Hawaii’s public school students are starting to climb out of the academic slump caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, with last year’s return to full in-person learning helping to push up test scores and other measures, according to the annual Strive HI report released Wednesday by the state Department of Education.

However, academic proficiency in language arts, math and science still lagged behind pre-pandemic levels — which already had been lower than the department wanted.

In addition, chronic absenteeism skyrocketed last school year, with 37% of students missing 15 or more days of school, more than triple the pre-pandemic rate of 12%. And a 50% fall college enrollment rate for Hawaii public school graduates continued to trail the national average of about 66%.

“I think what we’re most excited to see is that at a statewide level, we see the improvement in student learning as reflected by the achievement data from the statewide tests,” state Deputy Superintendent Tammi Chun said in a Honolulu Star-Advertiser interview. “Scores improved after the year of in-person learning, in spite of all the challenges with students with the quarantines and COVID surges and students being absent.”

However, Chun added, “There’s still a lot more work to do in terms of reaching the … proportion of students that were proficient prior to pandemic, and then getting to the targets where we really want to be in terms of student learning. We weren’t satisfied with where we were before the pandemic.”

For instance, only 43% of students tested as proficient in math on the Smarter Balanced Assessments in the 2018-19 school year. No statewide tests were administered in the 2019-20 school year, the year when the pandemic began. When testing resumed for the 2020-21 school year — a pandemic period when most schooling went online — students proficient in math plummeted to 32%. But in the past school year, the first year in which the schools resumed full in-person instruction, the proportion climbed back up to 38%.

A similar pattern in science scores showed 44% of students proficient in the pre-pandemic 2018-19 school year, tumbling to 35% in the 2020-21 school year, then rising to 40% last school year.

Likewise, students proficient in English language arts had been at 54% before the pandemic, sliding to 50% in 2020-21, then inching up to 52% last school year.

The Smarter Balanced Assessments are a common indicator of college and career readiness, “so these gains are significant because these assessments reflect very high standards,” Chun said. “Nationally, Hawaii exceeded, matched or is within two points of other states that have reported SBA results for English language arts and math.”

State Schools Superintendent Keith Hayashi said the DOE’s use of multiple educational strategies, supported by federal relief funds, have helped Hawaii’s schools start to mitigate the pandemic learning loss.

“By prioritizing a return to in-person learning last school year, schools were able to implement data-­driven strategies to support and accelerate student learning,” Hayashi said in a news release. “These include small-group instruction, intervention blocks, tutoring, out-of-school-time programs, academic coaching, personalized activities, and behavioral and social-­emotional assessments.

“Still, last school year was far from a normal year,” Hayashi continued. “The encouraging growth we are seeing is a testament to our educators who are counteracting the effects of the pandemic.”

The Hawaii State Teachers Association, the union representing 13,700 Hawaii teachers, declined to react to the Strive HI report. But some teachers this year have complained that their schools have been slow to receive added support and personnel to combat student learning loss. So far the DOE has spent about half of its allotted $639.5 million in federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Funds.

The Strive HI Performance System collects data on multiple measures of school success tracked by the DOE. In addition to academic proficiency, it documents performance of student “subgroups,” such as English learners, special education students and economically disadvantaged students; attendance; completion of career and technical education programs; graduation; college enrollment; and more. The data covers Hawaii’s 171,600 students statewide, including approximately 159,500 in regular public schools and nearly 12,100 in public charter schools.

Chun called the 2021-22 school year “a really unusual year in terms of the patterns of absences.” Student attendance and teacher attendance both were hurt by surges of the COVID-19 delta variant in fall 2021, and the omicron variant in late 2021 and early 2022. “There were a lot of reasons students were out — lots of quarantining, close contacts, students who had COVID,” she added.

“Usually elementary has the best attendance … but this past year there were a lot more high levels of absences,” Chun continued. “We think that was because parents were worried about their children, many of whom were unvaccinated because at the time … vaccinations weren’t available for their really young children.” Many secondary students, meanwhile, struggled to relearn the routines and norms of in-person school after a year of virtual learning, she said.

Lessons learned

Other points from the Strive HI report for 2021-22:

>> Reading: The percentage of third graders reading near, at or above grade level rose 4 percentage points to 80%. The percentage of eighth graders was 76%.

>> Promotion: 89% of ninth grade students were promoted to 10th grade on time.

>> Career and Technical Education programs, also known as CTE: The percentage of students who completed a CTE program by 12th grade increased by 3 percentage points to 64%.

>> Achievement gap: A large difference in academic achievement persists between “high needs” students — including English learners, economically disadvantaged and special education students — and “non-high needs” students. The gap in proficiency is 34 percentage points in language arts (37% vs. 71%, respectively), and 29 percentage points in math (25% vs. 54%).

>> Graduation: The on-time graduation rate stood at 86%.