Hawaii ranks last in in-person learning

Hawaii’s public schools were dead last in a recent study that ranked the 50 states and the District of Columbia for access to full-time, in-person learning during last year’s pandemic-plagued school year.

A spokesman for the state Department of Education, however, disputed the study’s results, saying it appears the researchers may not have collected all of the necessary data from Hawaii.

Featured in a recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, the study found that students in the South generally had greater access to their classrooms than those in other regions of the U.S. from September to April.

The state with the lowest mean percentage of all students with in-person access was Hawaii at 1.3%, according to the report, while the highest were Wyoming and Montana at 100%.

The study, by a team of eight East Coast academics, started with a given: Reduced access to in-person learning is linked to poorer learning outcomes and adverse mental health and behavioral effects in children.

The researchers went on to find disparities in most states when comparing the racial makeup of students learning online with those allowed in the classroom. In 43 states, non-Hispanic white students had greater access to full-time, in-person instruction than those of color.

Hawaii was among the states with the lowest amount of racial disparity, along with the District of Columbia, Delaware, Wyoming and Montana, while Ohio and Pennsylvania had the highest.

As for Hawaii’s poor access ranking, DOE spokesman Derek Inoshita said in-person learning was in operation at 76 of its 257 schools by the end of the fourth quarter.

DOE data posted on the system’s website show as many as 74% of students returning to in-campus learning toward the end of the school year.

Like many school districts, Hawaii transitioned its learning modes and opened more campuses as health protocols improved and conditions changed over the year.

Inoshita pointed out that the study acquired its data through internet searches, and it’s possible that the project’s search protocols were tripped up by the “Tableau data dashboard” format used by the DOE website. The Tableau format requires an additional click on items for more information rather than presenting the data on one static text-based spreadsheet.

Brown University economist Emily Oster, lead author of the study, declined to comment on the results, saying there was “extremely limited data from Hawaii given the sampling time frame.”

“We are working on a larger data collection effort where we aim to collect more comprehensive access data, which we hope Hawaii will participate in,” Oster said in an email.

The disparities documented in the study underscore the importance of giving priority to equitable access to the in-person learning mode for the upcoming school year, the authors concluded.

The report urges school leaders to focus this year on “safety-optimized” in-person learning options across grade levels, with intensified vaccination efforts to reduce levels of community transmission — and that mirrors the targets set by Hawaii’s public school system.