The top reported proficiency rate is 60% in Science. The lowest is 56% in English language arts.
Original Research by School Decision on Kapalama Elementary School
Kapalama Elementary School sits on North School Street in Honolulu, serving pre-kindergarten through fifth grade as a regular public school within the Hawaii Department of Education. The campus draws from a dense urban setting where Honolulu's civic downtown, commercial corridors, and residential neighborhoods fold into one another. The school sits in a city that functions as Hawaii's capital and its hub for finance, tourism, military defense, and state government, with an urban core marked by high-rise development and concentrated street life around downtown, Waikīkī, and Ala Moana Center. Public transit through TheBus and the Skyline rail system serves the broader area.
The student body is predominantly Asian, with smaller groups identifying as Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, Hispanic, and two or more races. A very small share identifies as white. A majority of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which places the school in a moderate-to-high economic-need range for its setting. Data on English learners and students with individualized education programs was not available, so those population sizes are unknown here. Enrollment is moderate for an elementary school serving this grade band.
On state assessments, Kapalama shows a solid academic profile with a particular strength in mathematics. Math proficiency holds steady across third, fourth, and fifth grades, with roughly three-fifths of tested students reaching proficiency at each level. That consistency across grade bands suggests a coherent math program rather than a single strong cohort passing through. English language arts tells a more dynamic story. Third-grade ELA proficiency starts lower, but by fifth grade the share of students meeting proficiency rises substantially, pointing to strong growth as students move through the upper elementary years. Fifth-grade science proficiency, measured through the Hawaii Science Assessment aligned to NGSS standards, lands in a solid range comparable to the school's math results. Participation rates are very high across all tested grades and subjects. Only one year of assessment data is available, so no trend over time can be drawn; the multi-year record is too thin to say whether these results are rising, flat, or declining.
The school does not serve high school grades, so there is no graduation rate to report. No gifted or specialized program offerings, course-access details, staffing ratios, discipline data, or attendance figures were provided. Civil-rights data was also absent. A parent wanting a fuller picture of classroom resources, enrichment offerings, or school climate would want to ask the school directly, since the available data covers academics and demographics but little else.
Honolulu's housing market shapes what families face around Kapalama. Typical home values in the school's zip code sit well above the national level and roughly on par with the statewide benchmark, which itself runs far higher than most mainland markets. Rents have been climbing at a brisk pace recently, faster than home values. The gap between monthly mortgage costs and rents is wide, with buying requiring a substantially larger monthly outlay than renting at current rates. Housing affordability ranks as a persistent concern across the city, tied to an urban core where developable land is limited and high-rise construction dominates. Honolulu is also grappling with a declining and aging population as residents leave for the mainland, alongside climate pressures including drought, sea level rise, and flooding. Those broader forces frame the community children are growing up in, even if they sit beyond the schoolhouse door.
The district brief for the Hawaii Department of Education returned no specific policy, curriculum, referendum, or budget changes of recent note, so there is nothing to relay on that front. This is a statewide district, which means Kapalama operates within a large system rather than a small local one, and parents may find that accountability and resource decisions flow through state-level channels rather than a nearby administrative office.
For a family weighing Kapalama, the academic evidence points to a school where math is a steady strength, reading grows sharply between third and fifth grade, and science holds its own. The economic profile suggests a community where many families are working hard to make ends meet in an expensive city. What is missing from the public data, particularly around programs, staffing, and school climate, leaves an incomplete portrait, and filling those gaps would take a direct conversation with the school.
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