Why not just ban alcohol at UH?

This silly pussy-footing at the University of Hawaii about the drinking problem is getting tiresome. How about simply saying "No drinking on campus. Drink and you're OUT."

Alcohol has been proven without question to be dangerous and deadly. And for the most part, unnecessary. If learning how to handle liquor is part of the students' education, let them do that on their dime, not mine, off campus. The public's hard-earned monetary support of UH's presence is not intended for this particular education/edification/indulgence.

Kaiulani kids showed concern for others

Kudos to the 440 kids at Kaiulani Elementary School in Kalihi for raising $11,732.51 in just a few short months for the victims of the Dec 26 tsunami in South Asia (Star-Bulletin, April 13). I can only imagine the drive these students had behind them and I for one am very impressed with their effort. They did this out of concern for others and it's something they chose to do, not something they had to do.

I read this story and felt extreme pride that our own local kids could accomplish something like this in such a short period of time. To the kids who go to Kaiulani, congrats, you all did well and can carry that with you for life!

Tuition hikes make it tough to get education

The University of Hawaii Board of Regents is planning to double tuition through the next five years. Governor Lingle, who appointed most of the regents, campaigned on a pro- education platform, and will soon be up for re-election.

She favored pay raises for faculty and those costs are now being passed on to students through tuition increases, making it even harder for them to get an education.

What is our governor doing? Why would she not invest in the education of Hawaii's people like she led us to believe she would?

This is our community, and we have the power to influence what will happen here. Let Lingle and the Board of Regents know that passing the costs to the students is not a wise decision.

To improve education, pass gov 's initiatives

Contrary to comments made by Rep. Roy Takumi about Act 51, the Reinventing Education Act of 2004 ("Act 51 will require much more money," March 18), the Lingle-Aiona administration is working in a bipartisan manner to implement this measure.

The House Education Committee chairman seems to think that simply more money is the solution to the challenges facing the Department of Education.

As parents with three children in our public schools, we know that the state already spends more than $1.9 billion per year on education, which per capita makes Hawaii one of the more well-funded public school systems in the country. The problem is that too much of that money goes to the DOE bureaucracy and too little gets down to the schools.

Rather than constantly calling for more spending, we suggest Takumi and other legislators turn their attention to passing Governor Lingle's latest education initiatives, which include not only robust funding for kindergarten on up through the university, but also funding to early childhood education, preschool child care and Preschool Open Doors. These measures focus on helping our keiki in their earliest stages of mental development to be prepared academically and socially before they enter kindergarten.

We owe it to our keiki and our teachers to make Hawaii's public schools as good as they can be. But it means enacting meaningful reforms and getting the dollars down to the schools, not just sending more money to the central headquarters of the DOE.

China in no position to criticize Japan

I am the first to admit that Japan did many horrible things during World War II and before to the Chinese people, but to have China complain about Japan not telling about its crimes is laughable. What about all of the horrible things that China has done to its own populace in the name of "freedom"? I think that the Chinese government should own up to its own crimes.

State workers bungle too many of their jobs

Is there anyone as fed up as I am reading daily in the paper about assorted government screwups? Every day, three or four, or more, articles tell about one bungled job or another maintenance and sewer mess, the failure of the state to collect and distribute child support funds despite a multimillion dollar computer program, child protective services that allow tiny tots to be beaten up and or starved by their adult supervisors, crooked cops dealing drugs and now failure to reimburse the bottle-collection agents so that they are out hundreds of thousands of dollars while the state sits with the money in the till.

The legislative bodies say they can't reduce taxes or fund needed programs because the money is needed to increase public payrolls. Based on news reports, a whole lot of the public employees should be fired. No way are they entitled to a salary or wage increase.

A whole lot of the blame has to fall on the management of various government programs. They set policy and must train and instruct the working people, but it's not happening.

Motorcyclists should have to wear white

Trademark of bikers: black bike, black jacket, black boots, jeans, and for those who wear helmets, they are usually black.

