About SBA
Hawaii is among
13 states and the Bureau of Indian Education leading a Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium that developed an assessment system to measure whether students are meeting the Common Core for Mathematics and English Language Arts/Literacy (ELA), and if they are on-track for college and career readiness.
Hawaii students in grades 3-8 and 11 take the SBA in the spring. Families receive results in the fall prior to the the public release of school- and state-level results. Click here to learn more about the SBA Family Report.
Results
The Accountability Resource Center Hawaii (ARCH) and the Accountability Data Center (ADC) provide additional results information for the statewide ELA, mathematics, and science assessments.
For students, SBA offers:
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More complex problems and challenge them to support their answers with explanations and evidence.
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The ability to mark test items for review, take notes on a digital notepad, use calculators and other tools in certain sections, and also pause the test.
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The opportunity to be placed in credit-bearing courses at a number of
colleges and universities, including the University of Hawaii system of colleges. See
this flyer for more information.
SBA is an assessments system:
- Teachers administer formative assessments — small, frequent academic checks — throughout the year.
This is supported with Tools for Teachers (formerly known as Digital Library) to which our teachers contribute items. Teachers are able to print reports and discuss students' real-time performance and progress with parents.
- For the Smarter Balanced summative assessments conducted in the spring, teachers have access to student scores within two weeks of completion of the assessment, allowing them to adjust instruction in the final weeks of the school year. Reports will also be provided to educators who will be teaching students the following school year to help inform their instruction.
- A parent or guardian with a disability (as defined by the ADA) may request an alternative format of a report so that it is accessible to that parent or guardian. For more information, contact the Assessment Section at hsa@k12.hi.us.
SPECIAL NEEDS: Students with significant cognitive disabilities take the HSA-Alternative exams in ELA/Literacy, Mathematics and Science.
Learn more.
OTHER ACCOMMODATIONS: Learn more about what constitutes accommodations for students with various needs.
HAWAIIAN LANGUAGE: For students in the Department's Kaiapuni (immersion) schools, the Department and its partners at the University of Hawai'i-Mānoa developed assessments for grades 3 and 4 in the Hawaiian language that are aligned to the standards and measure progress toward preparing students for success in college, career and community — the Kaiapuni Assessment of Educational Outcomes (KĀ‘EO). It was administered for the first time in spring 2016 following a successful field test in 2015. The Department has a "double testing" waiver from the U.S. Department of Education in place so Kaiapuni students in those grades do not also have to take the SBA.
Learn more about how the Smarter Balanced system works in two of our schools,
Waiakea Intermediate and
Konawaena Middle, below.
Summative assessment components
Students taking the SBA summative assessment do the following:
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A Computer Adaptive Test: An online
adaptive test that provides an individualized assessment for each student.
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A Performance Task: Tasks that challenge students to apply their knowledge and skills to respond to real-world problems. They can best be described as collections of questions and activities that are coherently connected to a single theme or scenario. They will be used to better measure capacities such as depth of understanding, research skills, and complex analysis, which cannot be adequately assessed with selected- or constructed-response items. Some performance task items can be scored by the computer; most will be manually scored.
Changes introduced with school year 2017-18 reduced the average time to about 5.5 hours for both assessments. They are not timed; students will be given appropriate time to answer all questions. SBA can also be administered over several days. Assessment changes:
- The test has been streamlined to include only the Computer Adaptive Test and the Writing Performance Task, and
- Test questions that took a long average time to complete were eliminated.
ONLINE PRACTICE TESTS: Students, teachers and parents nationwide have access to sets of assessment questions aligned to the Common Core that can be used for professional development and discussions with policymakers and other interested stakeholders. The practice tests are available at our
AlohaHSAP portal. These are only a preview, and do not encompass the full range of content that students may encounter. Also, they are presented in a “fixed form” (i.e., not computer adaptive) and users will not receive reports or scores.
Instructional shifts
SBA replaced the former Hawaii State Reading and Mathematics Assessments (HSA). SBA measures not only what students know, but also how well they can apply their knowledge in real-world situations. To explain the instructional shifts in our classrooms, and how those are reflected in the SBA, take a look at the following guides:
2024-25 Administration
Content Areas
|
Grade(s)
or Track(s) |
Testing Window |
Open |
Close |
| ELA/Literacy
Mathematics
|
3-8 and 11 |
02/18/25 |
05/30/25 |
1st semester students at block schedule schools ONLY
| 11 |
11/18/24 |
12/13/24 |
Multitrack
| 3-8
Yellow |
02/18/25 |
05/30/25 |
3-8
Red, Blue, Green |
03/10/25* |
06/13/25* |
*Subject to change.
HSA results
Before the introduction of the SBA in 2015, Hawai‘i administered the Hawaii State Assessment in Reading and Mathematics to students in grades 3-8 and 10. A "bridge" assessment (part-HSA, part-SBA) was administered in 2014.
State, school and grade-level results are released to the public to track the progress of the public school system and to support instructional program improvement efforts. Individual student data is not released.
TEST RESULTS: Click for a spreadsheet of statewide and school-level results for the following school years:
