Polyglotism is the word for Ni’ihau students

Ni’ihau students attending the Ke Kula Ni’ihau O’ Kekaha public

charter school in Kekaha are excelling in their ability to speak

Hawaiian, English and French.

Aha Punana Leo Inc, a non-profit Native Hawaiian family-based

educational corporation, reported students from kindergarten to the

fifth grade scored “extremely high scores” on tests related to

reading comprehension, word recognition and sound symbols in the

Hawaiian language.

The results suggest the students will do better in many languages and

academic disciplines as they enter high school or college. The test

outcome also opens the door for more Ni’ihau parents to become

involved with their children’s education, according to Luahiwa

Namahoe of ‘Aha Punana Leo.

“The progress we are seeing is astounding. We are seeing our

third-graders reading fifth-grade materials.” said Ilei Beniamina, a

Ni’ihau education specialist from Kaua’i Community College who worked

with Pacific Resources for Education and Learning on the assessment.

Up to half of the 30 students were tested.

Aha Punana Leo and Ka Haka ‘Ula ‘O Ke’elikolani College of Hawaiian

Language at the University of Hawai’i-Hilo are part of a consortium

that applied for federal funding for the assessment.

Pacific Resources for Education has done other research in public

schools in Hawai’i and indigenous language reading assessments in the

American Pacific Islands for the federal government.

Beniamina said she was pleased with the academic success of the

students and proud of teachers, parents and students.

The charter school is conducted in Hawaiian with English taught as a

second language, beginning in the late elementary grades. French is

taught as a third language in high school.

Namaka Rawlins, director of Aha Punana Leo Inc., and Dr. Kalena

Silva, director of the College of Hawaiian Language, said the

relationship between letters and sounds in Hawaiian makes it easy for

students to use phonetics to learn reading first through Hawaiian.

Early literacy skills learned in Hawaiian are much easier applied to

reading English and French than beginning reading with less

systematic English and French spelling systems, the officials said.

In standard English schools, Ni’ihau students tended to perform below

standards academically “as happened historically in other Hawaiian

communities where Hawaiian is no longer spoken,” Beniamina said.

Before the charter school was founded, Ni’ihau children “had a

history of truancy, poor academic progress, poor parent input and no

community involvement,” Beniamina said.

The charter school has proven to be a model “that works in our native

population,” she said.

Pacific Resources for Education, which conducted the assessment,

commended the school and its staff of three non-certified Ni’ihau

teachers — Hi’ipoi Kanahele, Leimokihana Kanahele and Kalei Shintani

— and a state Department of Education teacher, Byron Hokulani

Cleeland, for helping develop the test.

The charter school was initially started by Aha Punana Leo and later

became its own entity guided by a school board.

Aha Punana Leo began in 1983 with the goal of reviving the Hawaiian

language. Today, there are about 2,000 children learning in Hawaiian

in schools run by Aha Punana Leo or in state schools.

Staff writer Lester Chang can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 225) and

mailto:lchang@pulitzer.net