Most Hawaii elementary and middle schoolers are at least one grade level behind, testing shows

An analysis of fall testing data indicates that three-quarters of Hawaii’s public school students in first through eighth grades were at least one or two grade levels behind in math after the first quarter of the 2021-22 school year while two-thirds were also behind in English language arts.

State Department of Education administrators said Thursday that results of the “universal screener” testing are another indicator of how much the coronavirus pandemic set back learning among the system’s 163,000 students.

Administrators told the Board of Education they plan to redouble their efforts with the help of millions of dollars of federal pandemic relief funds and aim to return learning proficiency to pre-­ pandemic levels.

“It may take a few years to get our students there,” interim Superintendent Keith Hayashi told board members Thursday. “The department and our schools are very much committed to accelerating learning.”

Last month school administrators released similarly disappointing test scores from the 2020-21 Strive HI Performance System. Along with the latest test results, the data mirrors downward trends in student performance across the nation tied to the pandemic, they said.

More than 85,000 Hawaii students took the universal screener tests after the first quarter this year, officials said.

Some of the youngest students tested — in first and second grades — showed the worst proficiency in English and math in comparison to higher grade levels, while those in the third grade produced results significantly higher than their younger counterparts.

“This group of (third grade) students are the youngest group to have benefited from an uninterrupted, in-person kindergarten year,” said Phyllis Unebasami, DOE deputy superintendent. “This group of students was also prioritized for in-person learning last school year.

“While our older students perform a little bit better, there’s still a significant number of students at least one grade level behind,” Unebasami said.

Students with disabilities and those who are learning English as a second language did even worse, according to the department’s analysis of the data. Only 6% of students with disabilities were at grade level in both math and English language arts, while only 12% of English learners were at grade level in English and only 9% in math.

Just 23% of economically disadvantaged students were at grade level in Eng­lish language arts, Uneba­sami said, while only 16% were at grade level in math.

Along ethnic lines, Micronesians scored the lowest, with only 9.4% at grade level in English language arts and only 5.2% at grade level in math.

Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders were the next lowest, with about 20% at grade level in Eng­lish language arts and less than 15% at grade level in math.

Unebasami said the DOE is striving to provide the support Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander students need.

“We know that our Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander populations are very family- and community-­oriented. Thus, we understand for our students to succeed, we need to work with and support our families and school communities,” she said.

During Thursday’s presentation, school administrators held up the performance of Wheeler Middle School as an example other schools can aspire to. The Wahiawa school, heralded recently as one of the state’s three elite Blue Ribbon schools, scored in the 99th percentile of middle schools nationally.

At Wheeler, teachers track academic progress and meet to discuss ways to improve instruction on a daily basis, Principal Brenda Vierra-Chun told the board. There’s also a strong social connection between teachers and students within and beyond the classroom.

Wheeler has a stable staff of teachers and receives extra funding from the federal government because of its high number of students whose parents are in the military.

For those schools without the extra funding, the DOE recently received $412 million in pandemic relief funds through the American Rescue Plan Act. Hayashi said those funds and other money will go to schools that might not otherwise have the resources to implement plans to improve student learning.

“That is going to be very important as we move forward to enable our school leaders to maximize their efforts,” Hayashi said.