WHEREAS, Hawaii's public school children lag far behind the national average in measures of literacy; and

WHEREAS, in the 2002 Stanford Achievement Tests (SATs), Hawaii's public school scores remained well below national average: verbal scores dropped one point, from four hundred sixty-three to four hundred sixty-two, while the national average is over forty points higher at five hundred four; and

WHEREAS, new paradigms of learning need to be introduced in the classroom and at home, as the current methodologies are not helping our children learn to read at a high level of functioning; and

WHEREAS, a new conceptual model of language acquisition indicates that young children can learn language readily and informally through "comprehensible input"; and

WHEREAS, one suggested modality of comprehensible input is viewing captioned television shows; and

WHEREAS, watching closed-captioned television shows with the sound muted provides a familiar context for children to learn language and a powerful and effective visual tool to support budding literacy; and

WHEREAS, closed-captioning is available on almost all modern televisions for a variety of programs, including age-appropriate programs for school children; and

WHEREAS, the Department of Education should inform parents of the literacy benefits associated with using closed-captioned television so that the parents can work with the teachers to boost children's literacy in the home setting; now, therefore,

BE IT RESOLVED by the Senate of the Twenty-Second Legislature of the State of Hawaii, Regular Session of 2003, that the Department of Education is requested to implement a two-year pilot project in one of more schools to: instruct teachers on the literacy benefits of closed-caption television viewing; and require the teachers to produce written materials for the parents of their students explaining these benefits; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the schools in which the pilot project is instituted are requested to report to the Department of Education on any benefits or drawbacks associated with the pilot project, and that the Department is requested to compile these reports and submit them to the Legislature at least twenty days before the convening of the Regular Sessions of 2004 and 2005; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that certified copies of this Resolution be transmitted to the Superintendent of Education and the Chairperson of the Board of Education.

Report Title:

Education, reading, closed-captioned television