 This is the state of the state of Hawaii. Welcome to the show. I'm Stephanie Stoldalton, your host for this show. And our show title is Hawaii's student achievement lowest due to COVID. And the reading and math learning is deeply declined. So we have some serious topics to discuss this evening. And we're going to lead off with finding out about the current assessments by Hawaii's State Department of Education and by the U.S. Department of Education that reveal COVID's drastic impact on American students learning. And Hawaii's plan with federal resources to regain students achievement. So we have actually two topics to cover. So the learning condition of students and then the resources that are there in a generous amount to make a difference for them to restore Hawaii's education and student achievement. Well, Hawaii's own published school data reports indicate that there is serious and significant learning loss among elementary and secondary students. Hawaii Department of Education reports that up to 53% of elementary students and over 61% of middle school students tested one or more grade below level in English language arts. And in math, more than 60% scored below their grade level. Now Hawaii's serious learning loss that is reported in Star Bulletin and other texts is affirmed by the U.S. Department of Education's peak new first look at with just released data from an assessment known as the nation's report card. And that national data showed the largest declines observed in 50 years of administering this assessment in the nation's student achievement. And for Hawaii, for example, that means that a nine-year-old student typically a fourth grader had a larger slip in reading and language arts in 30 years. And it was also showing that there was the first decline in math scores ever. So to make up this loss of learning in our state and across the nation, the U.S. Congress over the past two years has been trying to provide the resources to make schools good again and open them up again and make them safe, which is what I mean by good. And they have done all of this for all the states. But for Hawaii, this state has received close to in total over the two years a billion dollars for educators to use to keep students healthy and safe and to recover from the pandemics learning losses and to soothe their social and emotional wounds, if not repair them. So this show is about recognizing our students' academic and social emotional conditions, which are very sensitive and serious, and trying to understand how the state plans budgets and operationalizes the generous one time federal funding to restore student learning and family confidence in the schools and teachers. And we have a knowledgeable guest here tonight to discuss how Hawaii addresses this formidable and daunting task. And Dr. Sherry Nakamura is director of the non-profit advocacy group, the Huey for Excellence in Education, or the HEA coalition. She follows in this work with her organization, Hawaii's governing agencies like the Department of Education Legislature and the Board of Education and others as they plan budget and operationalized approaches to improve schools' capacity to restore and assist the students' learning. So welcome, Sherry, to the state of the state. Yes, thank you, Stephanie. I'm so happy to be here again. It's a pleasure to have you. And I know that you have been quoted many times in Star Bullet Tendon Civil Beat, and I did find a quote where you said, we would like to see the money get down to the schools as soon as possible. So I thought I'd ask you, what have you found out about that in your tracking and studying of what the state's doing to make that happen? And how is it happening? So can you start off with telling us a little bit about that? Right. Well, maybe I can go from sort of our data in Hawaii. The available data looks at pre-pandemic smarter balance assessment. That is the summative assessment that measures a student's proficiency from one year to the next. So because of COVID, we missed a year, 1920, 2019, 2020, but we do have results from 2018, 2019 and 2020 and 2021. So you can imagine for English, language, arts, and math and science, all students' proficiency declined. All students. I heard you say all students. Yes. But for the subgroups, which are economically disadvantaged, students receiving special education, English learner, and certain ethnic groups like native Hawaiian students and Pacific Islander students, in some cases, the decline was greater. So they declined further than all students. So we did have decline and it was more widespread in particular in math and science from pre-pandemic to post-pandemic. So it is true. The federal government has provided close to a billion dollars for recovery, for health and safety, as well as to address learning loss. And plans have been made and shared with the Board of Education. But we find that a lot of these plans are quite broad in general. And we're not quite sure exactly how these funds are being utilized at the school level. And we're not sure whether or not there's progress being made. So this is the kind of transparency we continue to ask the Department and the Board. To the Department's credit, they do provide monthly financial statements. So we can see how the monies are being expended. It's just that the categories are so broad that we're not sure exactly what is being done in these broad categories and whether or not specific strategies are being used to target the subgroups that have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic and whether they're helping or not. Well, I saw that the Department is required to provide the Board of Education. That's where the report goes with a monthly expenditure report. Well, actually, it is on the Hawaii Department of Education