Hawaii Education: Q&A with Don Horner and Kathryn Matayoshi

For more than a decade, HONOLULU Magazine has critically examined the state's public education system. As part of this year's coverage, Associate Editor Tiffany Hill sat down with Kathryn Matayoshi, the state Department of Education superintendent, and Don Horner, the Board of Education chair, two of the most influential people when it comes to Hawaii's public education. The questions for this exclusive, video Q&A come from both the magazine staff and the public, and touch on a variety of subjects, such as what the department and board are doing to reverse negative public perceptions, how teacher evaluations will work, whether or not Matayoshi and Horner sent their children to public school and more. Visit honolulumagazine.com for additional public education coverage.

1) What is the DOE doing to retain new talented teachers and to remove poorly performing ones? 0:29

2) Is there a disconnect between the DOE and Board administration and what's going on at the classroom level? 01:41

3) What is the DOE and BOE doing to reverse that negative perception that many Hawaii parents have about public education? 03:40

4) Did you send your children to public school and if not, then why? 06:21

5) What kind of support and training is given to principals and their administrators? 08:34

6) How does the DOE extend the best practices of successful schools to those that are floundering? 10:56

7) How are the BOE and DOE helping schools that have a lot of new programs in place maintain consistency? 13:29

8) In your opinion, what is the role of the teacher, and how are evaluation measurements going to gauge teacher engagement with their students? 14:54

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  Education

[Donn T.]

Kathryn Matayoshi totally sidestepped or didn't understand the question about "What is the DOE doing to retain new talented teachers, and what is it doing to remove poor-performing ones?" Bottom line: keep and reward the good teachers and fire the ones that are consistently bad. The single biggest obstacle to achieving this appears to be tenure.

[tynan96792]

Mahalo for asking the question of these power figures WHY they are choosing not to support public schools in their own family's decisions. Quite frankly, I thought their answers were totally lame. Good job catching an authentic response as opposed to their canned, PR-proofed answers.

[Mitch Kahle]

Full disclosure: Don Horner is a pastor of New Hope Christian Fellowship at Diamond Head.