"The department has just been buried in recent years with mandate after mandate: No Child Left Behind, Act 51, the initiatives the department is putting forward like the new report cards and of course actions by the board," said incumbent Knudsen, who has served on the board for 16 years and is director of the office of external affairs at the East-West Center. "We need to pull back and focus if we're going to have the academic success we all want."

Knudsen, 55, who holds an O'ahu at-large seat, said while the federal No Child Left Behind Act has served to "wake everyone up that we must address education as a nation," she believes the punishments are so harsh that schools will eventually give up as one after another fails to meet benchmarks she calls unrealistic.

"The objectives of NCLB are important, but it needs to be restructured and changed so there are incentives and some reward," she said.

Many also express concern about the weighted student formula, and how it's playing out in distributing money throughout the system.

"We need careful re-looking at this," said O'ahu at-large candidate Ruth Tschumy, 63, a retired teacher and school administrator who is now an educational consultant and president of the Mediation Center of the Pacific. She is also calling for more transparency and efficiency in the Department of Education overall.

"Big organizations often build silos that are disconnected from one another, and I think that may have happened," said Tschumy. "I'd like to take a look at the structure of the DOE — not different school boards — but looking at the structure and trying to make it more cost efficient."

Windward O'ahu incumbent Vierling advocates putting at least $100 million more in the "lump sum" that's divided among schools — primarily money that pays for resource and support positions housed in district complexes — so that principals can buy the positions they need and get more direct services.

"I've been trying to get more shifted to the lump," said Vierling, 54, who has served on the board for a year and is a business developer with Servco Raynor Inc.

At the same time, he wants to focus more money on technology to improve the Department of Education's data-collection and display capabilities. "I've seen some systems where at the touch of a button you can get some really valuable data," he said.

In the Central O'ahu district, incumbent Robinson, 55, a community activist, is focusing her campaign around incentives to keep teachers in Hawai'i and in hard-to-fill areas, as well as the need to improve school facilities.

"There's no way children can learn when the classrooms are so hot," said Robinson, a former member of the Commission on the Status of Women. "This is the information age where we need computers in the schools, and electrical upgrades need to be done. The priority has to be fixing the schools for our kids."

Several candidates, including O'ahu at-large incumbent Ching, 59, a former teacher who is now a practicing attorney, and Windward challenger John Penebacker, 60, a retired administrator with the state library system, are focused on school safety.

"You have to have a very safe and secure school environment," said Penebacker, a former board member from the 1980s and a star on the Fab Five University of Hawai'i basketball team of the early 1970s. He suggests using the "school within a school" concept to handle students who are disruptive in the regular classroom.

"At the same time you give them the attention they require and let the regular classroom go on," said Penebacker, whose three children went through public school, as are his grandchildren. "Teachers spend an inordinate amount of time dealing with disruptive behavior."

Ching, who chairs a Board of Education ad hoc committee on school safety, said one of his major concerns has been to follow through and make school safer.

"If you're worried about being hijacked the whole day, you're not going to be focused on learning," he said.

Other candidates for the O'ahu at-large seats, such as former longtime state Rep. Terrance Tom, 58, are worried about finding and keeping the best teachers, while Bob McDermott, 43, also a former state representative, said one of the central areas to focus on — and the way to increase test scores — is improving the system for children who don't speak English as a first language.

"We need to retain and recruit teachers," said Tom, who wants more incentives, including more housing, for teachers who serve in hard-to-fill areas. Tom is an attorney in private practice.

"The front line are the teachers. We're not going to prepare our students to enter the arena of life and make sound decisions without good teachers," Tom said.

McDermott, meanwhile, believes that Hawai'i would see major gains by beefing up tutoring for students for whom English is a second language.

"Understanding the language is the key to the test scores, even in math, which includes word problems," said McDermott, executive director of the nonprofit Navy League.

Former board member and former longtime legislator Donna Ikeda, 66, is basing her campaign for an O'ahu at-large seat around her concerns that the American education system overall is failing and serious change is needed.

"Twenty-five years ago if you were in high school in the U.S. and doing well, the chances were you were going to do well in college and your job," said Ikeda. "But now you're competing not just with students in the U.S. but students globally. Kids in India, for instance, are surpassing our kids who are supposedly at the top levels. All these things are happening and it seems we're not focusing on the right things."

Yee, the outgoing board chairman who is not running for re-election, believes that it takes time to build capacity in many areas, and Hawai'i is doing that.

"The fact that the department has done a good job this year in reducing teacher vacancies, that's huge over previous years," he said.

As well, said Yee, the Hawai'i public school system has seen improvements in technology, with more computers in the classroom.

The complete list of candidates and their districts:

Maui: Mary Cochran (elected outright).

Central O'ahu: Eileen Clarke, Shirley Robinson.

Windward O'ahu: Kris DeRego, John Penebacker, Paul Vierling.

O'ahu at-large: Michael Bass, Darwin Ching, Carolyn Golojuch, Henry Hoeft, Donna Ikeda, Kim Iwamoto, Brian Kessler, Malcolm Kirkpatrick, Karen Knudsen, Philmund Lee, Marcia Linville, Bob McDermott, Liam Skilling, Nancy Stone, Terrance Tom, Ruth Tschumy and Brian Yamane.