The coronavirus pandemic’s impact on Hawaii’s public schools students ranged from moderate to severe, according to an independent assessment. 

However, Superintendent Keith Hayashi said in a written memo that the same analysis found that Hawaii’s recovery was exceptional among a dozen states that were compared.

The state Department of Education presented the findings to the Board of Education on Thursday, which showed that student proficiency has improved in English but are still lacking in Math. 

The analysis done by the mainland consultant Center on Assessment found overall that students learned at a faster rate after the pandemic than they did before, and that mathematics needs a “steeper recovery” than English in public schools.  

Out of the 258 public schools in Hawaii, the Center of Assessment sampled 16 schools with different “socio-economic and demographic characteristics.”

“These data provide positive signs that Hawaii schools attended to the learning needs of their students,” Hayashi wrote. “However, given that the pandemic created unprecedented effects on students, more data is required to project the long-term trajectory of students’ learning.”

Also the Center on Assessment found that “decisive leadership” would work well during the pandemic and that funding wasn’t a significant limitation for academic recovery during the pandemic.

Civil Beat’s education reporting is supported by a grant from Chamberlin Family Philanthropy.