Raising Standards in the Schools By: Anthony Pellegrino

More and more demands are being made on the public school system to raise its teaching and learning standards. To better understand the situation, let’s look at what are standards, and how should standards be evaluated.

There are two kinds of standards: content and performance. The first is the most important. Good content standards are clear expectation for learning and teaching. They clearly identify what is information and concepts are important to the students teachers, parents, testdevelopers and text authors.

According to The National Education Commission on Time and Learning’s 1994 report in Prisoners of Time accentuates an important point. For years the modern secondary public education wrongly emphasized time rather than mastery. We lacked a standardsbased education.

It appears that if students put in their time in school they would be promoted regardless of their level of academic mastery of subject matter. We just moved them along up to the next level and kept our fingers crossed that they would not cause any problems until they either dropped out at sixteen years of age or “graduated.” It didn’t matter that they didn’t learn anything. But finally the results are in.

Now that the general public and policy makers are on to the game and are becoming increasing aware of the problems, all the states in the U.S. have been scrambling to create/copy contentrich, demanding, and rigorous standards. Slowly progress is being made.

This change in awareness can be seen in the CNMI PSS as well Recall the first ever education summit held recently in Tinian, Rota and in Saipan. In Saipan over four hundred parents attended to ask questions and seek answers to why my child is or is not learning in school. Those local summits showed a dramatic awareness of the quality of education parents demand. This is the first step to improving our public school system.

The PSS has created standards and benchmarks for the schools to meet the challenge. For each of the grades and subjects taught, the PSS has manuals of standards and benchmarks. A standard is defined as a ” description of what students should know and be able to do at the highest level of generality, e.g., concept.

A benchmark is “a translation of a standard into what the student should know and be able to do at developmentally appropriate levels (grades K3, 46, 78, and 912). In other words it means testing students to check their learning level. Incidentally, it also evaluates the teachers as to their proficiency of teaching.

Content standard is “a description of what students should know and be able to do within a particular discipline or subject.” And the curriculum framework serves as “a bridge between standards and the classroom. It provides a curriculum content, organization and presentation.”

For example, the Social Studies Standards and Benchmarks manual tells a teacher, student and parent where they are or should be at a certain time in their particular subject of Social Studies. The manual states: “The standards represent the fundamental knowledge and skills that all educated citizens should have and be able to use.” The manual also gives suggestions on how to evaluate the progress learning that has taken place in the social studies classroom.

A lot credit for this awareness must be attributed to our Commissioner of Education Dr. Rita Inos, a truly nononsense educator. Working closely with all the principals and teachers, she is encouraging everyone to be more accountable for their performance with the children. She, her staff, principals and teachers are all making a difference in education.

Smile for the day: “When the going gets tough, the tough take a coffee break.”