate yourself about the invasive plant species wrecking Hawaii's fragile environment.

HECO deserves praise for underground lines

For years HECO has been criticized for running its transmission lines above ground on towers and poles. Now when HECO wants to underground transmission lines it is criticized about costs and health hazards (Star-Bulletin, Aug. 29).

It's more costly to go underground, but what's the cost of having to replace downed lines and poles after a hurricane? Buried lines put into conduit and surrounded by concrete provide way more shielding of electric currents than overhead lines, plus it's clearly more aesthetic. This is one HECO proposal we should support.