Hawaii students
rank in bottom
half of country

Education report also shows
teacher salaries just below
national average

---

Associated Press

Hawaii ranked in the bottom half of the 50 states in a national report on education released yesterday.

The American Legislative Exchange Council ranked Hawaii 13th out of the 24 states and the District of Columbia in which the SAT was the dominant college entrance exam.

The council also ranked Hawaii 34th in overall academic achievement.

It also said that in 1998, Hawaii students scored an average of 250 on the National Assessment of Educational Progress eighth-grade reading test, which was significantly lower than the national average of 261.

The bipartisan group is composed of about 2,400 state legislators from across the nation. It said it used more than 100 measures of educational resources and achievement.

The report said Hawaii spent $6,229 per pupil in the 1998-99 school year, $22 less than the national average.

Nationally, the amount spent per student has increased by 23 percent between the 1978-79 and 1998-99 school years, the report said.

Hawaii's per-student spending rose 21 percent in those same years, it said.

The average teacher salary of $41,547 was $912 less than the national average. But the report said on average, teacher salaries were 43 percent higher than the average salary for all workers in the state.

Iowa, followed closely by Minnesota and Wisconsin, had the top-performing public elementary and secondary schools in the nation, the council said. Mississippi, Washington, D.C., and Louisiana ranked at the bottom of the scale.

More information can be found at the council's Web site, at http://www.ALEC.org.