Posted on: Sunday, February 27, 2005

VOICES OF EDUCATION

By Robert Hillier

Editor's note: This is the latest in a series of "Voices of Education" articles prepared by "front-line" participants in education in Hawai'i who hope to drive the conversation on education reform beyond political and bureaucratic policy-makers. Contributors include preschool through college educators who seek to identify areas of consensus within the profession and then to inform policy-makers on their ideas. To learn more, see www.hawaii.edu/voice.

Critics of public education in Hawai'i often state that the test scores of Hawai'i's public school students are the lowest in the nation. One assessment often cited is the National

Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP. This is an assessment given to students in grades 4 and 8. I share the concern that the scores for Hawai'i's public school students are lower than desirable, and I share the goal of improving the performance of Hawai'i's students. However, I wish to counter contentions that Hawai'i's students have the worst test scores in the nation. I will also debunk the myth that poverty does not affect the test scores in Hawai'i.

How Hawai'i students have fared on the NAEP varies with the grade level and the assessment. Hawai'i's fourth-grade students ranked near the middle of the nation on the 2002 NAEP writing assessment. For the 2003 grade 4 mathematics and reading assessments and the 2003 grade 8 mathematics assessment, Hawai'i was ahead of several states and even with 6 to 8 others. Only for the 2002 grade 8 writing assessment and the 2003 grade 8 reading assessment were Hawai'i's students at or very near the bottom of the nation. On almost every assessment Hawai'i's scores were significantly higher than those in Alabama, Mississippi, New Mexico, and the District of Columbia. On many assessments, Hawai'i's scores were comparable to those of Arizona, Arkansas, California, Louisiana, Nevada, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and West Virginia.

Trend patterns offer a positive perspective. For reading, the gaps between Hawai'i and the rest of the nation have narrowed steadily. Hawai'i's math scores have risen in recent years, so that the 2003 grade 4 average scale score exceeded the national average for every prior year.

Test scores across the nation also overlap. For example in the 2003 grade 4 mathematics assessment, a student who placed in the 90th percentile among Hawai'i students would have placed in the 94th percentile in the lower-performing state of Alabama and the 83rd percentile in the highest-performing state, Massachusetts. In grade 8 mathematics, a Hawai'i student who placed in the 90th percentile here would have placed in the 92nd percentile in Mississippi and in the 84th percentile in the highest-performing state, Minnesota.

A recent guest editorial by Cliff Slater (Honolulu Advertiser, Jan. 3), discounts poverty as a factor in Hawai'i's test results. He states that Hawai'i is the 20th-wealthiest state in the nation. NAEP data focus on the public school populations rather than the population in general, on public school children rather than working adults and other residents wealthy enough to live in Hawai'i.

While the data on poverty (defined by student eligibility for free and reduced-price school lunch) vary slightly by test and grade level, they show a surprisingly high percentage of Hawai'i's public school students living in or approaching poverty. In Hawai'i in 2003, 48.1 percent of the grade 4 students assessed on the NAEP reading assessment qualified for free or reduced-priced lunch, compared to 43.6 percent nationally. Across the nation, the percentage varied hugely, with a low of 17.4 percent in New Hampshire and a high of 71 percent in the District of Columbia.

Figures on eligibility for free or reduced-price lunch on the 2003 grade 4 reading assessment show 34 states with significantly fewer eligible students, 12 states with approximately the same number of eligible students as Hawai'i, and only five states with significantly more eligible students.

All children can learn, and part of Hawai'i's mission is to help all children learn. However, poverty is a factor in academic performance. The correlation across the nation between the percentage of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch and the average NAEP scale scores is substantial. This means that the lower the percentage of students on free or reduced-price lunch, the higher the average scale scores and vice versa. What further compounds the economic picture is that while Hawai'i may be the 20th wealthiest state, it ranks 35th in its per-pupil expenditures. If one factors in cost of living, this per-pupil ranking falls even lower. In addition, if data from 1999-2000 is still accurate, Hawai'i spends the lowest percentage of its state revenues (15.7 percent) on elementary and secondary education of any of the 50 states.

In my work as an assessment specialist, I have visited about 200 of Hawai'i's 285 public and public charter schools. Wherever I go, I witness administrators and teachers working incredibly hard to align their teaching and assessments to the curriculum mandated in the Hawai'i standards. This diligence is paying off with higher scores both on the NAEP and the Hawai'i State Assessment. In the next six weeks, NAEP is assessing grade 4 and grade 8 students in Hawai'i and throughout the nation in mathematics, reading and science. The mathematics and reading results are scheduled for release in November, and the science results in March 2006. We anticipate in the results of the 2005 NAEP assessments improved scores and higher national rankings.

Robert Hillier has worked in Hawai'i's public schools for 36 years as a high school teacher, a college professor and an administrator. He wrote this commentary for The Advertiser.