Hawaiian immersion program gets ‘teeth’

In what Hawaiian language advocates called a bold and monumental step, the Board of Education on Tuesday made substantial policy changes to its Hawaiian language immersion program, including a mandate to create an Office of Hawaiian Education under the schools superintendent.

The revised policy also commits the Department of Education to invest financial and personnel resources "to create and implement appropriate curricula, standards, performance assessment tools (and) professional development" for Ka Papahana Kaiapuni Hawaii, the Hawaiian language immersion program the DOE formed nearly 30 years ago.

The program now operates in 22 public schools, educating about 2,500 students in Hawaiian in kindergarten through 12th grade.

An estimated 600 to 700 Hawaiian-speaking students, teachers and parents from five of those schools rallied in front of the Department of Education’s headquarters on Miller Street on Tuesday morning in support of the proposed policy changes. The BOE also received 100 pieces of written testimony, including handwritten letters in Hawaiian from immersion students, with the majority in support of the changes.

"This is a huge step for the DOE. I feel it’s a bold step. It’s visionary," said University of Hawaii-Hilo Hawaiian language professor Pila Wilson, a founder of Aha Punana Leo, a Hawaiian language education advocacy nonprofit that runs 11 Hawaiian immersion preschools statewide.

Supporters said the BOE’s previous policy was too vague and didn’t provide the needed supports to advance the Kaiapuni program, which had to instead rely on grass-roots and community resources.

"It’s not specific enough so we fall victim to interpretation. It’s very light, very fluffy, so the department has no mandate — there’s not teeth in it — to direct them," Kalehua Krug, a faculty member of UH-Manoa’s College of Education, said during the rally, before the BOE voted to approve the changes.

Krug’s three children attend an immersion school, and he serves as vice chairman of Aha Kauleo, an advisory board to the BOE on Hawaiian language immersion.

"Sometimes Hawaiian language, anything Hawaiian, is a hot potato, and because of that, nobody wanted to touch Kaiapuni," Krug said. "So this would give it teeth by being more clear, more specific about what the expectations are for accountability, evaluations, teacher preparation."

Supporters are hopeful the changes will help pave the way for developing learning assessments in Hawaiian.

Previously, immersion students took a test developed and scored by the language program’s teachers, but it didn’t meet federal testing standards. Students now are given a straight English-to-Hawaiian translation of the Hawaii State Assessment developed in 2011, which Hawaiian educators say contains serious grammar and vocabulary errors and has resulted in poor test results for some schools.

Because English isn’t formally introduced as a subject until the fifth grade, third- and fourth-grade immersion students take the translated version of the assessment, while older students take the English version. Some parents have been so frustrated with the translated tests that they’ve opted their children out of the testing, which in turn can hurt a school’s overall score.

"One of the big misconceptions is that the immersion program doesn’t want to be assessed in English or that we don’t want to teach in English. English is still an academic goal of the program, but it’s not the language of instruction; it’s not the base that our program is built on," said Baba Yim, a vice principal at Ke Kula Kaiapuni o Anuenue, the only K-12 Hawaiian immersion school on Oahu.

Several teachers at the rally said it’s challenging to provide a bilingual education under a monolingual educational system. With Hawaiian and English as the state’s official languages, they hope the board’s changes will provide the needed resources to build a comprehensive Hawaiian education program.

"We’re faced with the decision: Do we try to make sure that we prepare our students for the test that currently is in English, or do we try to make sure that we prepare them to save our language and to save our culture?" said Pili Keala-Quinabo, who teaches Hawaiian language to Anuenue’s intermediate grades.

BOE Chairman Don Horner and Cheryl Lupenui, who heads the board’s student achievement committee, said the updated policy is the result of a year of working with stakeholder groups.

"This is really long overdue, to be able to take a look at truly the best public education system that we can have for our students … and the need to ensure that there is an ability to learn through our Hawaiian language, our Hawaiian content, our Hawaiian context in service to preparing all of our students for college, career and community success," Lupenui said.

Horner said the revisions move away from "aspirational" policy to more specific requirements and goals.

"This is the beginning," he said. "You begin with policy."