The last time this issue was raised was shortly after statehood. Many people at the time believed that by removing some authority from the legislature and the governor and placing that authority in an elected board, it would create more democratic politics and greater accountability to the people. The people in 1964 ratified the elected BOE over the objections of the governor and legislature.

Successive governors and legislatures learned to live with the elected BOE, but not without circumscribing its ability to take independent action. Lacking a funding source of its own, the BOE is subject to the whims and desires of the legislature and governor鈥檚 office through appropriations and expenditures.

Here, the BOE appears weak and incompetent. Though nominally in control of educational policy, the BOE has little beneficial effect upon it. Sitting atop the system, it is removed from the reality of the schools. Though 鈥済overned鈥� by well-intending citizens, the primary qualification is name recognition or misidentification. And BOE members know little about the educational views of citizens, except when interest is whipped up by sensational, but educationally peripheral, issues. What we have is politicization without genuine democratic politics.

This tempts both the legislature and the governor to apply more mandates and controls. The more the mandates and controls, the weaker and more incompetent the BOE and DOE seem. Accusations accumulate, charges of educational mismanagement fester, educators feel demoralized, and parents wonder about keeping their children in the schools. Politicization abounds, but little changes.

The easy answer seems to be: dump it in the governor鈥檚 lap. At least, then, we shall have some ultimate accountability. Simply give up the democratic experiment in education.

No matter how enticing the alternative to an elected board is, the question of the appointed board simply substitutes one centralized command for another centralized command.

In education, we are learning that you just can鈥檛 mandate from on high what matters. No one is wise enough to say what will be educationally effective in a system of 180,000 children and 300+ schools. There are simply too many interacting variables.

Moreover, even if we did know which mandates would work, mandates are effective only in proportion to the level of surveillance. Ensuring that schools comply requires a commissar for every school and classroom.

Instead, we have never embraced the principle of social interaction: loosening centralized controls and allowing interacting individuals to exercise their own judgment in matters educational. It is a principle that governs market economies, as opposed to command economies. We now have a Soviet Union of an educational system that will never work. We need to create an educational governance system that establishes more arenas that are responsive to local democratic politics.

Interestingly, both gubernatorial candidates instinctively recognize the need to create local educational decision-making. But they have yet to suggest the governance structures that will enable this. It is clear, however, that choosing between an elected and appointed boards 鈥� retaining centralized command 鈥� is no solution at all to our educational ills.

Indeed, the legislature and the governor, at different times, sought to break up the system. The year before the current governor took office the Democrats in the legislature nearly enacted local control of the schools. And Governor Lingle rode into office in 2003 on a pledge to break up the centralized authority in the BOE and replace it with seven local boards. The Democrats鈥� efforts were given up at the last minute and Lingle鈥檚 efforts were thwarted by the Democrats. Though both reform proposals may have created more local politics in education, neither was connected to an educational purpose.

Policy Action #1: Create School Complex Boards with Real Educational Authority. The educationally significant arena for a democratic politics is the school complex (high school, feeder middle or intermediate schools, and feeder elementary schools). By establishing a complex-wide school board with real educational authority over all activities, educational decisions can be made that are sensitive to local conditions and needs. This would create approximately 48 school complex boards (excluding charter schools). Such boards would be elected from citizens of the local community, as well as include principals and representatives from each school in the complex serving in an ex officio capacity without vote.

This is the key provision for potential excellence in educational governance and educational achievement. It establishes the optimal arena for democratic politics and a configuration that is the best promise for educational achievement. It is optimal in size for democratic politics, since it is sufficiently small as to permit board candidates and the community electorate to interact in face-to-face fashion. It is also the best promise for educational achievement, since it encourages seamless and coordinated educational decision making across the school complex 鈥� and hence a student鈥檚 full school career.

The latter point deserves underscoring. The current governance system lacks coordination and encourages educator finger-pointing. High school teachers blame middle-school teachers for unprepared students, while middle-school teachers blame elementary-school teachers. And, of course, all three groups blame uninvolved parents and a bureaucratic state system. The point is to create a governance structure that encourages teachers, administrators, parents, and the local community to take responsibility for students across the entirety of their school years. By placing the final authority to hire staff, hire a complex head educator, as well as to set policy, at the school complex level, the governance conditions are created for educators to work together across the school levels for the good of each student.

This proposal differs from the major gubernatorial candidates鈥� platforms to simply empower school principals. Here school principals remain key personnel, but they are only single persons at single schools. It is the effort to harness individual schools into a coherent, cohesive, dynamic whole in the complex that enables a higher and deeper educational excellence.