Visualize the better visibility for everyone if only one piece of white was made mandatory for all motorcyclists to wear.

Safety first -- everything else is secondary.

How many more tax hikes can we take?

Contrary to what our politicians believe, there really is an end point to constantly increasing taxes, fees and deposits.

Here is a quick review of past and proposed new taxes:

Without a degree in higher math, a simple review of all these increases surely results in a cost per family on Oahu in the range of $1,500-$2,000 per year. Some workers don't even take home this amount of money in a month, so these new taxes will take away one month's wages for one wage earner in many families.

Taken individually, each of these taxes (except for the bottle tax) could probably be justified by its sponsor but taken as a whole these taxes will hurt each and every family on Oahu.

As usual our politicians are taking the stance that they know better than the people they represent. 2005 will go down in history as the year of the tax increase.

NAFTA undermines Social Security

Congress was and continues to be derelict in its understanding of the effect of the passing of the North American Free Trade Agreement and the corresponding outsourcing of American jobs would have on Social Security entitlement.

Every single job that was, has or will be moved offshore due to NAFTA reduces the Social Security revenue base.

All of the elected representatives in Washington, D.C., have created or seriously contributed to this so-called Social Security "crisis" by unconditionally passing NAFTA.

Before we even think about touching the Social Security system that has served us very well, I suggest as a very minimum we first legislate -- cancel or modify NAFTA -- to bring all of the outsourced jobs back or at least make the companies that moved the jobs offshore pay, on a continuous basis, both employee and employer Social Security premiums that would have been due.

Social Security tax calculations should use the estimated U.S. salary rate and not the reduced rate U.S. corporations pay offshore employees. Millions of U.S. jobs have been out-sourced and no one is discussing the dollar amounts or how the loss of Social Security taxes through outsourcing has contributed to the current situation.

Giant vehicles need suitable nickname

I was much taken by Paul Mulshine's column "Smart cars, but dumb politicians" in the April 13 Star-Bulletin. It put me in mind of what I think would make a suitable bumper sticker, to wit:

How do you spell "road hog" with just three letters?

S-U-V

New math assessment test will cause plenty of problems

After reading Susan Essoyan's report (Star-Bulletin, March 21) about how students will have to explain how they get their answers on the new math assessment test, I got hold of the Grade 10 mathematics sample test items and sample responses provided by the Department of Education. What I found was a recipe for disaster.

Multiple choice tests have their drawbacks, but every item has exactly one right answer and is machine-gradable. Test items that require written responses have to be graded by people and must allow for answers that are only partly right.

Assuming the sample items are typical of what will be on the test, items requiring short responses are really homework problems designed to reinforce a concept covered in a lesson. One of the sample short-response items requires a student to figure out how to plot three particular points on a coordinate plane (the mathematical content part of the problem) and then to take the time to plot them correctly, label their coordinates and join them with line segments. The problem was worth two points if answered correctly. But there are lots of ways to make even a careless mistake, especially in a tense, time-limited test setting. Plot one point incorrectly, or write in an incorrect coordinate or two. What are the rules for giving partial credit? Does any error make the whole thing wrong?

The extended response items were good examples of what a teacher could get kids to do in a 45-minute class. One of them was a pattern-discovery problem that allowed for an easy, relatively quick solution if one has the right insight. But the straightforward way most kids would use requires doing a lot of tedious, time-consuming arithmetic correctly just to get three of the possible four points. If they make just one arithmetic error, they won't get any more points or see any pattern. To get the fourth point, provided they get the first three, they would have to recognize a pattern and then invent some way to describe it in their own words, since they do not yet know the usual mathematical terms for such a pattern.

The other extended-response item was a spatial visualization problem involving a pyramid. In the first of four parts, the student must draw a specified triangle and then calculate the lengths of its sides. It is a wonderful problem. As a math teacher, I would love to help a class find its way to the correct solution. I would even like to help the folks who provided the sample answer, because even they didn't get it quite right.

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