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Before he heads off to , a former student member of the Hawaii State Board of Education shared with Civil Beat what he thinks can be done to improve K-12 education in Hawaii.

Kelly Maeshiro, 17, sat on the board last year without being able to vote. (The student member is elected by the Hawaii State Student Council.) The experience helped give him a broader perspective of what can be done to help his 180,000 fellow students succeed. His conclusion is that the larger issue of culture needs to be addressed, but the board and Hawaii Department of Education could take concrete steps to improve opportunities for students.

His recommendations are guided by three main principles he followed while on the board, and some of the recommendations he introduced while serving his term. None were implemented.

His three principles:

• Expand student credit options
• Empower students
• Have more responsible implementation of policy

His suggestions:

• Give the student member a vote on the education board to get what he calls “a worm’s-eye view” of what the other members are seeing from a bird’s-eye perspective.
• Create a broad, liberal arts curriculum instead of focusing students on career orientation.
• Develop better communication within the department between school-level educators and state-level administrators.
• Utilize the department’s e-school to provide more challenging courses, like Advanced Placement courses, that students might not have access to on their own campuses.
• Provide a credit-by-exam option for certain courses.
• Have the board approve the department’s plans to implement new policies.

Changing the Culture

Despite his non-voting status on a policymaking board and repeated attempts to give the student member a vote, Maeshiro is not certain that changing policies alone will transform the system.

You have to get deeper than that, he said — to the culture underpinning the education system. Former Superintendent Patricia Hamamoto used to say something along those lines, he said, but he thought for a long time she was referring to school culture. It took a while before it struck him that she meant the culture of society as a whole.

“Even if you have the best or the worst school system in the whole world, it’s the students’ values that it ultimately comes down to,” he said.

Maeshiro’s inquisitive mind and his drive to excel in school were primarily internal motivations, he said. For whatever reason, he values knowledge and education. And his best guess is that is thanks in part to his family.

“It’s not going to be the classroom or the building that makes the student,” he said. “It’s the student that makes the student, and the culture that makes the student. And the big challenge for moving education forward is figuring out what makes the student. Is it family, teachers, culture, the society at large? Is it other student leaders that inspire them?”
Even though he still has lots of questions about how to change the values and culture, Maeshiro is fairly certain family is the key to improving education in Hawaii.

“It’s politically incorrect to blame the family for education shortcomings, but President Obama mentioned this in a speech recently: A lot of the responsibility to educate our society is going to come down to the family unit. And I think that’s a fact that we’re not willing to accept yet, because it’s so much easier to point at the board of education or the department of education.”

That’s not to say there aren’t things the department and board can do. Changing a culture can be daunting, and until we do, it’s reassuring to make tangible changes to the system through policy, Maeshiro said.