Hawaii's Race to the Bottom

New York Times Editorial:

Summer vacation for Hawaii's schoolchildren starts on Wednesday. About 170,000 young people will be hitting the beach, the mall, grandma's house, the sofa -- all the places they have already been spending most Fridays for nearly the entire school year. Seventeen school days were sliced out of their educations by a series of school-closing teacher furloughs to help close a nearly $1 billion state budget gap.

The furloughs were rightly deplored by parents and denounced by Education Secretary Arne Duncan, and showed Hawaii's political and education establishment at its worst. When the first "furlough Friday" happened last October, we didn't imagine that Hawaii -- which has one statewide school district with a lackluster record of achievement -- would slouch through the rest of the school year without getting its kids back in their seats.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at May 23, 2010 1:02 AM
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