Mathematics test scores among Hawai'i's public school students have not improved as rapidly as literacy scores, prompting a renewed effort by state educators to deal with a long-standing problem.

All grade levels — except seventh and eighth — showed little to no improvement in math scores in the Hawai'i State Assessment test this year. The test is used to measure the progress schools are making under the federal No Child Left Behind law.

Meanwhile, education officials say they are concerned that Hawai'i students continue to lag behind their nationwide counterparts in math achievement, as revealed in national testing results over the last several years.

Stagnant test scores have led to broader concerns about whether Hawai'i's students are adequately prepared for college, the workplace or life beyond secondary school.

"When we look at how schools have been doing statewide, there has been minimal improvement," said Dewey Gottlieb, math education specialist with the state Department of Education. "One of the things we constantly struggle with in math is, as soon as a kid is behind and they go on to the next level, there is so much ground to be made up."

The scope of Hawai'i's mathematics problem has been categorized as a "crisis" by many educators within the public school system and within the University of Hawai'i. It has even drawn the attention of leaders within the business community, said Tammi Chun, executive director of the Hawai'i P-20 (or Preschool to age 20) Initiative, a statewide collaboration between early-childhood education, K-12 and higher education.

"Some of the numbers are pretty shocking," Chun said.

For instance, data collected from the UH system demonstrate that many recent high school graduates entering the university or community college system require remedial or developmental courses, she said.

In fall 2007, only 16 percent of entering college students scored high enough on math placement exams to be put into a beginning college math course. Some 84 percent of students scored at or below the high school math level, and 34 percent scored at or below eighth-grade level, Chun said.

Mathematics education ensures individuals can contribute to the local and global economies and it ensures individuals have the skills necessary for their daily lives, Chun said.

"You definitely want enough people to be able to have higher-level education and go into the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematic) fields, so we have competitiveness as a state and as a country," Chun added.

"For the individual, you need a certain level of math. Part of it is critical thinking and part of it is the everyday-life things you do that need math," she said. "If people understood the concepts of math a little more, maybe we wouldn't have had these problems with the mortgage crisis."

MANY LEFT BEHIND

Karl Dovermann, associate chairman of the Mathematics Department at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa, said data have suggested that Hawai'i students are two to two-and-a-half years behind when they graduate from high school.

"There are many smart, motivated students in the public school system who succeed there and come here to UH and succeed here as well. But there's a huge number of students who are unsuccessful, who don't learn what is required," Dovermann.

The poor performance of Hawai'i public school students in math has been a concern of education officials for the past several years. Their efforts to increase math achievement include the implementation of more rigorous graduation requirements and targeted professional guidance. These efforts were developed over a series of math summits late last year between the university, the Hawai'i P-20 Initiative and the state Department of Education.

The state has been making some progress in increasing its expectations in the area of math, especially when it comes to its graduation requirements and high school math standards.

Last year, Hawai'i implemented a voluntary high school diploma, called the "College and Career Ready Diploma," which requires students to take four credits of math instead of three, among other requirements. A student would need to complete Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra II and an Algebra II end-of-course exam to complete the math requirement.

Also, beginning in the 2010 school year, the DOE will no longer accept any math credit lower than Algebra I for credit to graduate, a major policy shift in mathematics education. Its main goal is to make the expectations more rigorous than they have been.

"Previously, there were all kinds of different courses that could count for (math) credit for graduation. They could get through high school with the highest course they may have passed being Algebra I. The concern was, a number of our students would go to the community college or four-year college ... and end up in remedial courses," Gottlieb said.

Many high schools have already eliminated Pre-Algebra from their course offerings, meaning students are expected to have taken the class in middle school, something that doesn't always occur.

Pearl City High School principal Carlyn Fujimoto said her school will no longer offer Pre-Algebra beginning next year. That has required her to work with the high school's feeder schools to make sure students are prepared for Algebra I upon entrance to the school.

"Statewide, we need to not only take a look at what we're doing in the intermediate school but also in the elementary school. Even when students leave fifth or sixth grade, teachers need to look at how can they make connections toward what the kids will be expected to do," Fujimoto said.

REMEDIAL EFFORTS

Educators also acknowledge that not all students will be performing math at their grade level by the time they reach high school. So math workshops will be available for remedial help. The credit, however, will not count toward graduation. It would count as an elective credit rather than a math credit.

Dovermann, at UH-Manoa, suggested that much of the problem with mathematics achievement rests with inadequate teaching at the high school level.

"We seem to be (seeing) a lot of casual hires as mathematics teachers in our school system, often people who have not studied mathematics and have no formal training in the subject," he said.

If a teacher has gaps in his mathematics education, those gaps will show up in his students, Dovermann said.

That's an issue that the DOE has been addressing through the federal No Child Left Behind's requirements to have content areas taught by highly qualified teachers who have expertise in the subject, said Daniel Hamada, assistant superintendent for curriculum, instruction and student support. Hamada also said the DOE will be using recent testing results to specifically target professional development to individual schools.

"We're taking a look at the data to determine what the patterns are in terms of gaps," Hamada said. "Based on that, we're strategizing professional development. We're trying to work with the individual schools that are not showing the progress we'd like."

Hamada said professional development, either through the state DOE or through the University of Hawai'i, is one way that teachers can achieve their highly qualified status in mathematics.

The most recent figure from the state DOE showed that last year, about 70 percent of math courses on the secondary level were taught by teachers who were highly qualified, said Bob Campbell, director of the DOE's federal compliance office.