Grading the Public Schools: The 2010 Grades – Honolulu Magazine

Posted on Jun 28, 2010 | 0 comments

by Michael Keany - This is the fifth time we’ve published our “Grading the Public Schools” chart, a comprehensive report card on Hawaii’s 257 public schools. We first brought you this list in 2003, using the DOE’s own data—standardized scores in reading and math as well as satisfaction scores from surveys taken by teachers, parents and students.

One note: The satisfaction segment of our chart has changed since we last compiled it in 2007. The DOE is no longer asking the specific survey questions we had been using. (Parents: “I would recommend my child’s school to other parents.” Teachers: “I would send my own child to this school.” Students: “If I could, I would go to a different public school.”)

As a replacement, we’re now using the overall positive satisfaction scores for each school. As we noted in our 2009 Public Schools coverage, the DOE’s new survey questions have been made more generic and tend to garner a higher percentage of positive responses, but it remains possible to rank Hawaii’s schools relative to each other. At the same time, we didn’t feel it was quite fair to compare this year’s school rankings with those from 2007, so we have not included the previous year’s rankings for the schools.