Hawaii

Hawaii is the only US state with a single, unified statewide school district — the Hawaii Department of Education — which operates all 257 public schools and serves approximately 170,000 students. This centralized model creates unique administrative consistency but also means that school funding, staffing, and policy decisions are made at the state level with limited local school board authority. Hawaii has the highest cost of living of any state, which significantly compresses the real purchasing power of its education funding. The tourism-dependent economy creates a transient teaching workforce, contributing to perennial teacher shortages. Hawaii uses the Smarter Balanced Assessment and has made significant investments in Indigenous Hawaiian language immersion programs (Kaiapuni schools), which operate at multiple grade levels statewide.