In accepting federal stimulus money for the state, Gov. Linda Lingle will be committing Hawai'i to education reform.

Judging from the guidance received so far from federal education officials, the new expectations are higher — and in some cases more difficult to meet — than some of the standards of the federal No Child Left Behind law. State Department of Education officials say that the governor's plan for $157 million in stimulus money would leave them with few additional dollars to meet the new set of education reforms — in addition to the reforms they're already committed to under NCLB.

"On the surface, when we look- ed at the four assurances, we said, 'This is No Child Left Behind. We're already doing this,' " said Robert Campbell, director of the DOE's federal compliance office.

"When the details started to show up, we noticed they went a fair step beyond what we are currently doing or allowed to do under NCLB," Campbell said.

The guidelines require states to show improved achievement over a two-year period in four areas, including raising teacher quality and tracking student progress to measure the effectiveness of teachers and schools.

Education officials say they need the stimulus money coming to the state in order to meet these new benchmarks.

However, Lingle plans to cut the current school year's budget by $90 million and then replace it with federal stimulus funds. And then, in 2010 and 2011, the governor plans to do the same thing with $9.2 million and $13.1 million in federal stabilization funds.

In a special meeting of the Board of Education last week, members accused the governor of being shortsighted.

But Lingle's senior policy adviser, Linda Smith, told board members that the governor's plan will not leave education high and dry. In fact, Smith said, Lingle plans to issue the DOE and the University of Hawai'i about $35 million in federal stimulus dollars originally intended for "government services." That money will go toward a joint plan to address the areas of reform.

Smith said the governor wants to work with the DOE to develop a plan to achieve the four areas of reform.

"We're not fooling ourselves," Smith said. "It's not going to be easy in terms of the plan and the progress that the Department of Education on the federal level expects from us. If we can partner together we can put together a plan that is both credible at the federal level and one that we can implement with the resources that we have."

At a recent meeting the state Board of Education, Campbell told members that the new benchmarks could potentially be more challenging than the standards the DOE is trying to meet under NCLB.

For instance, Campbell pointed out that NCLB requires states to measure whether schools are making increasing progress through the use of a state test. In Hawai'i, that test is the Hawaii State Assessment, which students take every spring.

One condition for the stimulus funds requires states to adopt "rigorous assessments that will improve teaching and learning," which goes beyond what NCLB prescribes. That's because it requires states to begin using "multiple measures from multiple sources" to determine whether progress is being made.

Potentially more costly is another condition that would require states to establish a statewide data system to track individual students from preschool all the way through college.

The federal government expects "a high level of quality data to be available to help guide day-to-day instruction, day-to-day teacher development programs, be able to inform universities about how well our students are prepared and inform us of how we may prepare them better," Campbell said.

Ultimately, the U.S. Department of Education expects the data to also be used to track the performance of individual teachers and schools.

"This is a huge commitment," Campbell said. "It's certainly something we want to do, but it's certainly something we'll need money for."

Education officials say they are unsure how much it would cost to establish such a system. Before Lingle announced her plans for the stimulus money, board chairman Garrett Toguchi said the DOE planned to spend at least $9 million of the money to create the tracking system.

Also in contrast to NCLB is a condition that would require the DOE to not only ensure its teachers are "highly qualified," but also mea- sure whether teachers are "highly effective."

"Highly qualified" tends to be easy to define, since the classification is mostly based on the level of training a teacher has had in a given subject area. But "highly effective" is more difficult to define and measure, officials say.

"A lot of board members have said the focus shouldn't just be on qualified, but also on measuring effectiveness," said board member Kim Coco Iwamoto.

"We've set up the infrastructure to increase highly qualified, but we really need to set up infrastructure to increase and measure effective teaching practices," she said.

While the vast majority of states are committing to the reforms in order to access millions of federal dollars, at least two Republican governors — in Alaska and South Carolina — have suggested they may refuse the education stimulus dollars. Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has said she's concerned the federal dollars will create new areas of spending that may be difficult to manage once federal funding runs dry.