Equipping a struggling school for success sometimes can require taking a new approach that the existing organization can't support. In those cases, merely tweaking the academic program won't turn things around.

Turning around schools, as it happens, is a priority for the Obama administration, which has announced a goal to use $5 billion in support of schools that undergo a top-down reorganization.

There are some within the Hawai'i Department of Education — most notably, its superintendent, Pat Hamamoto — who have a similar interest in what Hamamoto calls "reconstituting" schools. She lobbied for a measure that would have enabled her to redeploy teaching and administrative staff for schools well into the "restructuring" phase of the federal No Child Left Behind Act. These are schools that have chronically fallen short according to measures of the NCLB law.

That measure, House Bill 172, passed the House but ran aground in the Senate, following a hail of opposition from the teachers union, among others.

But it's essential that the primary focus remain on students and their needs. Yet too often their interests are overrun by those of an influential lobby.

So the idea should still have life after legislative death, given that federal funds are available for a "turnaround" plan.

Union members testified that the school reorganization option should be a matter for negotiation; there's a chance to bring it up right now, with the Hawaii State Teachers Association engaged in contract talks.

Further, it's within the power of the Board of Education to seek out these federal funds through a pilot project at one or more select schools. The board should press unions for such an initiative, while planning to push harder for the system-wide reconstitution authority next legislative session.

Hamamoto disputes assertions reconstitution would be a wholesale upheaval of staff — in most school districts that undergo this process, the majority of staffers remain in place. And there should be the means to change the faculty if a particular school needs a greater emphasis on specific areas that require specific teaching skills.

Much of the testimony in opposition noted that the NCLB law may be overturned anyway; this, they say, will negate the need to reorganize schools.

Or will it? Many Isle public school students have lagged in academic achievement, judging by standardized test scores, long before NCLB was enacted.

Other critics say reconstitution unfairly blames teachers, not uncooperative parents, for student failure.

But where are students in this tug of war? Education policymakers need to remember that when the classroom isn't working for the students, it's time to try a radical change or two — even if that may upset the apple cart for the adults.