USDE stresses improving teacher quality in CNMI

To achieve academic excellence among children in the CNMI, the U.S. Department of Education stressed several strategies to improve teacher quality, including recruitment processes and continued training.

Toward this end, U.S. Department of Education Academic Improvement and Teacher Quality Programs officer Elizabeth Ann Witt held a workshop last month for public school officials from the CNMI and the Pacific region.

Public School System Commissioner of Education Rita H. Inos and board member Herman T. Guerrero attended the workshop.

The workshop emphasized recruiting, training, and hiring highly qualified teachers. The objectives of the conference were to make available high quality professional development programs for teachers that would meet their identified needs, particularly content related needs.

Witt said each region should make incremental increases in the percentage of high quality teachers in a reasonable timeline.

In the CNMI, the Board of Education is requiring all teachers from elementary to high school to take and pass PRAXIS 1 and 2 before August 2006.

Witt ended her presentation with a communication plan for PSS to make sure that the teachers understand the plan and the timeline as to what they need to do to comply with the high quality teacher standards.

Witt also encouraged school officials to include the parents and the community in achieving the goals by notifying them on teacher qualifications.

Associate commissioner David M. Borja said that complying with the standards should encourage teachers to take and pass PRAXIS 1 and 2. He said it is for the best of the teachers. He said parents would not want to get a letter from schools informing them that the teacher of their children is falling behind the regional or national standards.

Witt said a highly qualified teacher must hold a bachelor’s degree with full State certification and has demonstrated subject matter competency in each subject taught. Teachers who need to belong to the highly qualified standards are teachers of core academic subjects: English, Reading/Language Arts, Mathematics, Science, Foreign Languages, Civics and Government, Economics, Arts, History and Geography.

A “new” elementary school teacher, she said, must pass rigorous state tests on subject knowledge and teaching skills in Reading, Writing, Mathematics and other areas of the basic elementary school curriculum.

New middle school or high school teachers, on the other hand, must pass rigorous State academic subject tests in each academic subject taught or successfully complete in each subject an academic major or coursework equivalent to a major, a graduate degree or advanced certification.

Veteran elementary and secondary school teachers have another option for demonstrating subject-area competence: through the High Objective Uniform State Standard of Evaluation. The HOUSSE procedures must be set by the State for grade-appropriate academic subject matter knowledge and teaching skills, among others.

The procedures, Witt said, must be applied equally to all teachers in the same academic subject and teaching in the same grade, but she said the time the teacher has taught the subject could be considered.

The conference also tackled the high quality professional development of teachers that would improve their knowledge of the academic subjects they teach. Witt said professional development should give the teachers and principals knowledge and skills to help students meet challenging State content and student achievement standards. She said professional development should not be short-termed.