Good students make good principals

Better late than never.

It’s great to see that Hawaii’s public school principals and vice principals have adopted a new evaluations scheme, one that takes student achievement data into consideration, even if it comes nine years after the enabling law was enacted.

Starting with the 2013-2014 school year, half of the rating, in fact, will be based on that student data. This replaces the current scheme, which focuses on whether the administrator meets criteria such as "promotes a positive climate" and "manages the full scope of school administrative responsibilities."

Yawn. Imagine that a business manager is judged a success based only on such platitudes, regardless of customer satisfaction.

Hawaii’s tourists: The more, the savvier

If Hawaii did better economically than most states during 2012, it’s probably because of tourism, which had its best year ever in terms of visitor arrivals (7.99 million) and spending ($14.3 billion). Love it or not, tourism helped us keep our boat afloat.

Despite the record numbers, however, it actually might have been hard for Oahu residents to notice, since about half of the visitors traveled to the neighbor islands. Also, it seems just generally that tourists don’t look so much like tourists anymore, regardless of where they’re from, due to the more relaxed and savvy nature of those who travel.

One thing to worry about — the devaluation of Japan’s yen that seems to be looming, which could raise the cost of travel for Japanese.