By Jennifer Hiller
Advertiser Education Writer

The Department of Education sent out something of a warning shot last week: Expect grim news when scores are released for the state's new standardized test.

Of course, the DOE press release wasn't worded that way.

But it did outline something called "cut scores," which tell whether students fall below, approach, meet or exceed proficiency in the Hawai'i Content and Performance Standards State Assessment, the test that Grades 3, 5, 8 and 10 took in April for the first time.

The anticipated results?

One percent of students will exceed proficiency in reading and math; 38 percent will meet proficiency in reading; 18 percent will meet math proficiency.

That leaves 61 percent of the state's children below or approaching proficiency in reading and 81 percent below or approaching proficiency in math.

"With these proficiency levels, Hawai'i has set the academic achievement bar at a challenging height," Superintendent Pat Hamamoto said.

Talk about understatement.

The DOE faces an almost Herculean task. By 2013 it is supposed to get all children up to proficient levels under the new federal education law, the No Child Left Behind Act, or face a loss of federal money or other sanctions.

Basically, the cut scores mean that either the state designed a very difficult standardized test or its students simply aren't performing well.

Hawai'i educators have been saying that they've set high standards and have designed a hard test requiring students to write out their answers instead of bubbling in A, B, C or D.

The first look at school-by-school scores should come in early December.

States nationwide have complained that they are being punished by the federal law for having set high standards for passing standardized tests. Colorado, Louisiana and Connecticut have lowered the bar.

Michigan is usually identified as a state being punished for setting high standards. More than 1,500 schools there were labeled as chronically failing — more than in any other state. That accounts for about one-third of the state's public schools, but state officials said the high number reflects the rigor of Michigan's tests.

Hawai'i has 82 schools that have failed to meet the academic standards — more than a quarter of the state's public schools — and so far there has been little grumbling that the state is being overly penalized.

The results of the new test will give the state a baseline score from which to judge how well its students and campuses perform in reading, writing and math in the future. Two of the seven sections come from the Stanford Achievement Test, a nationwide barometer of academic performance. Hawai'i's public school students traditionally have struggled when compared with Mainland students.

The Hawai'i-designed portion of the test will see specifically how well students are doing on what they should have learned so far in school.

The Hawai'i test is more rigorous than the SAT because it contains mostly open-ended questions instead of multiple-choice answers. Even the math problems require students to show their work or explain how they arrived at an answer.

Hawai'i could have made it easier on itself and created a more forgiving set of cut scores. Instead, school officials decided to leave the cut scores where they thought they ought to be.

Reach Jennifer Hiller at jhiller@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8084.