Archives for category: Hawaii

Robert Hubbell: Paradise Is Burning

By dianeravitch
August 12, 2023 //
33

Robert Hubbell writes one of the best blogs around. He is consistently on target with his observations. In this post, he grieves for the people of Hawaii and sees the inevitable link to climate change. I find it hard to believe that there are people who refuse to accept the reality of climate change, as unbelievable as the fact that some people are vaccine deniers. They are all too often the same people.

Paradise is burning. My wife and I are heartsick over the loss of life and destruction of communities and habitat in Hawaii. To the many readers of this newsletter in Hawaii, we hope you and your families, homes, and communities are safe. When you are able, please send a note letting us know that you are okay.

The destruction in Hawaii from wildfires is unprecedented. The fires are the product of long-term changes in weather patterns and land management practices. They are part climate change, part natural disaster, and part man-made accelerant. The effects are devastating and should be shocking to all Americans. The loss of life is tragic. As I sat in a roadside café and watched video of the fires in Hawaii, the news feed running across the bottom of the newscast said, “Florida under first state-wide heat advisory.”

While paradise burns and a state known for heat and humidity experiences an unprecedented heat advisory, you would think that all Americans would treat the emergency as a five-alarm fire. Instead, the opposite is happening—at least among Trump’s MAGA base.

Florida has approved the use of course materials from the conservative organization PragerU to teach (read: indoctrinate) Florida students about the “climate change hoax.” As described in the report I heard today, PragerU wants to combat the notion allegedly being “peddled by climate activists” that the climate crisis threatens our existence. Instead, PragerU claims that climate change is natural, and the evidence is inconclusive about the role of humans in accelerating global warming and extreme weather.

As usual, MAGA disinformation begins with a grain of truth and quickly veers into lies and deceit. Yes, earth’s climate has been changing for as long as the earth has existed. But our current climate crisis relates to the release of carbon into the atmosphere at unprecedented levels over the course of a single century by burning fossil fuels that took hundreds of millions of years of geologic processes to create. That is not “natural” and the role of humans in releasing greenhouse gas into the atmosphere is not open to debate, nor is the effect of that gas on global climate.

Like many MAGA positions that can be simultaneously maddening, disheartening, and dangerous, MAGA climate denialism contains the seeds of its own defeat. Most Americans recognize the threat of human-caused climate change, but younger voters are especially motivated by the issue. As we move toward a critical election for our nation (and the world) in 2024, Democrats should make fighting the climate crisis a prominent part of their messaging. That messaging has the twin virtues of being an area where Joe Biden has exceled and one in which MAGA disinformation is being disproved before our very eyes as we watch our earth—our paradise–burn.

To all in Hawaii, you are in our hearts.

Categories Environment, Hawaii

Hawaii: Charter School Will Close Amid Charges of Financial Mismanagement

By dianeravitch
July 14, 2018 //
3

In Hawaii, the state revoked the charter of a school on the Big Island, alleging financial mismanagement and enrollment errors.

Charters open, charters close. The kids are out of luck.

The Hawaii State Public Charter School Commission voted unanimously Monday to revoke the charter of a school on the Big Island after finding 22 contract violations that included allegations of financial mismanagement and enrollment irregularities.

Ka’u Learning Academy is only the second charter school in the state to have its charter revoked. It opened its doors in 2015 in the rural area of Naalehu on Big Island, serving grades 3 to 7. It had a projected 93 students enrolled for the 2018-19 school year….

The revocation of KLA’s charter comes several months after the commission sent the Big Island school a notice of prospect of revocation outlining alleged violations.

Those violations included use of school funds and debit cards for employees’ personal expenses; irregular accounting; failure to comply with collective bargaining agreements; enrollment of students outside designated grade levels that resulted in overpayment of funds to the school; a failure to properly maintain student records; and failure to conduct criminal history background checks.

Additionally, KLA came under investigation by the Hawaii Department of Education for possible testing fraud, including excluding low-performing students from participating in state assessments and using unauthorized personnel to administer those tests. As a result, the school’s 2017 test scores “cannot be considered valid or trustworthy or relied upon and will be invalidated,” the commission outlined in a report.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Hawaii, Privatization

Hawaii: Why Import Corporate Reformers from the Mainland?

