Income a factor in test-score disparities
By Derrick DePledge
Advertiser Education Writer
The achievement gap in Hawai'i's public schools is stark, with low-income students scoring well below the overall student average on state assessment tests, a new report by the state Department of Education shows.
In the first thorough demographic report to the federal government on how the state is complying with the federal No Child Left Behind law, the DOE found wide disparities in student performance that it will have to remedy if it hopes to meet the law's ambitious goals of having all students proficient in core subjects by 2014.
Educators have long acknowledged the differences in student achievement by race and income, and the federal law is intended to attack this inequality by demanding that schools improve test scores or face consequences. In Hawai'i, with some of the most racially and culturally diverse schools in the country, the gap is more sharply defined by income, although Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders generally have lower test scores than Asian and white students.
No Child Left Behind requires schools to measure student performance, both overall and among several subgroups, so educators can identify and confront any gaps between students. The results of state tests taken by third-, fifth-, eighth- and 10th-graders last spring found that low-income students were substantially below the state average at all four grade levels.
Unlike before, when school administrators suspected, but did not always define, gaps in student performance by race and income, the federal law now expects schools to draw the distinctions in black and white.
Last school year, 43 percent of Hawai'i third-graders were proficient or advanced in reading, but just 30 percent of low-income students reached that level. In math, 24 percent of third-graders were proficient or advanced, while only 15 percent of low-income students scored that high.
With overall student test scores in Hawai'i already disappointing, the achievement gap becomes yet another obstacle for teachers, who also must find ways to improve lagging scores by students just learning English and students with mental or physical disabilities.
"For teachers, this is something very different from the way they have taught before," Elaine Takenaka, the DOE's educational administrative services director, said of the law's emphasis on test scores. "It takes training. It takes time. But we don't have the luxury of a year or two to do that."
Looking into the gaps
Sixty percent of the state's public schools failed to make adequate yearly progress under the law last school year, and schools are expected to either improve student performance or face sanctions that can include restructuring under new staff. Students in poorly performing schools are also eligible for tutoring and can transfer to other public schools.
A November report by the Educational Testing Service, a research group in Princeton, N.J., looked at 14 factors that may influence student achievement, including nutrition, teacher experience, class size, school safety, television use and parent support.
The report found gaps by minority students in all 14 factors, and gaps between low-income and high-income students in 11 of the 12 factors where comparable data were available. The report found no gap between low-income students and high-income students when it comes to class size, and other research has linked smaller class sizes to better student achievement.
"This research shows that the achievement gap is not only about what goes on once kids get into the classroom; it's also about what happens to them before and after school," Sharon Robinson, president of the group's Educational Policy Leadership Institute, said in a statement at the time of the report's release.
Mary Anne Raywid, a veteran educator and author on the faculty at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa, said No Child Left Behind makes the assumption that students learn at similar rates. Some students, she said, process information differently and may not have had the same access to books growing up, so it takes longer for them to get comfortable learning from textbooks.
"These kids frequently need more help because there is not the same social capital at home," Raywid said.
Other challenges
With most of the state's public schools eligible for federal aid to help low-income students, the achievement gap is a statewide concern. The challenge has always been evident at schools where most students are low-income or need special help. But the new federal reporting requirements now allow school administrators to tell whether specific subgroups of students are keeping a school from meeting its goals.
A review of DOE data by The Advertiser found 33 schools where students did well enough overall to make adequate progress last school year under the law, but failed because of the performance of a subgroup of low-income students. Eight other schools missed out solely because of a subgroup of special-education students.
The review also found several examples of how the law can be unforgiving, even maddening, for schools that appear to be gaining ground.
At Waimalu Elementary School students met academic targets in reading and math, but the school did not make adequate progress because 94 percent of low-income students took the reading test instead of the 95 percent required under the law.
At Enchanted Lake Elementary School in Kailua, the school fell short only because 28 percent of low-income students reached the proficiency objective in reading instead of the 30 percent benchmark set by the state.
The task will get tougher when the academic benchmarks get higher and students in more grades are tested in the future, as required by the law. Some teachers believe such high-stakes testing places too much emphasis on what could be an isolated student performance and argue that it would be better to track students over several years using multiple measurements.
"It throws everything off. It's really unfair," said Derek Minakami, a nationally certified teacher at Kailua High School and a former state teacher of the year. Closing the achievement gap, he said, is "going to take a concerted effort, not just from teachers, but from parents and the community at large."
"It's a good thing to teach to standards and have higher expectations for our students. But there are flaws here."
Reach Derrick DePledge at ddepledge@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8084.
