Hawai'i's public schools received a C grade in a recent national report examining schools in several education policy areas, putting it on par with most of the nation's states.

While Hawai'i was highlighted as one of a handful of states narrowing the poverty gap in reading and math achievement, the study slammed the state on its public school graduation rate and teacher quality.

Hawai'i education officials disputed some of the key findings in the report.

Quality Counts 2008, a project of the nonprofit Editorial Progress in Education, which publishes Education Week, has been examining education policy through its comparative study for the past 12 years.

This year, New York and Massachusetts topped the list with overall grades of B. Idaho and the District of Columbia were at the bottom of the list with D-plus grades. No state was given an A. The national average was C.

Hawai'i received a D in the area of student achievement, the lowest-scoring category for Hawai'i's public schools. More specifically, the report ranked Hawai'i near the bottom of the list in terms of its public school graduation rate.

Quality Counts listed Hawai'i's graduation rate as 64.1 percent, a number vigorously disputed by the state Department of Education.

DOE spokesman Greg Knudsen said the high school graduation rate has remained steady for the past several years at some 16 points higher than the study claims.

"That's just flat-out wrong," Knudsen said of the study's graduation figure.

He said the state tracks individual students through graduation and therefore has a more accurate count of the state's graduation rate.

It wasn't clear what method Quality Counts used to measure the state's graduation rate.

There were some bright spots in the report. Hawai'i ranked in the top tier of states that closed the poverty achievement gap in math and reading.

When comparing Hawai'i's standardized test scores for economically disadvantaged students to students across the country, the state does well. Hawai'i ranks second for closing the reading gap for fourth-graders. Similarly, Hawai'i ranks sixth for closing the math gap for eighth-graders.

The report uses the National Assessment of Education Progress, a standardized test taken by fourth- and eighth-graders, for comparison.

In the area of teacher quality, the report gave Hawai'i a C-plus — ranked 16 out of 50 — but criticized Hawai'i's teacher licensure requirements.

The report says the state does not require teachers to complete substantial coursework in the subject area they teach in order to obtain a license. The report also said the state does not require a minimum amount of time for student teaching.

Education officials said both of those points are wrong.

Not only are teachers required to complete coursework in their subject area but all universities in Hawai'i require a minimum of nine weeks of student teaching, said Don Young, director of the Hawaii Education Policy Center.

"All of these give a very false impression," Young said. "We would agree that these are measures of quality, but why in the world they thought that this is not policy for the state of Hawai'i, I don't know."

Education officials acknowledge that sometimes teachers teach courses outside their field of study, a practice which has been on the decline under the federal No Child Left Behind law.

"Some are teaching out-of-field because of emergency hires. Or you have a situation at a school where there are two science teachers and you need someone to teach math," said Christine Sorensen, dean of the College of Education at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa.

She said the College of Education and other local universities are working with the DOE to provide continuing education to teachers who have been teaching out of their field so that they can meet the standards under NCLB.

Reach Loren Moreno at lmoreno@honoluluadvertiser.com.