School's emphasis on reading boosts test scores
By Derrick DePledge
Advertiser Education Writer
"Mosquitoes," the third-grader with the brown ponytail says softly. "Keep cool and bathe often. Wear light colors. Wear long sleeves and pants in the evening and early morning. An ice cube or ca ..."
Bruce Asato • The Honolulu Advertiser
The girl looks up, stumped. "Sound it out, help yourself," her teacher, Debra Miyaki, suggests.
Kuhio Elementary School teacher Debra Miyaki clarifies an assignment for third-grade student Alison Pologa, while fellow students, from left, Zoya Sigrah, Richard Loyd and Crystal Phan keep working on the assignment.
"Cala?" the girl says, searching. "Try it again," Miyaki prods.
"Calamine lotion," the girl says, confident now, "can relieve itching."
The third-grade class at Kuhio Elementary School was learning about health and how to outwit insects when outdoors, but it was also another chance for Miyaki to get her students to read aloud. The children shared hints about how to foil pesky horseflies, black flies, honeybees and wasps.
From kindergarten through fifth grade at the Mo'ili'ili school, reading is infused into just about every lesson plan, a calculated move by administrators to improve scores on Hawai'i's demanding student performance tests.
Statewide, the news on state test scores this month was grim, as results showed all but third-grade math scores declined from the year before and all of the four grade levels tested scored below the state's standards for proficiency in math and reading.
But there were sparkles of promise in unexpected places. Nearly 40 percent of Kuhio third-graders who took the state tests this spring met or exceeded the state standard in reading, up from 23.8 percent in 2002, the state Department of Education reported. Seventeen percent of third-graders were proficient in math, compared with 6.3 percent the year before. Fifth-graders at the school also made advances in reading, yet slid a few percentage points in math.
Even more surprising to some outside the school, Kuhio also made its annual target for improvement under the federal No Child Left Behind law, despite a student population where 69 percent receive subsidized school lunches and nearly a quarter speak limited English. Sixty-four percent of public schools statewide failed to meet annual targets under the law.
"I know we worked very hard," said Evelyn Aczon Hao, the school's principal. "But I'm so pleased that we made it."
The state tests, known as the Hawai'i Content and Performance Standards, are being used by the DOE to judge whether schools are meeting No Child Left Behind. The tests were first given in 2002 and require students to demonstrate a much more thorough understanding of reading and math than the national Stanford Achievement Test, which is multiple choice.
Selvin Chin-Chance, administrator of the test development section at the DOE, said a few themes have emerged since the state test results were made public. Students, hesitant to make a mistake, sometimes left questions blank or wrote that they didn't know the answer. Other tests had a lot of unanswered questions near the end, indicating students were discouraged and gave up or did not have enough time.
Chin-Chance said students can earn some credit for partial answers and can ask for more time to finish. "What we're trying to do is to get them to show their work," he said. "If you show sufficient work, we will give you partial credit."
The DOE, surprised by the poor results statewide, is also evaluating whether the tests accurately measure what students are being taught in the classroom or should be reasonably expected to learn, especially in math. It is too early to tell whether the DOE will alter the standards, but Chin-Chance said the state is considering these questions as it develops new standards for science, scheduled for 2006 as part of No Child Left Behind.
Educators are finding that an emphasis on reading can help students with both the reading and math portions of the state tests because students are able to better understand the questions and write out their answers. The test scores found that 37.7 percent of Kuhio fifth-graders approached the state standard in reading and 57.4 were close to the standard in math. Among third-graders, 43.4 percent approached the state standard in reading and 60.4 percent were near the standard in math.
"What we want to do is to get the kids to the same place eventually," Hao explains.
Many students enter Kuhio without first attending pre-school, or have parents who are unable to spend much time helping their children read or with homework.
Teachers, at recess or at lunch or after school, often take time to tutor students one-on-one.
"I have to give all the teachers a lot of credit," Diane Nakai, a Kuhio school counselor and test coordinator, said of the improved test scores. "You can't just have a child in the third-grade do well and say the third-grade teacher did everything."
During one morning this week, Pam Yoshihiro, a Kuhio kindergarten teacher, had her hands full.
She was trying to get her students to form sounds into words while one student was bent on disruption. As the other children sat politely in front of Yoshihiro, the little guy crawled and rolled on the floor, toyed with a bottle of glue, and stretched his blue T-shirt over his head into a hood until the teacher finally pulled him onto her lap.
"Cccc-aaaa-tttt," Yoshihiro coos, breaking the word into distinct sounds. "Smile if you know it," she tells the class.
A girl in front with her hair in braids is smiling. "Cat," she says with authority.
Reach Derrick DePledge at 525-8084 or ddepledge@honoluluadvertiser.com.
