The first truly comprehensive set of data on Hawaii’s keiki and their readiness for kindergarten is now in. And it lays out, in unambiguous terms, what everyone’s known to some degree for years: The state’s young children are, to a startling extent, not prepared for starting school. Fewer than one-third of them scored well enough overall to qualify as kindergarten-ready.

There has been pre-kindergarten testing before, but this was the first year the state Department of Education deployed the “kindergarten entry assessment” that in 2021 was prescribed in full detail in Act 210. According to DOE testimony before the Legislature that year, this was designed to “ensure equity for all of our students, including those in our Hawaiian immersion schools.”

To borrow an expression from past national education policy, this was rightly envisioned as the way to make sure there would be “no child left behind.”

Documenting where the shortcomings exist clearly supports the full-scale pursuit of the state’s public preschool expansion through the addition of classrooms, the Ready Keiki initiative championed by Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke. The importance of early learning in enabling children’s learning success, and their future prospects, is unquestionable.

DOE educators administered the Johns Hopkins University Ready for Kindergarten assessment to public schools, including the charter schools. A Hawaiian language version is in development for future use in immersion programs — a welcome show of commitment to this educational approach.

It’s about time to see this advance. Advocates for the assessment two years ago observed that Hawaii was one of just a few states that lacked uniform public pre-kindergarten testing in public schools.

The results should provide direction for the changes needed to bring up the scores.

To start, they showed that 29.6% of the kindergartners earned overall scores that classified them as “demonstrating readiness”; 39.5% scored at levels “approaching readiness”; and 30.9% were in the third tier, “emerging readiness.”

There are four “domains” that are assessed: language and literacy, mathematics, social foundations and physical development. Language skills were a challenge for children in many schools statewide; the Kaiser school complex was the only one testing as ready in all four domains.

Zooming in on specific communities reveals more disheartening numbers. Readiness percentages were in the single digits in the Farrington, Waianae, Lanai and Hana school complexes.

Why should this be so? Experts have no trouble suggesting reasons, including the language-access problems in these areas. One is Yuuko Arikawa-Cross, director of the state’s Executive Office on Early Learning, who said the lag may be due to the relative high proportion of isle children who speak something other than English as a first language.

This has to point policymakers toward bolstering programs for English Language Learners (ELL), the term educators use for this student population. Luke, herself an immigrant who learned English after her arrival from Korea as a child, is in an excellent position to press for that.

Undoubtedly, other social concerns in these geographic areas also count as factors. A 2019 analysis on school readiness published in Pediatrics calls poverty “one of the most widely recognized risk factors for school readiness.”

Outreach to address these gaps, such as efforts by Kamehameha Schools and others in the nonprofit sector, are crucial assists, but the primary responsibility lies with the state. Early-learning efforts have taken so long to reach the starting gate, it would be tragic to let them stall now.