Hawaii lags in preparing kids for kindergarten, state DOE report shows

In the Hawaii public schools’ first statewide assessment of children’s kindergarten readiness, less than one-third of children entering kindergarten this fall demonstrated “baseline readiness” for school, according to new state Department of Education data that evaluated basic language, math and social skills, and physical development.

On the Johns Hopkins University Ready for Kindergarten assessment, 29.6% of the kindergartners earned overall scores that classified them as “demonstrating readiness”; 39.5% were in the second tier, “approaching readiness”; and 30.9% were in the third tier, “emerging readiness.”

But results varied widely by school complex and island, often reflecting socioeconomic and demographic differences between neighborhoods — ranging from single-digit percentages of children demonstrating readiness for kindergarten in the Farrington, Waianae, Lanai and Hana complexes, to 58% in the Kaiser complex in East Oahu.

In a Honolulu Star-­Advertiser interview, Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke said the low numbers for kindergarten readiness in some categories are worrisome, and suggest that despite major strides, Hawaii still must make urgent progress toward improving public awareness of the importance of early-childhood education, and increasing access to free or affordable preschool.

“If only 20-something percent of kids (statewide) are demonstrating readiness, as a state we need to figure out how can we get parents to understand that getting kids ready for kindergarten could impact their placement or could impact how they’re labeled from kindergarten on, and could potentially have lifelong results and consequences,” said Luke, who is spearheading the state’s Ready Keiki initiative to create universal preschool access in the islands.

“By the time kindergarten happens, a lot of the kids’ cognition and the ability to learn is being stabilized,” Luke continued. “So this is a really important subject.”

Comparisons with other states are difficult, since there is no national mandate to assess incoming kindergartners, and states and school districts that do it use a multitude of tools. According to the Education Commission of the States, over three dozen states require some type of assessment at the time of kindergarten entry.

Maryland, for one, which also uses a kindergarten readiness assessment originating out of Johns Hopkins University, reported last school year that 42% of its kindergartners demonstrated readiness, up from 40% the year before.

Comparing data with other states might not be valid since this was the first year Hawaii public school educators had to learn to administer the kindergarten assessment, state officials said.

While in an ideal world 100% of children entering kindergarten would demonstrate readiness, every state and school district has different social and economic conditions, and varied systems of delivering early learning, said Yuuko Arikawa-Cross, director of the state’s Executive Office on Early Learning.

She and state DOE officials said it’s too early to say what goals for improvement might be set for coming years, as they have only just begun to study the data. “I’m just actually happy that for the first time we have some kind of unified database,” she said.

Teachers’ observations

The Kindergarten Entry Assessment is not a paper test. “Instead, it includes a variety of items, including teachers’ observations of daily activities and age-appropriate performance tasks in which the teacher asks a child to respond to a question or complete an activity,” says a DOE document on the assessment. Examples include counting, carrying a conversation, holding a pencil and taking turns.

The assessment covers four “critical early-childhood developmental domains”: language and literacy, mathematics, social foundations and physical development, DOE Deputy Superintendent Heidi Armstrong said in a Dec. 7 memo to the board’s Student Achievement Committee.

The 10,260 Hawaii keiki who were assessed this fall accounted for 85% of the DOE’s total kindergarten enrollment. A score of 270-298 indicated a student was “demonstrating readiness” for kindergarten; 258-269 indicated “approaching readiness”; and 202-257 indicated a student was “emerging” toward readiness.

Students of the Lahaina complex were excluded due to the August fires; only about 10% of eligible kindergartners there were tested.

The Kaiser school complex was the only one where average scores were in the “demonstrating readiness” range in all four domains tested.

Only two school complexes — Mililani and Kalaheo — along with the charter schools as a group posted average scores that indicated that kindergartners demonstrated readiness in three areas tested.

But the language and literacy domain was a common stumbling block nearly statewide. Other than Kaiser, not one school complex had an average score classified as “demonstrating readiness” in that area.

The high levels of Hawaii children who speak languages other than English could be a factor, Arikawa-­Cross said. “It might not show up as good on a test score, but I don’t think of multilingualism as a deficit,” she said. “I would really want children to hold on to their first language actually. That is something that’s really unique about Hawaii.”

A Hawaiian-language version of the assessment is in development for kaiapuni students — those enrolled in Hawaiian language immersion programs.

The DOE this school year conducted the Kindergarten Entry Assessment to meet the requirements of Act 210 of the 2021 state Legislature. Such an assessment is also called for in the 2023-2029 strategic plan for Hawaii’s public schools, in which one of the 27 “desired outcomes” reads, “All entering kindergarten students are assessed for social, emotional and academic readiness, and provided necessary and timely support to develop foundational skills for learning.”

Various studies suggest 80% to 90% of brain development occurs before age 5.