Policy Action #2: Change the Composition and Function of the State BOE. Retain a State BOE, which if elected requires candidates to have served on a school complex board. Restrict the State BOE policymaking authority to only minimal issues of statewide concern.

With most authority for governance and operations moved to the school complex and school levels, the temptation for a State BOE to micromanage the schools is removed. The BOE would intervene in a school complex only in the rare case that it is engaging in educational malpractice.

Moreover, governance through school complex boards confines educational disaster to a single school complex. Though that would be regrettable, it is vastly preferable to the current situation in which damaging actions by the State BOE or DOE Superintendent engulf every school in the state.

Policy Action #3: Alter the role of the State Superintendent and the DOE. The superintendent would no longer play an executive managerial role, since that function would be moved down to school complex heads. Rather, the superintendent would have a facilitative function in bringing issues of statewide concern to the State BOE. The superintendent would continue to monitor the school complexes for compliance with state and federal laws, regulations, and programs. The superintendent would oversee a limited number of offices: (1) Finance and Accounting, (2) Evaluation, (3) Human Resources, (4) Research & Development, (5) Legal Affairs, (6) Capital Construction, and (7) System-wide Technology. Through the Office of Finance and Accounting, school complex funding would continue according to the current statewide weighted formula with only the minimal expenditures necessary to maintain these statewide offices. Nearly all school funding would be decided at the school complex level.

In summary, many other issues would have to be decided, but this framework offers a start. Beyond the facile issue of an elected vs. appointed board, it establishes how educational governance can be tailored to the task of true educational reform 鈥� reform that holds the greatest promise for educational excellence and more democratic politics in a state in dire need of both.

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The federal education initiatives of 鈥淣o Child Left Behind鈥� (Bush II) and 鈥淩ace to the Top鈥� (Obama) have dangled the lure of more federal dollars in front of hungry state education budgets. It is not surprising that our leaders snap at the bait. But with the bait comes the hook 鈥� the diet of state and federal standards, testing regimen, and assessment and accountability measures as ordered up by special private interests.

Indeed, it was through a sense of the public good that the federal government originally entered into education. The question raised in the 1960’s was how the federal government might help the states bring excluded, ill-served minorities into the mainstream of the American school 鈥� questions of equity and justice. Over time, however, the federal education agenda has increasingly become captive to America鈥檚 economic competitive position. Ironically, the drive for enhanced profits by American business has led to the loss of millions of American jobs off-shored to cheaper labor markets.

Though the remaining jobs available to Americans are increasingly low-tech, service jobs, the federal initiatives preserve the illusion that future jobs require a curriculum diet in math, science, and language arts 鈥渇acts鈥� that can be easily tested. (Yet why hire an American engineer, when an Indian or Chinese engineer can be hired at 1/4 to 1/2 the salary?)

And if the diet they test is important to the education of citizens, it is no more special than social studies, humanities, art, music, and foreign languages that are being driven out of our schools by it. These are all disciplines for creating citizens. They deserve to be confronted and mastered equally. And while there is nothing special about mathematics and music per se (except to professional mathematicians and musicians), it is the connections among these disciplines that matter to creating citizens. For the issues of public life rarely confront us through the lens of a single discipline.

Most issues of public concern involve multiple disciplines linked in multifarious ways. Connections among the disciplines must be made, inferences drawn and tested, and critical imagination engaged. Continuously testing math knowledge in isolation from real world problems does not contribute to the education of citizens.

Hawaii stands at a crossroads in the upcoming elections. Our failure to educate for citizenship is not to be found in isolated math and reading scores. Rather, we need only point out that in the 2008 primary and general elections only 246,299 and 456,064, respectively, managed to vote out of a voter-eligible population of 1,004,000. Voting is the least-involving act of citizenship. Yet less than 1/2 of the voter-eligible population took their citizenship seriously at the most minimal level.

In the primary and general elections, we will be temporarily granting our sovereign power to a number of officials with influence over education, especially the next governor.

Will we have more furloughs of educators or will we empower educators to cultivate the next generation of citizens? Will we snap at the next baited hook out of D.C. or will we find the courage and resources to chart a stronger educational course? Please take the time to learn as much as you can about the record, background, and character of each candidate. As occupants of the office of citizen, it is our (least) responsibility to register and vote. Please become more involved if you can. Remember, our future and the future of our children are at stake.

David Ericson, UH-Manoa
Virgie Chattergee, UH-Manoa (Emerita)
Odetta Fujimora, DOE (Ret.)
Joan Husted, DOE (Ret.)
June Motokawa, DOE (Ret.)
Ralph Stueber, UH-Manoa (Emeritus)

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