Native Hawaiian Graduation Rate Falls to 80.3%
Native Hawaiian students lost 3.2 percentage points since 2021 while the state held steady, opening the widest equity gap in nine years of data.
Data-Driven Education Journalism for the Aloha State
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Local education reporting from every corner of Hawaii, grounded in Hawaii Department of Education data.
Hawaii's 9th-to-12th survival rate hits 90% for the first time, but a 2024 reclassification of students who receive special education inflated the count. The real gain is smaller.
Native Hawaiian students are chronically absent at higher rates than the overall student body at 88.7% of Hawaii schools, with a 25-point gap versus Asian students that has widened since COVID.
Maunaloa Elementary on Molokai dropped from 63% chronic absenteeism in 2022 to 2% in 2025, the second-lowest rate in Hawaii and 13 points better than its own pre-pandemic baseline.
Hawaii's graduation rate flatlined near 86% after a decade of gains. A 17-point Pacific Islander gap reveals who the plateau leaves behind.
Native Hawaiian students lost 3.2 percentage points since 2021 while the state held steady, opening the widest equity gap in nine years of data.
Hawaii's K-to-12th-grade ratio fell to 96.2 in 2025-26, the second straight year with more seniors than kindergartners, as birth rate decline and a 2014 age cutoff change lock in further enrollment losses.
Linapuni Elementary in Kalihi went from a 92% chronic absenteeism rate in 2022 to 28% in 2025, leading a neighborhood-wide attendance recovery in one of Honolulu's poorest communities.
Maui County lost 281 students in 2025-26, a fraction of last year's 807-student plunge. The wildfire spike has passed but the decline continues.
Hawaii lost 3,425 students in 2025-26 after losing just 901 two years earlier. Six years into a crash era, the state has shed 17,437 students.
King Kamehameha III Elementary, the Lahaina school destroyed in the August 2023 wildfires, has dropped its chronic rate from 67% to 24%, matching the state average, while other Lahaina schools lag behind.
Charter schools now enroll 8.2% of Hawaii's public school students, but the 2026 gain of just 277 students signals a sector hitting structural limits.
Every racial and socioeconomic gap in Hawaii's chronic absenteeism data is wider in 2025 than it was before COVID, and not a single one has returned to its pre-pandemic level.
Hawaii elementary schools have recovered 65.5% of their COVID chronic absenteeism spike, while high schools have recovered just 46.3%, and the gap between school levels is widening.
Honolulu County has lost 20,854 students since 2014. At the current pace, Oahu will drop below 100,000 students by next year.
One in three economically disadvantaged students in Hawaii is chronically absent, up from 21% before COVID to 32% in 2024-25.