The learning loss that Hawaii students suffered during the COVID-19 pandemic is expected to lower their lifetime earnings by an average of 3.7%, spurring a 1.2% loss in Hawaii’s gross domestic product, or $31.3 billion in present value, according to a new report by the Hoover Institution of Stanford University released Thursday.

And while test scores suggest public schools in Hawaii have done better than in most U.S. states in bouncing back from the pandemic, America as a whole is a dismal 31st among the nations in math, Stanford economist Erik Hanushek, the report’s author, said in a presentation to the Student Achievement Committee of the state Board of Education.

“Students in Hawaii are competing (at a math level) with Turkey, and I don’t think that’s where you want to be right now,” said Hanushek, who traveled to Honolulu to present the report. “We aren’t competing with our neighboring states. We’re competing internationally, given the international trade and competition around the world. And so the future of students in Hawaii, and the economy in Hawaii and the economy in the U.S., depend upon in fact improving some of this performance.”

Meanwhile, in a separate but related development, state education officials for the first time in recent years have announced a new set of concrete targets for student proficiency in math and English, and “on-time graduation.”

The targets for the 2028-2029 year, also called “key performance indicators,” or KPIs, are part of the BOE’s developing implementation plan for a six-year strategic plan it adopted in 2023. Setting the targets are a step for accountability, a spokesperson said.

State education officials have said they gradually would develop measurable targets for nine KPIs, including proficiency in various academic subjects. While some are still being researched and refined, the first ones to be released Thursday were:

>> Math: 50% of students will demonstrate proficiency on the Smarter Balanced Assessment by 2028-2029. That compares with 40% in school year 2022-2023, which is serving as the baseline, officials said.

>> English: 65% of students will demonstrate proficiency in language arts by 2028-2029, compared with last school year’s baseline of 52%.

>> Graduation: 90% of students will graduate within four years, compared with 85% of students in the class of 2022.

Asked whether there will be rewards or consequences if schools do or do not reach the targets, DOE Communications Director Nanea Kalani said by email that it is not a punitive system.

“The academic achievement targets are intended to assess progress under the Strategic Plan. They are designed to be ambitious yet attainable to support schools’ continuous improvement,” she said. “Under StriveHI, there are federal requirements to identify struggling schools and provide the necessary supports for improvement.”

Solid recovery

State schools Superintendent Keith Hayashi, in introducing Hanushek’s report, told the board’s Student Achievement Committee that Hawaii students “are making solid academic recovery coming out of the pandemic.”

For instance, he said, “Our statewide Smarter Balanced Assessments measure English language arts and mathematics proficiency for students in grades 3 through 8 and 11. In 2023 we ranked No. 1 among 13 states in ELA, and rank in top five for mathematics. Our students are returning to pre-pandemic learning levels faster than most states, and we aim to exceed pre- pandemic levels.”

However, “In spite of Hawaii’s strong academic recovery, compared to other states, Hawaii’s young people and the economy are still projected to experience negative economic impacts,” Hayashi acknowledged in a memo he wrote to the committee.

Hanushek’s report linked pandemic learning loss to lost earnings and the economy: “Those with higher achievement and greater cognitive skills earn more, and the value of higher achievement persists across a student’s entire work life. Moreover, the economic growth of states is highly dependent on the quality of the state’s labor force. The pandemic implies that the future workforce will be less prepared to contribute to economic growth.”

Utah will fare best

Hawaii’s “COVID-19 cohort” actually isn’t expected to suffer the most, Hanushek said. While Utah students will fare the best, losing only about 2% of their lifetime earnings, in places like Delaware the figure is closer to 9%. Hawaii’s nearly 4% “is still a significant number,” he said.

The report, which calculated losses based on National Assessment of Educational Progress scores from Hawaii’s public-school students, also said disadvantaged students suffered greater declines in learning during the pandemic. “What this implies is that kids at the bottom got hurt more over the pandemic, and they will suffer larger losses as we go forward in terms of their labor market and their skills that they have,” Hanushek said.

When asked what is the most effective way to help students recover, Hanushek said as an economist, he believes it would be to financially reward the most effective teachers and provide incentives to work in the most troubled schools, although he acknowledges it is a controversial opinion.

A Dallas school district, for instance, provided $10,000 to top-tier teachers, and $8,000 and $5,000 to teachers on lower tiers, Hanushek said. “The proportion of highly effective teachers in the worst schools of Dallas jumped, and two years after they instituted this program, the worst schools in Dallas were at the city average” in student achievement, he said.