Hawaii Math Scores Up, Reading Scores Down
It’s getting tougher for Hawaii students to show improvement as state and federal standards continue rising.
The latest Hawaii State Assessment, released Friday, shows that while reading scores are flat and math scores are improving, the results are falling behind rising federal expectations.
The number of students who were proficient in reading went down slightly, from 67 percent last year to 66 percent this year, and the number proficient in math went up significantly 鈥 from 48 percent to 54 percent.
Reactions in the Hawaii Department of Education were subdued, because students’ performance in both subjects fell short of ever-rising federal progress standards. The required states to have at least 72 percent of students proficient in reading this year, up from 58 percent for the previous three years. In math, 64 percent of Hawaii students were supposed to score proficient in math, up from 46 percent required for the previous three years. By 2014, 100 percent are expected to be proficient.
Hawaii Results
| Subject | Objective | Actual |
|---|---|---|
| Reading | 72% | 66% |
| Math | 64% | 54% |
Among the other findings:
Sixty-two percent of Hawaii public schools, including charters, did not meet progress requirements.
A redesigned alternate assessment for the 450 severely disabled students in public schools indicated they are getting left far behind.
The assessment, required by the federal , is developed by the Hawaii Department of Education in partnership with the and administered each year to public school and public charter school students in third through eighth and 10th grades.1 The results have no bearing on students’ ability to move on in school, but they have everything to do with whether schools remain in good standing under federal guidelines.
This was the first year the 94,500 eligible students took the assessment online and were given up to three opportunities to take it and improve their scores. But they also faced higher achievement standards. Although more students answered more questions correctly on the assessment than last year, the number of correct answers required to be considered “proficient” also went up. (Civil Beat reported last August that Hawaii’s standards are already among the most rigorous in the nation.)
“I was disappointed with reading, and I guess the alternate ruined my day,” said Systems Accountability Director Cara Tanimura. “But I’m pleased with the math. I don’t want to be discouraging.
“I think it’s impressive that we have held our own on reading and we’ve improved in math. The challenge was a focus on math, and they did.”
The number of students meeting the proficiency benchmarks in reading went up in fourth through sixth grades, but dropped between 4 and 8 percent in grades 3,7,8 and 10.
In math, the improvement was more consistent: Scores went up between 2 and 11 percent in every grade except seventh and 10th, where they remained flat.
Meanwhile, a federally mandated attempt to administer a translated version of the test to the 385 third-graders in Hawaiian Language Immersion Programs went bust halfway through the year. The immersion schools returned to the “for the fourth and final year,” Tanimura said.
Seventy-five percent of students who took the HAPA were proficient 鈥 3 percent over this year’s federal objective. But the 58-percent math proficiency rate was 6 percent shy of this year’s requirement.
