Fourth graders in Hawaii’s public schools have caught up to the national average in reading and math on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, but eighth graders still lag their peers nationally.

In both subjects, fourth graders notched an increase of 2 percentage points in proficiency rates this year compared with 2017, when the exams were last given, according to results released today.

Known as “the Nation’s Report Card,” NAEP is the country’s only common measure of achievement. It tracks performance by testing random samples of fourth and eighth grade students in reading and math every two years.

Since 2003, Hawaii’s fourth graders have made steady and substantial gains in reading, from just 23% proficient to 34% this year, while the national rate moved up more slowly, to 35% from 31%. This year the national and state rates are statistically equivalent, according to NAEP.

Fourth graders in the Aloha State also have shown major progress in math over the long term, from 23% proficient in 2003 to 40% proficient this year. In 2013 they pulled ahead of the national average by 4 points but then dropped slightly below it in 2015 and 2017. This year the state and national trend lines converged to a statistical tie, at 40% and 41% proficient respectively.

“We’re pleased that the overall trend is upward and that we are closing the gap with the national averages,” Brian Reiter, administrator for the state Department of Education’s Assessment Section, said in an interview. “I think that speaks volumes about what is happening in the classrooms, all the effort the schools are making.”

Hawaii’s eighth graders have improved over the last decade in both reading and math but never reached the national averages. This year 29% of them were proficient in reading and 28% in math, compared with the national rate of 34% for both subjects. The Hawaii figures moved up 1 percentage point in math and down 1 point in reading since the 2017 test.

NAEP notes that proficiency on its exams means that students have shown mastery of “challenging subject matter,” not that they are simply performing “at grade level.” States use other tests, such as the Smarter Balanced Assessment, to measure whether students have mastered the content standards for each grade and are on track for college and careers.

“NAEP proficiency … is intended to be an aspirational goal indicating mastery over challenging subject matter,” said Peggy Carr, associate commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics.

In a conference call with the media, she and other U.S. education officials expressed concern about stagnation in national proficiency levels in recent years on NAEP.

“Over the past decade, there has been no progress in either mathematics or reading performance, and the lowest-performing students are doing worse,” Carr said.

“Compared to a decade ago, we see that lower-achieving students made score declines in all of the assessments while higher-achieving students made score gains,” she said. “This divergence in performance is one reason why the average score appears to have been unchanged since 2009.”

NAEP is the longest-lived and most extensive assessment of what students know and can do in various subject areas.

“Nationally, fourth grade reading and even eighth grade reading has remained essentially flat across the nation for the past decade, but Hawaii has shown an increase,” said Dewey Gottlieb, NAEP state coordinator. “It’s a really nice indication of what’s been going on with attention to reading instruction in the primary grades.”

In drilling down to see what might be behind the relatively lower performance levels in eighth grade in Hawaii, he said the data show a divergence among subgroups over time.

“The students performing at the higher levels are performing as they have been or a bit better,” Gottlieb said. “It’s the students performing at the lowest levels where we are seeing the decreases happening.”

“We need to make sure those lower-performing students are getting the accommodations and support that they need in the classroom,” Reiter added.

One group of students in Hawaii showed marked improvement this year, despite challenging circumstances. English language learners increased their scores across the board compared with 2017 and with a decade earlier, particularly among fourth graders.

“We are encouraged by the progress shown by our ELL students and having discussions on what strategies have contributed to these encouraging outcomes,” said Heidi Armstrong, assistant superintendent of the Office of Student Support Services.

In addition to proficiency levels, NAEP also reports average scale scores for each grade and subject, but they cannot be compared across grade levels or subjects, only over time.

Altogether, about 600,000 fourth and eighth graders were tested nationwide in reading or math this year, including 8,800 in Hawaii.

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