By dianeravitch
May 15, 2017 //
15

Andy Jones’s a high school teacher in Hawaii. He writes here with profound dismay about the search for a new superintendent for the schools of Hawaii.

He was not sorry to see the current superintendent go. She was an avid supporter of test-based accountability and data-data-data.

“This week we learned that the new superintendent will likely be one of two products of the current educational Big Box: a nationwide collection of individuals with graduate degrees from institutions (many of them recent startups) that support a transformation of public education according to post-traditional business models – what critics refer to as the “corporate educational reform movement.

“This model – one to which Matayoshi adhered and which was largely responsible for facilitating the national failure that was No Child Left Behind (NCLB) – is founded on the idea that, where public education is “broken,” it can be “fixed” through methods that emphasize top-down standardization and systemic compliance.

“That’s precisely the model the state is doing its best to move away from – a desire encapsulated in the Blueprint for Public Education drafted by Governor Ige’s ESSA Task Force, as well as in the Hawaii State Teacher Association’s Schools Our Keiki Deserve report.

“A quick Google search on the proposed candidates leaves little room for optimism that either candidate is prepared or likely to jump start Hawaii schools out of their post-NCLB limbo and into the brighter, more wholesome future envisioned by HSTA and the Governor’s Task Force.”

Jones finds reasons to avoid both candidates when he googles. Both have red flags in their history.

He adds:

“The local educational community has requested candidates with deep teaching experience, extensive personal knowledge of Hawaii and its public school system, a collaborative mindset, and a commitment to teacher empowerment. The board’s selections demonstrate failure to acknowledge the input they solicited on their own survey.

“It may seem hyperbolic to ask for some sort of an explicit mandate for board members to do what is right. But perhaps because board members are appointed rather than elected, they don’t appear to be particularly concerned about holding themselves accountable to community opinion.

“Through the various missteps reported in the media over the past months, it has become clear that an appointed Board is not serving the interests of Hawaii schools and the children they serve.”

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Hawaii, Testing

Hawaii: Michelle Rhee and Kevin Johnson Arrive to Give Advice about Education

By dianeravitch
March 14, 2017 //
24

I have been bombarded by people in Hawai who are concerned that Michelle Rhee and her husband, the former Mayor of Sacramento Kevin Johnson, have arrived to advise state officials about education reform. Several sent this article.

I recall that Mr. and Mrs. Johnson were invited five years ago to lecture at the University of Hawaii on the subject of ethics in education.

I am hoping to visit Hawaii for the first time next January or February and check out the water supply. Or is it something they are smoking?

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, Hawaii, Rhee, Michelle

Hawaii: Sorry, But the Nutty Teacher Evaluations Are Still Imposed 

By dianeravitch
September 10, 2016 //
22

Earlier today, I posted a piece by Andy Jones, a high school language arts teacher in Hawaii. In the introduction, I mistakenly said that Hawaii had eliminated the teacher evaluation system that was created in response to winning Race to the Top funding. I wrote: “This past spring, Hawaii dropped the test-based teacher evaluation that Race to the Top had forced on the state as a condition of winning RTTT funds. The money was all gone, and so was this bad idea.” That was not completely accurate.

Andy Jones sent this note to correct me:

“I so hate to ask, but…the HSTA secretary, who along with everyone else here is a great admirer of your work, just asked me if I could mention to you that your intro to my article is somewhat inaccurate, in that the teacher evaluation system (EES) is still in place. We were merely successful in eliminating test scores from the evaluation. We are, however, almost equally angry at present, because in the months since that announcement was made, they have insisted on maintaining the excoriated SLO component (Student Learning Outcomes) – the mindbogglingly ridiculous quasi-action-research template we have to go through in our evaluations in which we choose learning objectives, administer pre-assessments, make predictions about student learning, collect evidence of student growth, etc., and are only rated “distinguished” if 90% of our predictions are accurate. This is now worth 50% of our evaluation, along with the standard Danielson-based observation cycle and Core Professionalism (basically a portfolio on Danielson Domain 4) comprising the other 50%.

“HSTA secretary Amy Perruso wanted me to post you on this, because she’s afraid that HSTA will now be bombarded with emails and telephone calls asking “How did you get rid of the teacher evaluations?” – which, unfortunately we have not and which we’re going to be attempting very aggressively this year to get rid of.

