Fewer teens in Hawaii are getting pregnant, according to a national report released Tuesday, though the number of 3- and 4-year-olds attending school dropped and the state’s education performance still trails slightly behind national averages.
Fewer teens in Hawaii are getting pregnant, according to a national report released Tuesday, though the number of 3- and 4-year-olds attending school dropped and the state’s education performance still trails slightly behind national averages.
The 2017 Hawaii Kids Count report, compiled each year by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, measured health, economic well-being, education and family/community to determine overall child well-being in the state.
The report shows Hawaii’s teen birth rate decreased from 33 births per 1,000 15- to 19-year-olds in 2010, to 21 per 1,000 in 2015. The teen birth rate nationally similarly dropped — from 34 per 1,000 in 2010 to 22 per 1,000 in 2015.
“We’ve seen some impressive improvements there,” said Ivette Rodriguez Stern, project director at the University of Hawaii Center on the Family. “And it speaks to a lot of the preventative programs that we’ve seen at both the federal and state level. So we’ve kept improving in a positive direction there.”
The report showed 52 percent of Hawaii’s 3- and 4-year-olds were not enrolled in school between 2013 and 2015, which is up from 44 percent from 2009-11. Leaders at the Center on the Family said that could be because of the high cost of preschool and early education programs for youngsters in Hawaii and a lack of easy access in many areas of the state.
Hawaii showed the biggest gains in economic well-being factors, which Stern attributed to declining unemployment rates.
For example, the number of teens not in school and not working dropped from 12 percent in 2010 to 6 percent in 2015, according to the report. And the number of children living in a household with a high housing cost burden was 38 percent in 2015, down from 46 percent in 2010. The number of children whose parents lack secure employment was 26 percent in 2015, down from 30 percent in 2010.
The number of children living in poverty was 14 percent in 2015, unchanged from 2010 data.
The state made some strides in education, the report shows, though still performed slightly below national averages. Among Hawaii’s fourth-graders, 71 percent were not proficient in reading in 2015, a slight improvement from 74 percent in 2009 though lagging behind the national rate — 65 percent in 2015.
Among Hawaii eighth-graders, 70 percent were not proficient in math in 2015, slightly better than 75 percent in 2009 though lagging behind the 68 percent nationally. The report shows 18 percent of Hawaii high-schoolers did not graduate on time in the 2014-15 school year, a slight improvement from the 20 percent in the 2010-11 year.
Nationally, 17 percent of high-schoolers did not graduate on time in the 2014-15 year.
“We’ve been improving in the right direction but we’re still below national averages for reading and math and we have over half our young 3- and 4-year-olds not in preschool programs,” Stern said. “We want to see that going in the other direction.”
Email Kirsten Johnson at kjohnson@hawaiitribune-herald.com.