Hawaii schools are climbing back from pandemic slump

As COVID-19 took hold across the islands beginning in 2020, Hawaii’s public schools struggled to take stock of the damage wrought by the burgeoning pandemic. Remote learning had scrambled routines, while shortened statewide assessments limited what educators could measure, and thousands of students were missing from classrooms altogether.

The 2021 Strive HI report, the state Department of Education’s annual snapshot of student performance, painted a sobering picture: only 32% of public school students met math benchmarks in the 2020-2021 academic year, 35% met science benchmarks and just half were judged proficient in language arts. Chronic absenteeism soared, with many students missing 15 or more days of school and educators faced questions about how much learning had been lost.

Four ye