The Department of Education is trying to determine why reading and math test scores for students with severe cognitive disabilities dropped so dramatically this year with the introduction of a more academically rigorous annual assessment.

Just 4 percent of students who took the Hawaii State Alternate Assessment tested proficient in math, down from 62 percent in 2010. Eight percent were proficient in reading, down from 70 percent.

In response to the big decline in proficiency levels, the Department of Education plans to step up teacher training and analyze whether other problems exist in the test’s implementation.

"We were very surprised to see the low scores," said Cara Tanimura, director of the DOE’s systems accountability office. "We are looking at the test again."

About 450 students took the alternate assessment, and they represent a fraction of the state’s overall special-education student population. Most special-education students take the Hawaii State Assessment alongside their general-education peers.

Officials were expecting some decline — though not so steep a drop — in proficiency on the alternate assessment with the move to a redesigned test that focuses on grade-level-appropriate benchmarks.

Also changed with the new test: Students were no longer allowed to be prompted while testing, and the assessments were scored by external scorers, not teachers.

The DOE said the test itself puts Hawaii at the forefront of a movement to put greater emphasis on academic rigor and testing in classrooms for severely cognitively disabled students.

In the past the main objective for these students, officials said, was to make them as independent as possible — teaching them such things as life skills and personal hygiene.

While those things are still part of the curriculum, the DOE is now moving toward making sure that these students are pushed academically.

But the significant drop in test scores is concerning parents, some of whom have grown frustrated over the annual testing process required under the federal No Child Left Behind law and decided not to have their children participate.

Sixty-six percent of eligible students took the alternate assessment this year, from participation percentages in the mid-80s in previous years.

The DOE said the decline is in large part due to parents having their children opt out of the new test.

Shanelle Lum, public policy and information specialist for Hawaii Families as Allies, said many parents don’t want to put their children through a rigorous testing process that will result in a discouragingly low proficiency score.

She said her own child, an eighth-grader with severe autism, took the alternate assessment and saw his scores drop markedly.

"It’s disheartening to see those type of results when you know that’s not a true indication" of what a child can do, she said. "I know that a lot of parents do opt out because it’s very flawed."

The new test, which cost the state about $2 million, came about as a result of a compliance agreement with the U.S. Department of Education, which required that Hawaii test students on grade-level-appropriate benchmarks.

On the new alternate assessment, for example, an eighth-grader might be asked to solve an algebraic equation, but the complexity would be lower than what would be seen on the Hawaii State Assessment. (On the alternate a student could be asked to solve for x if 1 + x = 2.)

"The prompts they may be using could be pictures. It may be simpler numbers," said Kent Hinton, administrator of the DOE student assessment section.

He added that though the proficiency levels are low this year, the move to more academically rigorous material for severely cognitively disabled students has shown successes.

"When you add the academics, students are able to do a lot more," he said. "We are seeing students make some huge gains."

Scott Marion, vice president of the National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment, said the shift to more academically rigorous tests for special-education children with the most severe disabilities is a major one that will likely go through some growing pains as students, parents and teachers get acclimated to new tests and new expectations.

But, he added, the federal government is pushing more states to move toward redesigned, "evidence-based" tests that more accurately guage how much a student knows in reading and math.

"The reality is that these kids can actually do some much more sophisticated stuff than people gave them credit for," he said. "A lot of the tests in the past were these checklists that the teachers would say, ‘Yes, I saw the child do that.’ It was just the teacher’s impression of what the child was able to do."