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The recent dispute between the Board of Education and superintendent on one hand and school principals on the other highlights an ongoing rift between the central authority of the educational system and the schools. It also bespeaks the need to democratize our educational system.

After a series of criticisms aimed at the department regarding teacher evaluations, a few DOE administrators responded in an op-ed saying the criticisms do not acknowledge the “monumental progress” or the “phenomenal achievements” of the department in the past few years. The results, they say, “.”

Those at the school level are less convinced.

Though the same op-ed says the Department of Education has “replaced (No Child Left Behind’s) top-down accountability model with a system developed from the bottom-up — by Hawaii educators, parents and the community,” it curiously omits how this system developed from the bottom up by educators, parents and the community was only developed by a portion of those constituencies — a tiny minority, in fact.

It fails to acknowledge that this system is massively unpopular among the stakeholders identified. In a January 2013 Star-Advertiser poll, for example, only 22 percent said they felt that “student reviews of teachers [should] be used in formal teacher evaluations that help determine pay and tenure.” The remainder felt the evaluations should not be used at all, or only as an “advisory tool.” A poll published in the newspaper on July 5 of that same year showed that 71 percent of respondents said they do not “expect student achievement will improve with the new teacher evaluation system.”

The DOE concedes that the “evaluations are a challenge and a burden for many principals and teachers,” but goes on to say that “we are encouraged by principals and teachers who tell us they’ve set personal goals based on feedback they received this year” — the whole minority of them.

Public opinion only has an effect on public policy in a functioning democracy, and that is exactly what we lack.

Again, the DOE fails to note that the overwhelming majority — 75 percent of the 160 principals who filled out an independent survey — agreed that the evaluation system “has had a negative impact on their schools,” while 94 percent say that “the teacher evaluation system has hurt faculty and staff morale” and 78 percent maintain that it has “taken time away from preparing students for the new national test,” .

It is worth mentioning, moreover, that the vast majority of principals have very sensible opinions on this topic.

In response to the critical principals’ survey, the DOE, to its credit, convened a panel of principals to review the policy and has already adjusted it significantly, and I think it is fair to assume this was an act of genuine goodwill on its part in an attempt to deal with the concerns raised.

As the superintendent , “We have basically three themes to the modifications: simplify, streamline and differentiate” the approach for teachers based on need — i.e., adjust the evaluation system.

Even the HSTA commended the modifications. The adjustments are significant and salutary, and that real achievement should not be understated.

But I think it is worth looking at the implicit assumption of this modification. The implicit assumption is that teacher evaluations are ideally effective and just need to be “tweaked” in practice. But this is not true. A preponderance of the available evidence suggests that, even at their best, teacher evaluations are counterproductive.

In 2010, for example, the Economic Policy Institute assembled a research team that included the most respected scholars of education in the country like Diane Ravitch and Stanford scholar Linda Darling-Hammond. Their report concluded explicitly that policymakers “should not mandate a test-based approach to teacher evaluation that is unproven and likely to harm not only teachers, but also the children they instruct.”

For one, the evaluation models are so inaccurate that fifth-grade teachers are strong predictors of fourth-grade test scores — which means they can’t really tell us much. Evaluations also narrow the curriculum and demoralize teaching staff, which we have seen is true.

And our teachers are already quite demoralized, as we may infer from the fact that Hawaii has one of the highest teacher turnover rates in the nation. The vast majority of people, then, are quite sensible in opposing teacher evaluations.

So there is an apparent paradox here. The DOE is implementing policies supposedly “developed from the bottom up” by everyone that, it turns out, no one really supports.

But public opinion only has an effect on public policy in a functioning democracy, and that is exactly what we lack — generally, in our politics, and specifically in the DOE.

The issue of teacher evaluations — the most recent of many ongoing rifts between central authority and the school level — suggests that those at the school level do not have meaningful opportunities to influence the design of policy.

In other words, the DOE is not a very democratic institution. Its decisions are not made by the majority of those within it, but by a small number of lawyers and business leaders, and the fact that these leaders are generally very competent and decent individuals only underscores the systemic and institutional nature of the issue. The problem is not the individuals, but the institution.

There is a very practical premise to democracy, namely that people know their own interests best.

We should democratize the DOE because, however intelligent central authority might be, those at the school level best understand the interests of those at the school level.

And until we democratize the DOE, it is only rational to expect that it will continue to create unpopular policies which are opposed by the majority.

The ongoing, decades-old rift between central authority and the school level will continue to exist as long as we leave its root cause untouched, namely the undemocratic structure of the institution.

And, since it doesn’t touch this root cause, getting rid of teacher evaluations is an important step, but not enough. We must democratize the educational system.

I once supported an appointed BOE; that was a mistake. What we need is more democracy, not less.