Cultural differences aside, standards are a must

Let’s hear it for those raising the bar for charter schools. After years of reports that shook general confidence in this public-education option — accusations of nepotism and uneven achievement records come to mind — it’s good to see some of them get a thumbs-up from accreditors.

Granted, there are more in the pipeline than have cleared it, but this is a start. Four of the state’s 17 Hawaiian-focused charter schools gained full accreditation from the Western Association of Schools and Colleges.

There are complaints that standard accreditation schemes can’t properly assess Hawaiian charters’ programs because of cultural differences.

Our position: Any nonprofit is free to run a private school as its leaders see fit, but where public funds are being tapped, maintaining some uniform standards is a must.

Winning can be defined in many ways

As if it wasn’t hard enough to win spelling bees these days, now you have to memorize the entire dictionary, it seems.

For the first time in the event’s 85-year history, the Scripps National Spelling Bee this year required competitors to answer vocabulary questions in the preliminary rounds before qualifying for the semifinals.

That was the downfall for Akira Takabayashi, the Kauai eighth-grader who represented Hawaii in the contest: His cumulative score wasn’t enough to put him on stage last week. However, consider this: Young Akira only came to this country from Japan at age 7, when he knew nary a word of English; from there he went to state spelling champion.

That should make him a W-I-N-N-E-R, in anyone’s book.