Hawaii fourth- and eighth-grade students made strides in reading last year, though their math scores were either flat or declined slightly.
Hawaii fourth- and eighth-grade students made strides in reading last year, though their math scores were either flat or declined slightly.
That’s according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which tested 2,300 Hawaii fourth-graders and 2,200 Hawaii eighth-graders in both subjects.
NAEP conducts the tests every other year and releases the results as The Nation’s Report Card. Results were released earlier this month.
The results show 38 percent of the state’s fourth-graders were proficient in math in 2017, the same as 2015 but lower than the national average of 40 percent.
For eighth-graders, math scores were 27 percent last year, down from 30 percent in 2015 and also lower than the 33 percent 2017 national average.
Fourth-grade reading scores in Hawaii increased from 29 percent in 2015 to 32 percent in 2017. Nationally, fourth-graders scored 35 percent proficient in reading.
And Hawaii eighth-graders scored 30 percent proficient in reading in 2017, up from 26 percent in 2015 but lower than the 35 percent national average.
State Department of Education Superintendent Christina Kishimoto said in a news release the “uptick we’re seeing in reading scores among our eighth-graders is encouraging.”
She said it shows “continued improvement over time” and said Hawaii is “one of only (10) states to show solid progress in eighth-grade reading in 2017.”
Full reports can be found at https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/.
