In Our May Issue

Dear Friends,

In a matter of weeks, tens of thousands of students will graduate from Hawaii’s high schools. Have they been well served by their public schools? In this issue, we take a close look at education—as we do every May—with two feature articles.

First, we focused in just the high schools for this installment of our “Grading the Public Schools” chart. We all know that satisfaction and student performance both seem to drop at the high school level, so it seemed worthwhile to narrow our scope this year to see how the high schools are doing. You’ll find them ranked, based on parent, teacher and student satisfaction, averaged with student performance on math and reading tests. You’ll also find write-ups on the best public high school and the most improved high school.

Second, we look at how public education overall is faring in the Islands. It’s been 10 years since HONOLULU Magazine first published “The Death of Public School,” summing up what was then years of public frustration with a system that consistently ranked among the worst performing in the nation. Has anything changed since then?

We studied some other subjects this month, too. One of my favorites: The hidden world of self-storage. People don’t just stash their stuff in these anonymous-looking building, they’re building entire lives!

We meet up with Hawaii’s rising fashion designer, Andy South, who’s talent and amazing work ethic have him poised for success.

Finally, we share the story of one local family that was both separated, and united, by the disastrous March 11 earthquake and tsunami in Sendai, Japan.

Sincerely,

A. Kam Napier
Editor