Low scores may bring sanctions to schools
| Results of Hawai'i Content and Performance Standards tests | |||
| • | Grade 3 math | • | Grade 8 math |
| • | Grade 3 reading | • | Grade 8 reading |
| • | Grade 5 math | • | Grade 10 math |
| • | Grade 5 reading | • | Grade 10 reading |
By Jennifer Hiller
Advertiser Education Writer
Most Hawai'i schools will have to move mountains in the next few years to stay in compliance with federal education law.
Although educators this week welcomed the first set of test scores for the new Hawai'i State Assessment, the first test designed specifically for Hawai'i students, they also got a first look at how difficult it will be to keep pace with the No Child Left Behind Act.
Nearly all schools will have to improve their test scores in most cases by dozens of points — and do it quickly — to avoid sanctions that range from paying for private tutoring for students to having the school's staff reconstituted.
No Child Left Behind, the federal education law, requires steady and continual improvement of test scores until all students have reached proficiency by 2014.
Test-makers have warned for months of the difficulty of the new Hawai'i test. Just 37 percent of 10th-graders met proficiency in reading; 17.3 percent met proficiency in math.
Under an accountability plan approved by the Board of Education Thursday night, all schools should have at least 39 percent of their students scoring proficient on the math and reading portions of the test right now.
DOE officials have said they will keep the standards high and will not make the proficiency level easier to meet.
"I took that third-grade test and I couldn't answer all of them," said board member Shannon Ajifu, a former school principal, at a meeting last week.
The Hawai'i State Assessment creates the baseline from which all schools will have to improve to meet NCLB requirements.
By the 2004-2005 school year, 51 percent of students should be scoring proficient.
"Now I'm wondering, why did we make this so hard?" board member Karen Knudsen asked. "We don't want to discourage the kids, but we did set high standards."
Among the highest-scoring schools were Ka'a'awa Elementary, with 73.7 percent of fifth-graders scoring proficient on math, and Aina Haina Elementary, with 85.2 percent of its students proficient in fifth-grade reading.
The Education Laboratory charter school, commonly known as the Lab School, had the best scores on the test among Hawai'i middle schools and high schools.
It had 88.4 percent of its eighth-graders proficient in reading and 73 percent proficient in math.
Of its 10th-graders, 88 percent were proficient in reading and 68 percent were proficient in math.
No Child Left Behind requires all public schools to show progress in reading and math every year. Additionally, every demographic and racial subgroup at each school also must show progress in both subjects or the entire school will fail to meet the federal requirements.
For the first time, test data will show how students at each school score across ethnic groups (using census categories of white, black, Native American, Hispanic, Asian-Pacific Islander), and how students who are high-poverty, special education or of limited English proficiency are scoring against the general population. This is meant to ensure that schools are improving the academic performance of all of their students and not shielding one group's low test scores by averaging them with the whole school.
Also, schools will have to improve graduation rates in high schools or retention rates in elementary and middle schools. If at least 95 percent of students in each subgroup fail to take the standardized test, the school will automatically fail.
There are 37 different conditions that schools must meet.
School officials say that extensive testing data required for NCLB will be released in March.
Reach Jennifer Hiller at jhiller@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8084.
• • •
 |