– Andy”

Categories Education Reform, Hawaii, Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations

Andy Jones: Hawaii’s Education Future Is Looking Brighter

By dianeravitch
September 10, 2016 //
1

Andy Jones is a high school language arts teacher in Hawaii. The public school teachers in Hawaii have been energetic in stopping the worst extremes of the Race to the Top grant that the state received. This past spring, Hawaii dropped the test-based teacher evaluation that Race to the Top had forced on the state as a condition of winning RTTT funds. The money was all gone, and so was this bad idea.

Andy knows the history of American education, the cycles of criticism that follow one another, and he believes that the new federal law will give the state the ability to chart a better course than the one imposed by the Bush-Obama agenda of test and punish. I regret to say that his article is behind a pay wall, but I will share with you what he shared with me. In this time of doom-and-gloom, it is great to hear an optimistic forecast!

Andy writes:


Alarm, overhaul, stagnation, denial, recognition. Repeat ad infinitum.

Students of educational history will recognize in these five words the cycle that has defined American school culture for decades.

Thirty-three years ago, the “A Nation at Risk” report rang the alarm of educational decline. Its clarion call for improved public education resounded for the next generation and led eventually to initiatives such as No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top – programs that inaugurated sweeping, possibly irreversible changes to schools and school communities across the country.

A consensus has now emerged that these changes have led to dismal failure — a consensus signaled by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which emphatically seeks to reverse the damage done, in part by giving states back the freedom to define and enact their own vision of 21st-century education.

On the heels of ESSA and the widespread discussion it has initiated, the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) has released a report that may prove as decisive as “A Nation at Risk.”

The title — “No Time to Lose: How to Build a World-Class Education System State by State” — is misleading in that it seems to announce a mere repeat of the alarmist tone of the “Nation” report, perhaps to be followed by a new round of dubious policy suggestions from non-educators.

However, in what must come as a welcome shock to educators accustomed to routine governmental denial of policy failure, “No Time to Lose” fully acknowledges the mistakes of the past 15 years and seconds the sustained criticisms of prominent researchers such as Diane Ravitch and Pasi Sahlberg. These and many others have analyzed the extensive Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development reports on international education and have concluded that the misguided “reforms” of the past years have had an overwhelmingly negative impact on American schools, leading to ever further decline internationally.

They have also highlighted an additional, sinister aspect of these “reforms,” which have involved the gradual removal of educational decisions from the purview of teachers and educators and the corresponding enrichment of educa- tional corporations profiting from the proliferation of mediocre materials and programs that schools are forced to use.

We are fortunate to be living in a state led by a governor who recognizes what is at stake and who has created a robust task force that is working to establish grassroots consensus as to what is best for Hawaii schools and the students they serve.

We are also fortunate to have an increasingly dynamic teachers union that has sponsored a teacher- written report, “Schools Our Keiki Deserve,” which echoes the advice of our top educational researchers as well as the urgent tone of “No Time to Lose.”

Hawaii Department of Education (DOE) officials have shown signs recently that they are beginning to veer away from the pattern of denial that for years has characterized state and district education departments across the country. They have, for instance, conceded the unhealthy aspects of standardized testing, and they have also begun to embrace the idea of whole-child education as practiced in the world’s top-performing school systems.

As the DOE continues revising the Strategic Plan which will guide Hawaii education over the course of the coming years, teachers and citizens should encourage DOE officials to fully embrace the sobering findings of “No Time to Lose,” the tremendous energy and wealth of ideas emerging from Gov. David Ige’s task force, and the “Schools Our Keiki Deserve” report.

The report outlines a plan that is fully in accordance with the best educational research — one that can and should be integrated into the blueprint of the document that will determine much of what happens in our schools.

Categories Hawaii, Teacher Evaluations, VAM (value-added modeling)

Good News! Hawaii Drops Test-Based Teacher Evaluation!

By dianeravitch
May 22, 2016 //
21

The test-based teacher evaluation that was a hallmark of the Obama administration’s Race to the Top is slowly sinking into the ocean (or the desert).

