Elliot Washor's TGIF 08.08.2025

Are you with me now? A. J. Ryder

 It was now time for students to show up and all the planning and work to get Namahana School up and running was OVER. I’m so glad I was there to welcome students, parents and community for that first day of the school. Below is Andrea directing traffic into the school as we all cheered on each and every student and family. Take this photo as a metaphor for all of Andrea’s hard work. The proof is in the poi.

The local paper covered the story and both the community and the students spelled out Namahana as seen from the perspective of Owen’s drone.

The one hundred and twenty students in the 7^th and 8^th grades showed up and were really excited about all that they experienced this week. Here’s Dennis and I being interviewed by two students who asked some really tough questions. We had a great time.

There was advisory time and whole group activities culminating in every Kumu (advisor) doing a Who Am I presentation for students and parents. I was in Makaela’s and Kunane’s. Prior to coming to Namahana, Makaela spent years working in shark ecology. Her videos with 15-foot sharks touching their noses and bodies was jaw dropping. Kunane’s presentation was just as compelling, focusing on the decades he spent as a master mason. These were folks who knew how hard it is to do something well and the students and parents responded. Soon it will be the students' turn to do their Who Am I’s.

There were other meetings as well with board members, funders and of course with Ed Noh, Executive Director of the Hawaiʻi State Public Charter School Commission who showed up on Friday. Ed was on our trip to Australia where he learned firsthand about the International Big Picture Learning Credential and our work in Tasmania and New South Wales.

Here’s a shot of the final Pick Me Up activity ending the week. It was a great one. I can’t say enough about Kapua and her staff. It seems like they have been doing this for years.

“Where you sit is where you stand” – Dee Hock CEO, Emeritus of VISA International

This quote emphasizes the importance of understanding the influence of your position in actions and decision-making, as you advocate as a leader to transcend traditional hierarchies. I learned a long time ago at meetings with college presidents that transcending traditional hierarchies is something they are very fearful of. Decades ago this was not always the case. Many college presidents stood their ground on serious issues that influenced k-12 education but now big-time corporate type boards and big money weigh-in on the politics and the pushback that would have occurred decades ago is not part of the currency of college presidents. This pushback has not shown up at least not yet, when it comes to responding to the demands our present government is making on colleges re: the release of student data around race, it begs the question: Where did they really stand before? Was what they always did just adherence to the regulation du jour or their true beliefs?

In the news this week was the notion of merit-based admissions to colleges using standardized tests. I’ve always been with Debbie Meier on this one. At one meeting I was at with her, she chastised both the left and the right for their acceptance of standardized testing stating: “We’ve had standardized testing for 80 years (now 110 years) and we still don’t have equity.”

Just this week the results in admissions to NYC’s elite public high schools were announced. Presently, this year’s class at Stuyvesant admitted 8 Black students and 27 Hispanic students in a class of 781. This in a city where 20 percent of the students are Black and 42 percent are Hispanic.

Anyone who thinks this is all new news is kidding themselves. Like in prior decades our present state of merit-based admissions based on standardized testing bends and sways to political whims of an easily manipulated narrow band of content that maintains the status quo of sorting students by how smart they are on a test but not how smart they are in all sorts of ways both in and outside of school.

Fortunately, every week our colleagues from Australia are seeing our psychometrics and data around students looks better and better using the International Big Picture Learning Credential. BPL board member Peter McWalters, Andrea and I have been at these meetings. Peter would tell you he has never seen anything like this and wants to know more. The IBPLC eliminates the Carnegie Unit and does not rely on a system that ranks and sorts but rather matches to a standard eliminating/minimizing standardization and all the biases around race, class and gender. We will soon be releasing way more compelling data showing a different way to measure MERIT. Then what will be the response of the system?

Be well and Plenty, plenty, bye, bye