5% Proficient in Math, 100% Concerned

From the 2020-2021 to the 2023-2024 school years, Lahainaluna students' proficiency rates in math and reading dropped. Math declined from 14% to 5%, and reading from 57% to 28%. Many at LHS agree that there’s a learning issue on campus and that something should be done. However, no one can definitively say why. Was it COVID-19? An overall decline in motivation? Are these scores just inaccurate? Is it the way we gather data? Perhaps it’s a combination of factors.

“How are you gonna, like, achieve stuff?”

Many are concerned about the drop in reading specifically. English scores in the 2022-2023 school year decreased to 49%—a drop that we might connect to the effects of COVID-19 and remote education. But the 28% drop for 2023-2024 is more concerning. The decline immediately after COVID was only 8%. The problem is getting worse, not better.

Freshman Wendy Moore thinks, “Literacy is a really big thing to understand for your future. If you don’t even have a bare understanding of it,” she added, “how are you gonna, like, achieve stuff?”

Brianne Lagazo agrees: “I think being able to analyze what you're reading and understanding what you're reading is really important, especially at a young age—to be able to understand what you're reading and expand.” Ending on a sad note, she admits, “A lot of people my age are not able to do the same thing.”

Sophomore Jaylee Vierra suspects that LHS students, per our StriveHI scores, “aren’t reaching our full potential, like we could be doing a lot better.” Without reading comprehension and basic math, we essentially lose “a key function in adulthood.” Yet, she also guessed that LHS students struggle with “these basic concepts because we don’t care to learn them.”

“Being able to think deeply about information, and maybe not even deeply, but critically about information is really important because you guys are making decisions based off of information that you're gathering,” says librarian Tara Nakata.

“It's different for everybody.”

Math scores were even worse, and some students are concerned about what this means for those leaving high school to look for jobs and greater levels of education.

Thinking about her classes, sophomore Yaretzi Flores observes that students “don't really truly grasp [the subject being taught].” She thinks that students are being promoted without the skills their teachers need them to have. Flores notes that teachers often have to reteach material because students didn’t learn it the first time.

"If you can't learn one topic,” she explains, “like, there's no way you can hop on to another and, like, fully get the concept of that.”

This situation presents teachers with a dilemma. They can move their classes onto the next subject, leaving students behind, or they can reteach. In both cases, students are negatively affected.

Describing this situation, junior Shalany Hadley says, “It’s a little disappointing.” Students who are ready to learn “won't grow” when teachers have to reteach.

Yet, Hadley empathized that “It's different for everybody.” Personal experiences or mental health issues may affect those who benefit from reteaching. “If something's going on in your personal life, it does make it harder for you to focus and, like, truly give your full attention to what you're trying to learn.”

Presented with the data, junior Gonzalez Cruz related to those who are struggling. “I'm in Algebra Two. I was learning this one equation, and I couldn't figure it out, because all the kids remember it from last year, or, like, the years before, and I didn't really fully get the concept down that year.”

Systems and School Funding

Cassie Jacinto or “Aunty Cass” is our current Student Activities Coordinator, though she used to teach math at LHS. “There are so many people that are under, like, the poverty line at Lahainaluna,” she said, referring to the fact that poverty can contribute to less parental involvement and a shift in priorities for some students.

The problem with priorities, in particular, presents the possibility that the scores themselves are not accurate. Pointing to testing culture, she asked, “How many students actually think that those test scores matter?”

Even students who are well-off may see no value in the test if it doesn’t gain them anything. “There's no accountability anymore,” said Jacinto. “Like they just take this test? Are they even gonna really try?” If it doesn't matter to the students, she reasoned, then how accurate is the statistic in the first place?”

“They don't care. It's not tied to a grade,” she said. “That's what motivates people most of the time, right? Yeah, like, 'Oh, does this test affect my grade?' No, okay, so are you really going to try then? Does it matter? Right? The answer is no, right, it doesn't matter to the students.”

“How do we make test scores better?” Jacinto questioned. “Like, well, why are test scores so important?” The answer: “Because it's tied to funding. Where are our priorities?”

Priorities

Since 2020, educators and officials have accounted for low test scores by blaming the pandemic, but it’s been three years since then, and the problem is only getting worse.

“I think we can only blame COVID for so long, you know, I think we're cycling out of that group of kids that were affected by it,” says English teacher Jennifer Ariemma. Instead, she thinks the problem could be our low expectations. “I don't think we hold ourselves to a high enough standard for kids. We have a tendency to pass students who shouldn't really, necessarily, be passed.”

“Some students know more than the test gives them the capacity to show,” says Ariemma. “If we had a different way of testing our students, if we had a different way of monitoring their progress, I think we'd be able to help them a little bit more than taking a test.”