The latest annual report on Hawaii public school graduates suggests continuing damage from the COVID- 19 pandemic to test scores and postsecondary education enrollment — and both measures are still lagging miles behind the state Board of Education’s proposed goal to have every graduate “prepared for college and career success.”

Just 51% of Hawaii’s graduates in the Class of 2022 enrolled in any kind of postsecondary education — including four-year and two-year college programs, and trade and technical training — in the first fall after graduation, according to the report by Hawai‘i P-20 Partnerships for Education.

“Various studies nationwide that have shown that within this decade, approximately 75% to 80% of jobs are going to require a college degree. … Clearly we’re not there,” said Lauren Moriarty, a member of the BOE’s Student Achievement Committee, which was presented with the report Thursday.

Also among the key findings of the “College and Career Readiness Indicators, Class of 2022” report:

>> Postsecondary enrollment trends: The overall percentage of local graduates who enrolled in the first fall after graduation in any type of postsecondary education had held at 55% for the Classes of 2018 and 2019; dropped to 50% for the Class of 2020, the first graduating class of the pandemic; and inched up to just 51% in 2021 and 2022.

“It seems to maybe be trending in the right direction, but it’s still basically flat,” Stephen Schatz, executive director of P-20, said in his presentation of the report. Hawai‘i P-20 is a statewide partnership led by the Executive Office on Early Learning, the state Department of Education and the University of Hawaii system.

Graduates who suffered “economic disadvantage” at any point during grades K-12 showed dramatically lower college enrollment than those who had never been economically disadvantaged — 42% postsecondary enrollment vs. 68% — the report said.

>> ACT results: Scores on American College Testing assessments over the past five years show that Hawaii’s 2022 high school graduates trailed slightly behind prepandemic levels in math, recovered from pandemic effects in English and registered a sizeable increase in science (see graphic).

However, the percentages of island grads producing college-ready scores were still small. In math, only 21% of 2022 Hawaii grads who took the ACT scored 22 or higher out of a possible 36 points — the threshold considered “college ready.”

In science, the percentage of grads who reached the college-ready mark of 23 points or more was 22%. In English, the percentage of grads who reached the college-ready mark of 18 points or more was 41%.

Having “all students graduate high school prepared for college and career success and community and civic engagement” is a goal in the draft proposal for the 2023-2029 Strategic Plan for Hawaii’s public schools.

Schatz said the test scores should be interpreted with caution because participation fell off dramatically during the height of the pandemic. For the Classes of 2018, 2019 and 2020, more than 80% of students took the test. But for the Class of 2021, it was 78%, and for the Class of 2022, it was a mere 61%.

Still, committee member and BOE Chair Bruce Voss said that with the smaller, more select group of test takers, “you’d expect a bump right for our overall readiness numbers. But we didn’t get that; we got a little teeny bump in English and really no movement at all, or appreciable movement, in math and science. And I found that very sobering.”