Since 1987, when the Hawai'i state legislature instructed the state Department of Education to provide an early total immersion program for children who had attended Pūnana Leo, a private Hawaiian language immersion preschool, the Hawaiian Language Immersion (HLI) program has grown, by the fall of 1994, from 35 students in two classrooms on two Hawaiian islands, to more than 750 students on five of the seven habitable Hawaiian islands.

The Pūnana Leo preschools (Kamanā, 1992) established in Hawai'i in 1985 were inspired by the Te Kohanga Reo, Maori language nests, begun in New Zealand in 1981. By 1985, the Maori preschools had spread to 374 centers (Shafer, 1988). Similarly, the call for a total early immersion program in the public elementary schools was inspired by the success of the French immersion programs in Canada, which had a substantial and well-documented record of linguistic and academic success, and other successful immersion programs in the United States (California State Department of Education, 1984). However, it must be emphasized that both the vision and the motivation for HLI run deep in the history, the love of the 'aina, or land, and the ethos of Hawai'i, and only indirectly from immersion innovations elsewhere. Furthermore, the Hawaiian Language Immersion program is not exclusively a university or academically driven movement, although the universities have played an indispensable role since the beginning, but is distinctly a grassroots effort that has touched a chord in the lives of the people, including many non-Hawaiians.