Your comment reveals you know just enough about public school funding to pretend you actually understand it. No Child Left Behind (2001) conditioned federal education funds on standardized testing focused initiatives and scores. Feds put in about 12-15% of HIDOE's $2 billion+ annual budget, not the majority by far, but $250 million you can't afford to lose. The standardized testing requirements, incentivized (basically forced) districts to mostly drop art, music, PE, even social studies and science at first, to fund "test score chasing." This was contrary to what the research suggests is most effective, but money talks. Ku's right about Obama not doing much to fix it; in fact Race to the Top (2009) probably accelerated the trend in Hawaii. ESSA (2015) provides somewhat more flexibility, but only taking effect now. Otherwise, Ku is a kook on this subject, too. He'd do better to go home and kook rice.