 

Not only did New York teacher Sheri Lederman have her rating overturned by a judge who said the state’s evaluation system was “arbitrary and capricious” (it was designed and defended by State Commissioner John King, now Secretary of Education), but Hawaii just eliminated test-based teacher evaluation. Hawaii won a Race to the Top grant and was required by the rules of the competition to adopt a test-based teacher evaluation system. They did, it never worked, it angered teachers, and it is gone.

 

The state Board of Education unanimously approved recommendations Tuesday effectively removing standardized test scores as a requirement in the measurement of teacher performance, according to a press release from the state Department of Education.

 

 

The recommendations, which were subsequently approved by Superintendent Kathryn Matayoshi, will offer more flexibility to incorporate and weigh different components of teacher performance evaluation, although the option to use test scores in performance evaluation remains.

 

 

The recommendations originated from members of a joint committee between the Hawaii State Teachers Association and DOE, established by the most recent collective bargaining agreement in 2013. Vice Chairperson of the BOE Brian De Lima said that since then, the committee has conducted ongoing reviews and improvements to the evaluation system.

 

 

“There was a continuous evolution to make things better so teachers don’t spend all their time involved in the evaluation process, particularly when they’ve already been (rated) highly effective or effective,” De Lima said. “And the teachers being mentored who may need additional work, they’re getting the attention and the support so they stay interested in remaining in the profession — the most important profession.”

 

 

Formerly, teachers in Hawaii were beholden to curriculum and standards developed with little or none of their input by entities HSTA Secretary-Treasurer Amy Perruso described as “corporate philanthropists.” These entities, namely the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, have had sway in setting teacher performance standards, developed testing for those standards and profiting from the system, she said.

 

 

Teaching effectiveness, then, was rated on student understanding of curriculum teachers themselves didn’t develop but were forced by the administration to implement. Performance of teachers was also rated on aggregated test scores of every student participant — the majority of whom individual teachers never had in their own classrooms.

 

 

“The teacher evaluation system served as a control mechanism,” said Perruso, who also teaches social studies at Mililani High School on Oahu. “If you don’t follow the guidelines, you won’t be rated as ‘effective.’ That’s why what happened (Tuesday) was so critical. It gives teachers back a modicum of power. We’re no longer completely held under the thumb of principals because they can’t use test scores against us anymore.”

Categories Accountability, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Hawaii, Teacher Evaluations, VAM (value-added modeling)

Hawaii: Educators Disparage SBAC Tests

By dianeravitch
October 9, 2015 //
11

This post arrived from Randall Roth, a one of the signers of the article:

The following commentary appears in the October 8 edition of the Honolulu Star-Advertiser under the headline, “New testing regime at public schools is a recipe for disaster.” The byline follows the piece:

Testing obviously plays an important role in educating children — particularly tests designed to help teachers identify the needs of individual students.

The state’s new testing regime, called the Smarter Balanced Assessment (SBA), is quite different. It is not just unhelpful, but counterproductive.

First, SBA test results are not available until long after the test-takers have moved on from their current teachers’ classrooms and, in many instances, from their current school.

Second, SBA tests and the entire battery of tests administered cost more money to buy and consume more time to prepare for and administer than most members of the public would ever imagine possible.

These resources should instead be spent educating the children.

Third, test-takers perceive these tests as inconsequential and have little incentive to take them seriously, yet teaching careers are on the line, including those of teachers in subject areas not even covered by these tests.

Fourth, subject areas not covered by the SBA tests, such as art, music, history and science, tend to be de-emphasized by school communities seeking higher test scores, and individual teachers have a strong incentive to “teach to the test” in the areas that are tested.

The superintendent has long contended that the SBA test results would be helpful in evaluating teachers.

Ironically, the combination of these flawed tests and their role in an equally flawed teacher-evaluation system has already adversely affected a principal’s ability to deal effectively with teachers who require their attention and support.

Such unintended consequences can be expected when non-educators like the superintendent take it upon themselves to dramatically alter the way schools work without first seeking the meaningful involvement of school-level personnel.

Businessmen Terrence George and Harry Saunders recently expressed enthusiastic support for the new testing regime in Hawaii’s public schools (“Students did well on challenging exams,” Island Voices, Sept. 27).

They described recently released test scores as “encouraging,” not because the scores were high — they were not — but because the scores had been expected to be even lower.