website. If you do a search for ESSER data and information will come up about the federal funding. And there is a tab or link that says monthly expenditures. So you can go in and see a financial statement. And you can see what is budgeted and you can see what has been expended and you can see the balance. But the categories I mentioned are very broad. So for example, you can say complex area plans and it could be in the tens of millions of dollars for health and safety. And maybe a million dollars have been expended. So you really don't know specifically how these funds are being used. And so we keep, again, we as an advocacy organization continue to ask the Department, you know, can you be more specific? We'd like more granular information about how the schools are utilizing these funds specifically to target learning laws. Well, is the report aligned with like the budget or a plan? Or does it stand alone? What what is how is it? Yes. Okay, yes, I know what you're asking. So the schools every year create academic and financial plan for themselves. So each school does an academic and financial plan based on their students and their community. And I think that has that process has been going along, you know, pre, during and post pandemic. And we're still in a pandemic. But this process has continued as is. But then the federal funding has been supplemental. So you would hope that the continual or the the plans that have been there throughout or have been had a consistent process would align with the federal funding plans. It's not, I'm not quite sure if they are, it seems like the federal funding did add another layer. And my understanding is the schools and the complexes had to come up with a federal funds plan, how they were going to use these funds. And I would imagine in some cases there is an alignment, or there was an alignment, and some cases perhaps. So are you saying that that report is not it is not designating the funding source that these are these are the department's allocations from the state. And then this is the federal funding. And yeah, the way they they're reporting it is the federal funding is a standalone source. And they're utilizing this standalone source for various initiatives. So it's it is, I think you can think of it as separate, even though we would hope that it would be aligned with the normal process of how a school does its academic plan and budget. So a parent can go on and find S or ESSER is the acronym for that elementary and secondary. They could, but it's not that easy to find. So actually, a parent could find the academic and financial plan for each school. That's on one part of the website. But then the ESSER plan and funding is in another section on the website. So you do have to have some knowledge. It's not like one page where you can easily navigate. It's it's actually quite complicated. Well, it said that there's also a narrative that is due with it. So it says from what I read about what was required that it had the financial plan and then the narrative. Does it have a good narrative? I should have looked at it. I didn't get a chance. But so is there enough narrative there to help a reader know what it's about? Well, the department did create a academic and financial plan. Actually, it was the board that directed the department to do this. The department at first came with a financial plan, which was difficult to understand. And so the board told the department, you know, this is hard to understand. We need an academic plan. So how you are actually going to or what is your plan for providing health and safety, ensuring health and safety, and also addressing learning loss and a corresponding financial plan. So the board directed the department to do this. And the department fulfilled that request. They did create a plan with the financials. And the board did approve it. Now, we're not quite sure if they just created a narrative to match the financial plan that they had initially, or whether or not they truly created the academic plan and then connected the financials that would be needed to execute the academic plan. So that that we're not quite sure, but the department did come up with this plan. I would say that it was still it is still difficult to understand exactly what the department is doing at the school level. So once again, they have very broad strategies. So I can name these strategies. You know, there's four of them. One is healthy. One is healthy habits, healthy schools. The other is action oriented decision making. The next one is responsive capacity building. And the last one is effective academic practices. So all right. So those are the four system wide strategies. Correct. And but those are very broad. So we would like to know. So for example, action oriented decision making, action oriented decision making, what specific actions are, is the system or schools executing or performing to really target some of our struggling subgroups? I mean, that's the kind of information we would like to know. We haven't heard specifically what schools are doing. Or for example, if there's a particular school or schools that are using effective data driven actions that are really addressing all students or students who are economically disadvantaged or the subgroups, we would hope that the department would be able to identify some of those and maybe be able to share them. Or maybe they would look system wide and see what common issues came up with respect to the pandemic. We hear about social emotional mental health issues. I would imagine, you know, even though students are individual, perhaps there would be common issues regarding engagement. We would hope that the department would look at the system or have a systematic way of identifying some of these issues and solutions so that we could utilize our resources in the most effective way, you know, a systematic way. But because we don't have this kind of detail, we don't really know what to make of these strategies. And, you know, it could be that each school is doing what they think is best for their own situation, which is fine. It's just that we don't have unlimited resources. We have limited resources so that, so we would hope that the department would make the best use of the limited resources that we have. And we think that that is just having a systematic way of, a systematic approach to addressing the effects of the pandemic. Well, I found, I had another descriptor in here that is supposed to be given to the board, which is a quarterly educational metrics report. Yes. That contained in, have you seen that? Yes. Well, so this is really interesting. Yes. A department was required to do that. And they have presented to the board the beginning of the year and the middle of the year report. So every school is supposed to have what they call a universal screener. And you mentioned that data, you mentioned the data from the screeners at the beginning of the show, where I think you quoted that, you know, certain amount of percent of students are not on grade level. So the screeners are able to assess students and this information is produced. So I've only seen the beginning and the middle of the year. I think when I looked on the website, they did update it for the end of the year last year, but they never presented that to the board. So it's on the website, but there wasn't a presentation to the board. So, you know, and, of course, the data on the website, like if I was a parent and I just looked at this data, it is hard to make sense of what the data is saying without a narrative or maybe looking at across years or some kind of explanation. So it is true that the department is posting the information as required, but I think stakeholders like a coalition is really wanting a narrative and an explanation of what the department's analysis is of this. You know, if we would like to know is, by looking at these interim, you know, snapshots, is the money that the federal government has provided as a supplement really helping? We can't really tell, unfortunately. So one would expect then to have that the educational metrics report that those metrics then would be reflecting the criterion that everybody's trying to reach like improvement in English language, arts, or math issues. So those are all different, right? There's no district-wide metrics that everybody's trying to meet and who is and who isn't. Yeah. So how does that work? Yes. So this is, I think I mentioned this before. So when the department was presenting their plan to the board, a board member asked the superintendent, what are your targets for the use of these funds with respect to these metrics, indicators, academic achievement indicators, or social-emotional learning indicators. And the superintendent said, oh, there were no targets, but rather he just wanted progress. So it turns out that there are targets, although the department has not clearly pointed to them, there are targets that the department has made to the federal government, long-term targets and interim targets. But it doesn't seem like any of those targets were mentioned in the federal funding plan. So to us, without clear targets and goals, it's hard to know if progress is being made because we don't know where we're trying to get to. So that's another question we've been asking the department. Can you clearly articulate what your outcomes, your goals, your targets, even if it's, if they don't think that, even if the targets maybe they're too aggressive need to be adjusted, that's fine. But we think that there needs to be clarity on what they're trying to get to. Because then, I mean, right now, without any clear goals, we're not sure if these four strategies are really helping. Or, yeah, we're not sure if our money is being well spent, I guess. Well, yeah. And I mean, it doesn't sound, I don't want to say it's not coherent, but it doesn't seem like it's hanging together out of a framework of guidance for it. Anyway, it's not comprehensive. Anyway, I wanted to say who's signing off on it? So it's the, so the board asked for it, the department posts it, and that's it. There's no letter on there, dear colleague, you know, this is what you're doing. This is a nice sign off of it because I'm a board member in this. Well, so actually, I think the results from last year's smarter balance assessment will be reported. Usually, it happens in October. So we're hoping that there will be a meeting in October to review the results. Now, one thing that is different this year, this time, is that the board has contracted the National Association of State Boards of Education, the acronym is NASBE, and they're helping the board create a strategic plan. And it's the first time that the board is taking responsibility to create a strategic plan. So there have been some trainings with board members that are open to the public that have been very useful for people like us or advocacy organizations like us, because we're seeing the process being done, you know, in real time. And I am, I believe that in October there will be a session with all of the DOE data, student achievement data. And I think this would be very informative for the public to attend and, you know, pay attention to because hopefully we'll get more, hopefully we'll get more specific specifics on, you know, where we need to focus. Right now, it seems very general, like we know that there's been learning loss and we know that we have these four strategies that the department is utilizing. But we, we believe that we need more specific. So could you say that the four pillars then they're, they're