The state received its highest grade, an A, for equity, because of its single statewide school district, which minimizes some of the extreme school spending disparities that are found between some school districts on the Mainland that rely in large part on local property taxes and bonds to fund education.

Gov. Linda Lingle has proposed splitting up the state Department of Education into seven local districts with locally elected school boards to bring education decisions closer to local communities. The governor, along with key Democrats and many in the education community, also favors moving to a new student spending formula that would base spending on student need, rather than school enrollment.

The state received its lowest grade from the newspaper, a D+, for improving teacher quality, down from a C- last year. The newspaper found that Hawai'i does not expect teachers to have student teaching experience or coursework in the subjects they intend to teach, although teachers must pass subject and skills tests to get licensed. The state also does not require performance assessments for teachers to earn continuing licenses and does not have written professional development standards. It also claimed that teacher salaries, when adjusted for the state’s high cost of living, were the lowest in the nation in 2002.

Joan Husted, executive director of the Hawai'i State Teachers Association, said the cost of living in Hawai'i is among the main reasons cited among teachers who leave the DOE after a few years in the classroom. "We have to get teacher salaries up if we ever want to get local kids to come back home to teach and to fill all of our classrooms with well-qualified teachers," she said.

Education Week has released a national analysis of school performance, known as "Quality Counts," for the past eight years. The data is collected from the most recent comparable national statistics, which can be from a few years back.

For example, the report card gives Hawai'i a C for adequacy of resources, down from a B- last year, finding that the state ranked 40th out of 50 states and the District of Columbia in student spending in the 2000-2001 school year. The report card found that Hawai'i spent $6,614 per pupil that year, a figure that does not include spending on computers, school buses, school construction, debt interest or any other items that last for more than one year.

Lingle and the DOE have clashed over school spending during the debate on education reform, offering competing numbers for how much the state spends on students each year. The Education Week ranking, which will likely be widely referenced in the education community, illustrates again how the numbers can vary depending on who is counting.

A financial report by consultants to Lingle found that the state spent $10,422 per student in 2002-2003 when spending by all state departments was taken into account. The DOE countered that it spent $8,375 per student last school year when capital costs and debt service are excluded.

Lingle's report claimed that the DOE spent $8,361 per student in the 2001-2002 school year, a number that does not include capital costs and debt service. The consultants, using their own calculations, ranked that spending as 15th in the nation among states and the District of Columbia. The DOE countered that it spent $7,626 per student during that school year.

The DOE argued that the governorâs report was distorted, partly because of calculations that differed from those routinely used for comparing states by the National Center for Education Statistics, the primary source for Education Week's student spending figures. The Lingle administration, however, believes its report better reflects the actual amount the state spends on education.

Greg Knudsen, a DOE spokesman, said it is encouraging that Hawai'iâs standards and accountability grade improved from a D+ to C+. The state's student assessment tests determine whether schools meet the annual goals of the federal No Child Left Behind law.