Public schools represent society's belief in all children's potential and promise to become the leaders and shapers of a better future. Yet in Hawaii, as in the rest of the nation, public schools do not serve all students equally. Children in wealthy neighborhoods attend schools with more resources and higher-performing peers than children in less wealthy neighborhoods. Children of different ethnic backgrounds fare differently, with widely varying achievement scores and graduation rates. This means that students' opportunities vary greatly depending on their race and socioeconomic status. In a nation founded on the principle that all are created equal, we need a system of public education that raises all students to the same high standards, not a system that deepens existing inequalities. Achieving equality and closing the "achievement gap" between students of different backgrounds depends on a political and educational system that supports all students' achievement through policy reforms, transformational leadership, fiscal transparency, high expectations, and data-driven planning, curriculum, and instruction. It also depends on parent, community, and student commitment to entering school ready to learn and with unflagging focus on educational goals.
The Harold K.L. Castle Foundation is committed to closing the achievement gap in public education so that all of Hawaii's children have access to a high-quality education that prepares them to pursue a wealth of future opportunities. The health of families, our communities, our economy, and our democracy depends on a system of excellent public schools for all students.
The Foundation's public education investment goal is to help eliminate the achievement and preparation gaps by building school and community leadership.
Preparing Leaders to Close the Achievement
and Preparation Gaps:
The Harold K.L. Castle Foundation is committed to the creation of a school
system characterized by the high achievement of all students. Research and
case studies show that strong principals, teachers, and community leadership
are critical to creating a school system that helps all students succeed.
To help sustain and cultivate excellent school leadership, the Harold K.L.
Castle Foundation supports efforts that:
Our Education Dashboard - Holding Ourselves Accountable:
In addition to identifying good grantmaking opportunities, the challenge for the Foundation’s education program is to determine whether our investments are having the desired impact. To hold ourselves accountable and to monitor the effectiveness of our investments, we have joined forces with Targeted Leadership Consulting to develop the Harold K.L. Castle Foundation Education Dashboard. We thank our grantees, funding partners and Department of Education leaders for their kokua in designing this dashboard.
This dashboard consists of indicators and metrics of school-level leadership, student achievement and attainment that reflect our priorities and that we believe should improve if we are being wise with our investment of dollars and technical assistance.
While we appreciate that it is difficult if not impossible to evaluate the Foundation’s investment strategy without touching on the effectiveness of our grantees and the performance of the schools they serve, this dashboard is truly intended to evaluate our investments against our own goals. Further, we appreciate that this will be a perpetual work in progress; that these indicators are merely one-dimensional representations of what is actually going on; and, that our grantees cannot be held completely responsible for systemwide change in leadership, student achievement as measured by these indicators.
Nonetheless, we hope that this dashboard will communicate to all stakeholders what the Foundation believes is important to watch and in so doing influence general and policy discourse around public education in Hawaii.
Click on the icon below to visit our dashboard. Please let us know what you think and how we may continue to improve the monitoring and evaluation of our investments.
Our Recent Investments