Hawaii didn’t do so well compared with the rest of the country on the College Board’s Advanced Placement tests, according to a report released today.

Hawaii Department of Education officials often say our Hawaii State Assessment scores can’t be accurately compared with student assessment scores in other states, because the standards are more rigorous. They talk a lot about needing a standardized test for comparison. Here’s one. And while AP tests aren’t administered to every student, they are supposedly for the best and brightest high schoolers (In Hawaii, 22 percent of graduates last year took an AP exam). Here’s what the report shows:

• Hawaii ranks 40th in the nation for the percentage of the class of 2011 who scored a 3 or higher on an AP exam. Here, the percentage was 10 percent, compared with the national average of 18 percent. In Maryland, the number was 28 percent.
• Hawaii’s Class of 2011 students scored 3 or higher on less than half of the 5,225 exams they took.

It should be noted, though, that Hawaii students’ participation in AP and their scores are showing improvement year over year.