STAND

STAND. COM. REP. 2435

Honolulu, Hawaii

, 2004

RE: S.B. No. 2059

S.D. 1

Honorable Robert Bunda

President of the Senate

Twenty-Second State Legislature

Regular Session of 2004

State of Hawaii

Sir:

Your Committee on Education, to which was referred S.B. No. 2059 entitled:

"A BILL FOR AN ACT RELATING TO EDUCATIONAL ACCOUNTABILITY,"

begs leave to report as follows:

The purpose of this measure is to:

(1) Establish academic achievement, safety and well-being, and civic responsibility as the agreed upon goals for Hawaii's public education accountability; and

(2) Define civic responsibility.

Your Committee received testimony in support of the measure from the Department of Education.

Your Committee finds that accountability has the potential to be one of the pillars of educational reform, ensuring high academic achievement, student health and safety, and enhanced civic commitment. As with any far-reaching reform, however, it cannot be engaged in all at once. This measure represents another significant episode in an ongoing effort to establish an accountability framework for the public educational system with clear, concrete objectives.

Your Committee has amended the measure by:

(1) Correcting the number of students in the public educational system from 189,000 to 183,000;

(2) Eliminating employees from the accountability provision from the purpose section;

(3) Eliminating references to concrete examples of the contemporary importance of civic responsibility from the purpose section;

(4) Specifying a host of longitudinally-tracked performance indicators as to what shall be tracked to measure accountability.

As affirmed by the record of votes of the members of your Committee on Education that is attached to this report, your Committee is in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 2059, as amended herein, and recommends that it pass Second Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 2059, S.D. 1, and be referred to the Committee on Ways and Means.

Respectfully submitted on behalf of the members of the Committee on Education,

		____________________________ NORMAN SAKAMOTO, Chair