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Lt. Gov. James “Duke” Aiona, the Republican candidate for governor, said student achievement hasn’t been on the state’s radar — until he and Gov. Linda Lingle came into office.

At a recent gubernatorial forum, Aiona said: “We’ve never talked about student achievement.”

The comments came as Aiona discussed improvements to Hawaii’s public schools during his tenure as lieutenant governor. He talked about the expansion of the , which is an effort to improve science, technology, engineering and math skills across the state.

It seemed that Aiona used STEM, along with other examples, to help show how the Lingle/Aiona administration has taken steps to highlight student achievement in the classroom.

Civil Beat contacted the Aiona campaign and asked the gubernatorial-hopeful to clarify what he meant.

“There has never been such a laser focus on student achievement and closing the gap,” said Travis Taylor, a campaign spokesman.

Taylor offered Civil Beat several examples of how Aiona and Lingle have championed the cause of achievement. He mentioned Hawaii’s Race to the Top win, which means $75 million going to education reform.

Taylor also talked about efforts to statistically identify the achievement gap in English, language, math and eventually, science, and drafting a plan to address the problems. He also spoke of STEM targets, to have 100 percent of high schools with a STEM-aligned curriculum by 2017.

“To accomplish this,” Tayor said, “we will adopt a common core curriculum tied to a new online state test, track student progress, reward teachers by linking a portion of their evaluation to student achievement, and set up two ‘zones of innovation’ covering 16 of the worst performing schools where we’ll accelerate the efforts.”

Despite obvious setbacks, such as Furlough Fridays, the Lingle/Aiona administration has certainly taken steps that focus on student achievement. That isn’t in dispute.

But has it “never” come up as a topic of conversation prior to Aiona and Lingle’s efforts?

No.

One such example of student achievement came from the Hawaii Legislature in 1991.

was passed, which created an 11-member Commission on Performance Standards. It was approved by Gov. John D. Waihee on July 8, 1991, and deemed that the commission would have “representatives of the Hawaii State Parent, Teacher, Student Association; the Hawaii State Student Council; the superintendent; the dean of the college of education of the University of Hawaii; and the professional education community.”

The act called for the commission to “review the implementation of the performance standards by the board and the schools to determine whether the standards should be modified.” The commission was given the power to hold public forums “to discuss the implementation and effectiveness of the performance standards.”

A state-run commission established to observe and improve performance standards in the classroom certainly falls into the category of talking about student achievement.

You can read more about the state’s history with standards-based education in this University of Hawaii by Boyce Brown.

Civil Beat also contacted former Gov. Ben Cayetano, a leader of Hawaii’s Children First, a group led by three former governors advocating education reforms. We asked him whether student achievement was an issue when he was governor and lieutenant governor.

His response was brief but to the point.

“It was always a matter of discourse,” Cayetano said, without offering specific examples.

It’s one thing for Aiona to tout the administration he’s been part of. But it’s another to create a false impression about the history of education in Hawaii. Student achievement has been, and most likely will continue to be, a hot-button issue as long as there are students and as long as politicians have a say in the quality of their education.