Hawaii’s $75 million federal Race to the Top grant draws to a close this week, marking the end of an unprecedented four-year investment that launched some of the most aggressive education reforms ever seen in the state’s public school system.

As the state readies to cross the finish line, educators credit the program for initiatives that have helped improve test scores, lift graduation and college-going rates, and raise the bar for quality teaching. More importantly, many say, schools are better positioned to sustain the momentum seen in the past four years.

Hawaii won its award in 2010 by pledging to pursue sweeping reforms to better evaluate teacher effectiveness, turn around low-performing schools, boost student achievement and improve instruction in the classroom.

The federal government has doled out more than $4 billion through Race to the Top — awarded during three phases to 21 states and the District of Columbia — as part of a push to improve student achievement in the nation’s education system and better prepare students for college or careers.

Hawaii is the only state among the 10 round-two winners that has not applied for a so-called no-cost extension — essentially an extra year to meet targets and spend funds. Some states, including New York and Florida, still have millions of dollars in unspent Race money.

Most of the Hawaii’s grant has gone toward overhauling teacher evaluations and creating two so-called Zones of School Innovation on Hawaii island and Oahu’s Leeward Coast to implement interventions at 18 schools that had consistently been among the lowest performing in the state.

Department of Education officials say the state has made significant progress, but emphasize that the grant was intended to be a catalyst for change and not a silver bullet.

"There’s still a lot of work to be done," said DOE Assistant Superintendent Stephen Schatz. "We’ve become more focused as a system, and there’s a greater sense of urgency that we need to focus on getting better outcomes for students."

Schatz, a former principal on Oahu and in California, was tasked with overseeing and managing the grant as head of the Office of Strategic Reform.

"It’s been a tough and challenging few years," he said. "One of the positive things about this has been that the community has begun to rally around this idea that we need to do better for our students and in order to do that, we’re going to have to make significant changes in our schools."

Some of the more tangible accomplishments among the state’s 255 public schools include:

» Hawaii fourth-graders for the first time scored higher than the national average in math on the 2013 National Assessment of Education Progress, or NAEP, given every two years. The math scores — up four points from 2011 and by seven points from 2009 — tied for eighth best in the nation.

» Overall, fourth- and eighth-graders saw NAEP reading and math scores go up between four points and seven points between 2009 and 2013.

» On the Hawaii State Assessment, the statewide math proficiency rate has gone up by 10 points to 59 percent since the 2009-10 school year. The percentage of students testing proficient in reading has increased by three points to 70 percent.

» The statewide average graduation rate has improved to 82 percent from 80 percent four years ago. The statewide college-going rate (those enrolling within two years of graduation) has gone up to 63 percent from 60 percent in 2010.

» Chronic absenteeism (students who are absent 15 days or more a year) has improved to 11 percent of students last school year from 18 percent the year before, meaning 5,500 fewer students overall were chronically absent.

» The ninth-grade flunk rate (the percentage of students not promoted to 10th grade) has dropped two percentage points to 9 percent over the past two years.

"When you think of what the massive changes were, it’s phenomenal that the DOE is moving this much this quickly," said Hilo-Waiakea Complex Area Superintendent Valerie Takata.

The Zones of School Innovation were considered the lowest achieving complex areas in the state when Race started, with one dozen of the schools in restructuring, the most serious consequence under the former No Child Left Behind law. This year, only one of the schools is categorized as a priority school.

"We have seen the growth that can be made if we focus our efforts and do the work we need to do with intention," said Keone Farias, principal at Keaau Elementary, which is in one of the zones. "I don’t know a single principal who would say that work was easy … However, I also don’t know a single principal who would say they didn’t think the work we did was worth it."

Another key reform area was making better use of data to improve instruction.

Komarey Moss, a district educational specialist for the Leilehua-Mililani-Waialua complex area, said teachers are now equipped with student data to help customize lessons.

"It drives all the way down to the school level, updates every 24 hours and helps teachers to use information to differentiate their instruction based on things like how certain students performed in the past, how they perform now, if they are (English-language learners), if they are economically disadvantaged," Moss said.

One of the more controversial pieces of the Race grant has been the new performance-based teacher evaluation system that was implemented statewide last school year and ties a teacher’s rating in part to test scores. A rating of highly effective or effective is needed to earn pay raises and tenure, while a poor rating can lead to termination.

A prolonged labor dispute over the evaluations between the DOE and the Hawaii State Teachers Association, the union representing 12,500 teachers, at one point threatened the state’s Race grant.

In December 2011, the U.S. Department of Education placed Hawaii’s grant on "high-risk" status, citing unsatisfactory performance and concerns about whether future goals could be met. The lack of a union agreement on revamped teacher evaluations contributed to the decision in addition to an overall slow pace of Race reforms.

Teachers ultimately ratified a contract agreeing to high-stakes evaluations, but many have since complained that the evaluation system is overly burdensome and relies on metrics that they argue will not improve teaching.

Others have been critical of the state DOE for what they call a rushed implementation.

"The controversial part has less to do with how fast it came," said Joan Lewis, a veteran teacher at Kapolei High School and HSTA’s vice president. "It’s really the elements of the evaluation. Teaching is not just a science, it’s not just about going to college and getting a degree, it’s an art form as well. It requires a passion and a heart that’s not measurable in any standardized way."

Lewis said she hopes teachers will continue to play a vital role in shaping future education reforms.

"I think we’ve been very good partners in this and we believe we’ve lived up to our commitments with Race to the Top, including going through an evaluation system that we thought from the outset was wrought with danger," she said. "We think we are in the right position to say, ‘We did it your way. Now let’s have a serious conversation about not just what should be in our evaluations, but what should our schools look like if we want education to improve.’ Let’s listen to those who do this for a living."

The federal Education Department removed Hawaii’s high-risk designation in July 2013 after the state accelerated its spending and made strides toward its goals.

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan told reporters late last year that experts initially scoffed at his department’s selection of Hawaii for a Race grant, questioning the state’s ability to meet its aggressive targets.

"I think Hawaii, to their tremendous credit, has proved a lot of skeptics wrong," he said.

The goals laid out in Hawaii’s Race to the Top application have since been folded into the state Board of Education’s 2011-2018 strategic plan in an effort to ensure the reforms won’t end with the grant.

"From the beginning, we understood this was intended to be a catalyst for change," Schatz said. "We wanted to build a plan that’s sustainable, a plan that would allow us to move when this thing is pau."