not, and I guess I should, anyway, they are operationally defined ordinarily, those would be operationally defined. And those would be translated into, as you say, those indicators, targets, or and the metrics, then the metrics matched up with them. So that's something maybe they're learning with the NASB work. Well, hopefully we will have targets so that the strategies can work for those targets right now. I mean, perhaps the department internally has these targets, but we haven't been informed about them. Well, it's just good to know that you all are looking there and overseeing what they're doing to, you're not overseeing it, but you're tracking it so that we can make some sense out of it because my other question was about how you tend to look also at other examples of school systems that are similar have features that are of interest to Hawaii's work. Yes, I have been looking at other districts that are similar size to Hawaii. And I do learn a lot from their processes. It seems like the districts are more transparent on their process of how to do a strategic plan, what their goals are, the strategies then tie into how they're, you know, trying to make progress to those goals. So we would encourage the Hawaii Department of Education not to copy because we every district is different, but maybe take a look at those processes so that it's clear to the public and we can make the connections a logical connection on what the department's trying to do so we can better support our students. Yes, that's very good. I also saw that it was reported that the teacher union president was asking about the superintendent Hayashi's role in the process and that he was implying that or maybe directly stating that it was the superintendent's work that brings that money down into the schools and makes things happen more expeditiously. How is that superintendent's role working for the benefit? Well, I do agree with the union in that the superintendent can make a lot of things happen. Again, we don't have all of the details to know and so I guess we are consistent. We want more transparency. We want to understand what's going on at the school level more specifically and yes, we do believe that money should get down to the schools because that's where the students are and the schools are doing the work and we feel that that's where the support needs to be. Well, I noticed in the write up from the feds that these funds, very generous funds, are use it or lose it funds so that you've got to use the funds by the deadlines that they're placing on them. So in other words, the latest one would be September 2024. I mean that's really only two, I mean less than two years away, right? So does it appear to you that they're moving in the direction to be organized and operationalized enough to use all of this money? Well, I just took a look at some of the the last monthly report and for some categories or line items, we are far away from spending down that money. So I'm not sure. We hope that processes are in place to get the monies down to the school level as we would hope. From some of these snapshots of the financials, it seems like we've spent a little money, but that there's still a long way to go for some of these line items. Well, do you think that there's, do you think that there would be any spontaneous ways of, I mean like buying more teachers or buying more assistants for the classroom? I mean is there that, is it moving along really bureaucratically or do you see that there are there open discussions about other alternatives? I think the department has recently hired a couple of deputy superintendents. So now there are three deputy superintendents and I believe it is their charge to help maybe operationalize some of the processes. So we'll see. Maybe on the next time I can give you an update Stephanie and we can continue this conversation. Well, good. I was going to ask you for any recommendation you have for those who are responsible for moving this along and I think you've made several and one of them is about the transparency part of it because we would ourselves teachers and parents and parents would like to go take a look at it and be able to understand what seems to be happening with these funds and how it's going to make a difference for the students. But we're getting out of time and we still have to say, so we will have to say more. Well, I think that our organization continues to advocate for a simple way for the department to communicate to parents and community members on what's going on. So hopefully with our advocacy there will be some streamlining of communication processes so that, you know, for example, we don't have to search the website all over to find the information that we need. Well, and also suffice give some information or build the confidence of teachers and parents who are reporting in the media that they don't see any changes at the school. They don't see where any of this is coming in to make a difference for the students' achievement. So that's a question and they would be well, you could serve them well by giving them some help on getting them. Agree, agree. Yeah. But we're out of time. So I'm your host, Stephanie Stoll-Dalton for the State of the State of Hawaii and we've been discussing Hawaii students' learning loss from COVID deprivations and the federal resources that are here in the state to restore schools and student achievement. And I thank Dr. Sherry Nakamura for discussing these serious education issues in ways that our bureaucracies, agencies, and those responsible are trying to make a difference with the generous funding. We'll join us again in two weeks. Mahalo to all of the viewers and aloha, everybody. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and donate to us at ThinkTechHawaii.com. Mahalo.