Eighty-five percent of Hawaii secondary school classes are taught by teachers rated as "highly qualified," up 20 percentage points from five years ago but still short of the state’s goal of having a fully certified teacher in every classroom, new figures show.

Hawaii has historically struggled to increase its percentages of highly qualified teachers, in part because of perennial shortages and high turnover in some subject areas and at hard-to-staff schools.

In 2010-11, Hawaii ranked second from the bottom among states for the percentage of core classes taught by highly qualified teachers. Utah was last.

Nationally, 96 percent of core classes are taught by highly qualified teachers.

The new state figures show elementary schools are near the 100 percent mark, with 97 percent of core classes taught by highly qualified teachers.

At middle and high schools the figures are lower. In the 2011-12 school year, 85 percent of secondary classes were taught by highly qualified teachers, up from 77 percent in 2008-09 and 65 percent in 2007-08.

At secondary schools that serve high-poverty areas, 8 in 10 classes are taught by highly qualified teachers.

Carol Tenn, who heads up a Department of Education unit aimed at boosting the percentage of highly qualified teachers, said Hawaii faces unique challenges in attracting a highly qualified candidate pool.

"Schools have worked hard to meet this requirement and have made significant progress across all complex areas," she said, adding, "It is much more difficult to entice an HQ teacher to move to Hawaii."

To increase its numbers of highly qualified teachers, the state has worked with existing teachers to get them certified and revamped hiring procedures. This school year the state is also offering more online courses taught by HQ teachers.

Federal law mandates that all core academic subjects be taught by a highly qualified teacher. "Highly qualified" means a teacher has a bachelor’s degree or higher, is fully licensed, has demonstrated subject-matter competency in the courses they teach and has passed required teaching exams.

One of the ways Hawaii tried to attract more highly qualified teachers for the 2012-12 school year was by starting its annual hiring push earlier.

In years past, the DOE did most of its hiring during the summer. This year it kicked off hiring in March.

Doug Murata, DOE assistant superintendent of human resources, said starting the hiring process earlier drew favorable reviews from principals but that it’s too soon to tell whether it resulted in an increase in highly qualified teachers.

He said about 800 new teachers were hired for this school year.

Meanwhile the department wants to make a distinction between "highly qualified" and "effective" as defined by the planned teacher evaluation system, two terms the DOE says are not necessarily synonymous. The DOE wants every teacher to be both, and so is also advancing efforts to revamp teacher induction and evaluation systems.

The new teacher evaluation system, which includes student performance data, will be taken statewide in 2013-14. That school year, the DOE wants 55 percent of teachers in schools serving high-poverty communities to be "highly effective" — highly qualified and effective. For the following year the DOE’s goal is 75 percent.