Isles sixth in
school standards

Hawaii's tests for proficiency in
reading and math are among
the toughest in the nation,
an educational journal says

The state tests given to Hawaii's public school students are among the toughest in the country, according to a study published in the current edition of the journal Education Next.

Hawaii placed sixth on a list of 40 states ranked for the strength of their standards for proficiency in reading and math, as analyzed by Paul E. Peterson and Frederick M. Hess, editors of the quarterly journal, which is sponsored by the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

The tests are important because they are used to rate school performance under the federal No Child Left Behind law and can trigger sanctions on schools that do not measure up. But each state creates its own test and sets the passing score. So states with easy tests can appear to be doing well, while those with challenging ones can appear to be failing.

"Hawaii's standards are very high," Peterson said yesterday in a telephone interview. "The irony is that states that have high standards will tend to have a lot of schools that appear to be in trouble, whereas states that have low standards, such as Texas, don't have many schools that are in trouble."

The No Child Left Behind law demands that all American children become proficient in reading and math by 2014, but leaves it up to the states to set their own standards for proficiency. To get a handle on how tough those standards are, Peterson and Hess studied how students did on their state tests vs. the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which was given to fourth- and eighth-graders in 2003.

The researchers gave each state a grade based on how challenging their tests were. The top three states, South Carolina, Maine and Missouri, earned A's for their standards, while Oklahoma, Texas and Tennessee bottomed out the rankings with F grades.

Hawaii got a B, with its grade-point average placing it sixth in the numerical rankings of 40 states. Another 10 states were not ranked because they did not administer the national test.

"We want to be sure that states that are really stepping up to the challenge like Hawaii are being recognized," said Hess, director of educational policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

Robert McClelland, director of the state Department of Education's Planning and Evaluation Office, welcomed the ranking.

"We always have seen our standards and our assessments as challenging and rigorous, something we want all of our students and schools to aspire to," he said. "It's good to have an outside objective opinion that validates what we already know. When you set high expectations, you're more likely to get people to rise to those expectations."

The researchers took into account the variation between proficiency levels on state tests vs. the national test and summarized the results in an article called "Johnny can read ... in some states."

For instance, if only 50 percent of a state's fourth-graders were proficient by the national standard but 80 percent were proficient under the state standard, the state was given an F for failing to set high expectations for its students. Conversely, if a state with that national proficiency level had only 45 percent of its students proficient on its state test, it would get an A for having standards that exceeded the national ones, the authors wrote.

Hawaii recently came under criticism for having a high rate of schools facing "restructuring," the stiffest penalty for low performance under No Child Left Behind. But that comparative analysis by the Education Commission of the States was quickly pulled from publication because of concerns that such state-to-state comparisons are invalid given the varying benchmarks for success.

"We thought it would be good, now that this program (No Child Left Behind) has been up and running for a while, for people to start thinking about what are the ways in which it can be improved," said Peterson, a professor at Harvard University.

"The federal government has the power to give some waivers to states on their No Child Left Behind AYP (adequate yearly progress) policies," he added. "And the states that have the high standards, like Hawaii, might be in a position to request the Department of Education to give it a careful look."