After acknowledging that making sense of all this is “admittedly confusing,” these businessmen concluded that senior members of Hawaii’s Department of Education should be commended.

With all due respect, we strongly disagree.

And Hawaii’s public school principals overwhelmingly disagree.

According to our 2015 survey of public school principals, approximately nine out of 10 believe that the DOE has performed poorly in this area of implementing the SBA.

There is an inherent risk in harmful unintended consequences as a result of top-down decisions such as these decisions about the recent testing.

Such risks can be minimized or eliminated by seeking involvement and using the meaningful feedback of students, parents, teachers, and principals.

Such consequences can be avoided if DOE leadership has a deep understanding of what works and what does not.

We can’t help but wonder if the superintendent has ever asked herself why no private schools in Hawaii have adopted anything remotely close to the new SBA testing regime currently being forced on every public school in Hawaii.

Darrel Galera is executive director of the Education Institute of Hawaii (EIH) and former principal of Moanalua High School, and Roberta Mayor is EIH president and former principal of Waianae High School and education superintendent in Oakland, Calif. This commentary was also signed by EIH board members Marsha Alegre, John Sosa and Randall Roth.

The commentary can be found at http://www.staradvertiser.com/editorialspremium/20151008_new_testing_regime_at_public_schools_is_a_recipe_for_disaster.html?id=331193142&c=n (registration required)

Categories Common Core, Hawaii, Standardized Testing

Hawaii: Teacher Fights New Evaluation System–and Wins!

By dianeravitch
July 24, 2015 //
27

Hawaii applied for and won a Race to the Top grant. So, of course, Hawaii was required to create a new teacher evaluation system that incorporated student test scores. Many teachers objected. Mireille Ellsworth was one of them. She especially opposed the use of “Student Learning Objectives.” She said the measures were invalid and unreliable. Because she refused to complete the “SLOs,” she got a subpar rating. She challenged the rating, and she won.

 

 

When the Hawaii Department of Education released the details of its new teacher evaluation system three years ago, veteran teacher Mireille Ellsworth made a radical decision: She would simply refuse to do part of it.

 

Like many teachers in the state, Ellsworth felt that linking teacher pay — even partially — to student test scores was unfair. But there were other portions of the complex and multi-tiered system that she objected to as well, including the use of Student Learning Objectives as a measure of teacher success.

 

“I could tell it was something that could be easily manipulated by any teacher,” Ellsworth said. “Essentially it would be a dog and pony show.”

 

The new evaluation system was put into place over the past five years, at a cost of millions of dollars, teacher demoralization, and untold hours of work. When the results were tallied, 97% of the state’s teachers were found to be highly effective or effective. The search for “bad” teachers was very expensive and ultimately a failure.

 

Ellsworth said no to the whole process.

 

Ellsworth, who teaches English and drama at Waiakea High School in Hilo, has a slew of objections regarding the EES. The 18-year teacher’s biggest beef though is with the Student Learning Objectives or SLOs, which she refused to complete two years in a row.

 

For the SLOs, teachers are asked to predict the growth or achievement of each student — something they can then come back and revise mid-semester. Ellsworth felt it was a student privacy violation for this student data to go into her personnel file, and said the data could easily be manipulated by teachers.

“It’s just an exercise in trying to justify your existence and pass it no matter what,” Ellsworth said.

 

She had philosophical objections to the SLOs as well.

 

“If a teacher has low expectations for a student, research has shown that student will perform at a lower rate,” Ellsworth said. “For me to put on paper and then in my professional portfolio online that I expect anything short of success is completely wrong and is against everything I’ve been taught.”
It is, she said, like committing “educator malpractice.”

 

The strongest support for test-based teacher evaluation comes from the conservative National Council of Teacher Quality, which defends the process that Ellsworth and other teachers find objectionable. NCTQ seems certain that the schools are overloaded with ineffective teachers, but does not attempt to explain why the new RTTT-mandated systems in almost every state find that 95-99% of teachers are rated effective or highly effective. All those billions spent, for what?

 

For her courage in resisting the government’s attempt to force her to violate her professional ethics, Mireille Ellsworth joins the blog’s honor roll of champions of public education.

Categories Hawaii, Honor Roll, Resistance, Teacher Evaluations