Daniel Inouye: “Under the provisions of the Library Services and Construction Act, Public Law 98-480, Native Hawaiian organizations are…”

“Under the provisions of the Library Services and Construction Act, Public Law 98-480, Native Hawaiian organizations are authorized to provide library services to Native Hawaiians. One of our most exemplary Federal grantees, Alu Like, Inc., has been administering the Native Hawaiian Library Project since 1985. Native Hawaiian children in the State's public school system start school well behind other students when it comes to crucial vocabulary skills. Hawaiian children enter kindergarten with lower vocabulary scores than other children (12th percentile: Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test--Revised, 1989), and in achievement tests of basic skills, Hawaiian students continue to perform below national norms and other groups in Hawaii. On the Reading Comprehension Subtest of the Stanford Achievement Test administered by the Hawaii State Department of Education in the spring of 1990, Hawaiian eighth grade students scored at the 18th percentile, the lowest of the four principal ethnic groups in Hawaii. A recent study in Hawaii by the Governor's Council for Literacy shows that Native Hawaiian adults have low literacy rates, with 30 percent at the lowest level compared with 19 percent of adults statewide. It is these statistics, and the need to assure that parents have reading skills sufficient to foster learning and reading skills in their preschool and school-age children, that the Native Hawaiian Library Project has sought to address.”