Pearl Harbor Elementary School

Pearl Harbor Elementary School is a PK–6 school in Honolulu (96818) serving 413 students as part of the Hawaii Department of Education, located in a cluster of military- and airport-adjacent communities where nine other elementary schools sit within roughly 2.5 miles.

Statewide, the school ranks 109th of 203 (46th percentile, 2 stars). It peaked in the early 2020s at the 60th percentile, slid to the 36th in 2023-24, and partly recovered to 46th in 2025-26 — though that recovery reflects relative movement within the state cohort rather than local gains, since English language arts held flat and math slipped slightly. Against nearby peers, proficiency trails the group median in every subject: 48 in ELA, 38 in math and 50 in science, which is 13, 16 and 12.5 points below the peer medians respectively. The school also serves a materially higher-poverty population than most neighbors — 50.6% free/reduced lunch, about 21 points above the peer median — and chronic absenteeism of 18.0% is 7.5 points above the peer median and more than triple the rate at Lt Col Horrace Meek Hickam Elementary School (5%).

Resources are not the issue: at 12.5:1, class sizes are smaller than at seven of ten neighbors, and per-student spending of $17,057 is the third-highest in the group. The most useful benchmark is Salt Lake Elementary School, which has a similar poverty rate (49.0%) yet posts ELA 58, math 55 and science 66 with 13% chronic absenteeism — suggesting demographics explain part of the gap but not all of it. Science is the bright spot, rising from 35.2% to 50% over three years, while math fell from 49% to 38%. Special education students sit at the 6th percentile with 0 stars, down from the 44th two years earlier, and English learners fell from the 50th to the 25th percentile.