Education
Education represents an essential pillar of society. It is through education that children are prepared to enter society and be successful individuals.
Unfortunately, Hawaii's education system is a disaster. From underpaid teachers to grooming in the classroom, the people of Hawaii have become increasingly wary of the Hawaii Public School system.
As the son of a woman who's been teaching for 24 years, most of it in Hawaii, this is an issue near to my heart.
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Parental Rights and Responsibilities
The education of students should be a co-operative effort between Teachers and Parents.
Parents have a right to know what their children are being taught and a platform to address any concerns regarding it.
Likewise, parents have the responsibility to play an active role in their child's education, ensure they do their homework, and deal with behavioral issues that may interfere with their learning.
School Choice
Like most, I rushed to the conclusion that overcrowded classrooms are the primary reason for the decline in education quality, but recently was surprised to become aware of a study by the Heritage Foundation comparing African American Student's math scores from Public and Catholic School. To quote the study directly,
"The typical, or average,7 African-American eighth-grader in a D.C. Catholic school performs better in math than 72 percent of his or her public school peers."
These Catholic School classrooms had 10 additional students compared to their Public School counterparts. Thus it becomes apparent that simply reducing classroom size is not as directly correlated to the decline of education quality as one would expect. Thus it becomes an issue of the quality of education being provided.
One means of improving the Hawaii School System is to move towards a voucher system. Through this method, the funding will move with the student, whether in Public, Private, or Charter school. This will incentivize schools to improve through healthy competition while providing funding for alternatives to sending students from lower income households to schools that are faltering.
Alleviating the Teacher Shortage
Hawaii is listed as the fifth highest ranked state in regards of teacher shortages according to Universities.com and Yahoo News.
One solution that is gaining traction in other states is offering incentives for Veterans and retired first responders to go into teaching to fill the shortage.