Officials defend SAT 9
The Stanford Achievement Test comes closest to the local standards for the core academic areas, and for that it should be continued by the Public School System, Commissioner of Education Rita H. Inos said yesterday.
Board of Education Chairwoman Marja Lee Taitano had criticized the SAT 9 as “a waste of time and money” because of the huge cost to implement it.
Inos told the board that “SAT 9 is correlated to our standards therefore it offers (learning) images.”
She said it is as costly as instruction and will require tremendous amount of resources to really see what the children are learning.
But BOE members Thomas Pangelinan and Esther Fleming argued their merits. Both said PSS needs tools for evaluation because it is preparing students for college, which sometimes is pursued overseas.
The SAT 9 was first administered in the CNMI last year. It is meant to establish a baseline data for future scores. Students in third, fifth, eighth, 10th and 11th grades took the test last March.
