While performance by Kamehameha's elementary students do show declines, similar trends can be found at other private schools nationally. Also, the methodology is misleading and exaggerates the decline. After reanalyzing the data, reading scores were found to have dropped 17 percent, not 26 percent. Math scores declined by 17 percent for students in grade five and 32 percent for grade four. More importantly, however, all classes of competitively admitted students in K-5 last year scored above average compared to national norms.
More students taking the exam decreases the mean scores.
A March 1997 report from the UH Office of Admissions showed 58 of 100 students who had applied met the SAT guidelines. Since 1987, average SAT verbal and math scores for Kamehameha seniors have been at or above the national average and well above the Hawaii average. Students admitted via the lottery system since it began in 1979 entered with varying abilities, so could not fairly compete with the best and brightest from outside schools applying as seventh-graders to Kamehameha. Kamehameha Elementary students, however, on average fared better than non-Kamehameha students applying to the seventh grade. In 1995 the KSBE trustees decided to admit all Kamehameha sixth-graders.