Public School Revelations

If we are to fix the public education system in Hawaii, we must know the facts.  Laura Brown shares ten things about our schools that we must consider as we go about fixing them.

Remember: Furlough Friday is a symptom.  Addressing only the symptom while ignoring the cause of that symptom is foolish at best, dangerous at worst.

Top 10 Most Shocking Revelations About Hawaii's Public Education System
Part 1 of a Series
By Laura Brown, 12/11/2009 6:03:24 AM

This is a report on the top 10 most shocking revelations about Hawaii's public education system.
 
10. There is an 88,000 person payroll with only 170,000 students in the Hawaii Public School System. Just over 10,000 of those employees are classroom teachers.*

9. Personal information of those employees is kept on 3 X 5 index cards rather than being housed electronically, so the information is not easily searchable.

8. The Department of Education (DOE) accounting department does not link with the DOE budget department. For example, the DOE has a $40 million carryover at the end of each year while DOE asks the Hawaii State Legislature for $40 million in emergency appropriations nearly every year. DOE is allowed to carryover these funds, but each new budget does not reflect the carryover.

7. The $2.5 billion DOE budget has grown by $1 billion over the last 10 years, while student enrollment has dropped by several thousand.
 
6. The DOE has statewide standards, but no K-12 curriculum to provide content for those standards.
 
5. The DOE has 50,000 computers networked in classrooms and 1,200 servers.

4. The teachers' collective bargaining agreement negotiated by the Hawaii State Teachers Association limits instruction to 1,415 minutes per week or approximately 4.5 hrs per day.

3. Hawaii's taxpayers spend more than $14,500 per student for public education.
 
2. Hawaii's students scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reveal that 1/5 of all students function at grade level or above in reading -- and 1/4 of all students function at grade level or above in mathematics, with 4th graders performing a little higher. Only 15 to 20 percent of all students tested ranked at grade level in writing and science.
 
1. The longer students remain in public schools, the less academically educated they get, according to standardized scores.

* DOE Web site has varying numbers of teachers as compared with the DOE budget

More money is not the answer.  More bureaucracy is not the answer.

Finding the right solutions may be as simple as focusing like a laser on this one simple question, "What do the STUDENTS need from the system?"

In her speech, yesterday, as the 2010 session opened, I love what Representative Lynn Finnegan said, 

Remember, the fundamental purpose of our educational system is to educate…not just to employ.