Best School Psychology Programs in Hawaii Rankings for 2026

Hawaii credentials school psychologists who work in public schools through the Hawaii Teacher Standards Board (HTSB). The bar is the national specialist standard: a specialist (EdS) or doctoral degree in school psychology of at least 60 graduate semester hours, including a supervised internship, the NASP standard being a 1,200-hour internship with at least 600 hours in a school. Here is the step-by-step. First, finish a qualifying specialist or doctoral school psychology program. Second, complete the supervised internship that program builds in. Third, take the Praxis School Psychologist exam (test code 5403) and have ETS send your scores to HTSB using state code 8620, or qualify by holding the NASP Nationally Certified School Psychologist (NCSP) credential. Fourth, apply to HTSB, clear the background check, and add the school psychologist field to your license.

One practical note on the exam. HTSB sets its own qualifying score, and the agency keeps the current passing scores on its licensure test categories page, so check the live number there rather than assuming. The NCSP route is genuinely useful in Hawaii because so many practitioners trained out of state or online. If you already earned the NCSP through a NASP-aligned program, that national certification does a lot of the heavy lifting toward your Hawaii credential.

Working in a public school is one thing. Opening a private practice is a different license entirely. To assess and counsel clients outside the school system as a psychologist, you need to be a Licensed Psychologist through the Hawaii Board of Psychology at the Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs. That requires a doctoral degree in psychology and a passing score on the Examination for Professional Practice in Psychology (EPPP). A specialist-level (EdS) school psychologist does not qualify for the psychologist license, so most school psychologists in Hawaii hold the HTSB credential only, and pursue the doctoral psychologist license separately if private practice is the goal.

Hawaii pays school psychologists below the national median, and there is no soft-pedaling that. The BLS May 2025 data puts the Hawaii median at $82,110, against a national median of $95,990, a gap of about 14.5%. The pay band is narrow: the bottom 10% earn around $77,190 and the top 10% reach about $92,750, so there is not a lot of spread between an entry-level and a veteran school psychologist on the state schedule. Urban Honolulu, where essentially the entire workforce sits, reports the same $82,110 median, with a top 10% closer to $95,420.

The number that matters more than the headline is what that salary buys. Hawaii has one of the highest costs of living in the United States, so an $82,110 median stretches a lot less here than a similar figure would on the mainland, and unlike a handful of states, Hawaii does tax income. That said, the pay is set on a single statewide DOE salary schedule, which means it is predictable and climbs with experience and graduate units, and the shortage gives credentialed school psychologists real leverage. If you are weighing Hawaii against a higher-paying mainland state, run the cost-of-living math before the salary alone decides it.

For a Hawaii student the decision is not which of a dozen local programs to rank, it is which route fits your life: train in state, train online, or leave to train and come back. Here is how the realistic options sort out.