Despite a second consecutive year of disappointing statewide results on the Hawai'i State Assessment, schools superintendent Pat Hamamoto said an early analysis of school-by-school scores released yesterday shows that "learning has gone deep and it's taking root."

However, she said, renewed attention must be focused on the early grades.

Palolo Elementary School, for example, saw major gains this year in reading and math and achieved state goals — referred to as "adequate yearly progress" — for the first time. A total of 43 percent of third-grade pupils met or exceeded the state benchmark in reading, up markedly from last year's 31 percent.

In math, 40 percent of third-graders tested proficient this year, compared with 18 percent last year.

"When you look at the percentages (in each complex area) it meant the learning has gone deep and it's taking root," said Hamamoto after the scores were released during a Board of Education committee meeting.

"And that's what I'm looking at. It says things are starting to happen. ... What is unfortunate is that you won't see these results until a few more years as the kids march up."

Hamamoto said a cursory analysis of the scores shows that the department must refocus efforts on the early grades as well as school readiness for pre-kindergarten.

"The countries that are doing well in education are putting resources in the lower grades," she said.

She said she is committing the department to cutting in half the number of students who are well below proficiency by their first testing period in third grade.

"It means that at the end of third grade, when we test, we better have no more than one-third or one-fourth of our kids in the area well below proficiency," she said. "So we have to work at the early grades coming in."

The school-by-school scores released yesterday complete the testing picture for the Department of Education.

Overall statewide scores released in July showed that just 95 out of 282 schools — or 34 percent — made their goals under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. That's about the same as the previous year.

Selvin Chin-Chance, who heads the DOE's test development section, said there has been no time to do an in-depth analysis of the school-by-school scores yet, not even to determine whether more schools scored higher this year than last.

"We just finished it this morning," Chin-Chance said of the school-by-school scores yesterday. "We rushed to get it done and haven't had time to do anything else. We haven't gotten to that yet."

The data also show a school-by-school breakdown on the SAT test on which Hawai'i students generally fare well in comparison to the national average.

This year, for the first time, individual schools will be able to look back and track the progress of individual students since this school-by-school data compilation began several years ago. That will give them the capability to see what works to help individual students learn better.

Palolo Elementary principal Ruth Silberstein said the new data will help school officials "zero in on which students primarily need help and in what areas."

"It affects our instruction as well as the way we group students," she said. "The individual data is very, very important. It gets down to the nitty-gritty."

Silberstein said that while the school can compare data over time, "this year it's more systemized."

She was feeling very positive about her school's performance.

"It's wonderful that we are improving, and we need to continue to work hard," she said.

This year, for the second year in a row, 28 percent of a school's students needed to meet math standards and 44 percent of a school's students needed to meet reading standards for a school to meet its overall goals. These benchmarks will remain in effect for one more year before they move higher.

Under the federal law, all public schools must show that 100 percent of their students are proficient in core subject areas by 2014.

Reach Beverly Creamer at bcreamer@honoluluadvertiser.com.