CNMI highlighted in USDE newsletter

The CNMI Public School System has been recognized by the U.S. Department of Education in a feature that came out in the department’s newsletter Fast Facts.

Commissioner of Education Rita H. Inos said she was elated when she found out that the CNMI was highlighted in the June 30, 2005 newsletter of the U.S. Department of Education. She said the newsletter is circulated among all Cabinet members and chief officers of the department.

“It puts the CNMI on the map, especially with the positive news about its school system,” she said.

Inos said she learned about the good news from U.S. Department of Education officials who visited the CNMI last Wednesday and paid a courtesy call at the governor’s office.

Under the Fast Facts Highlights’ operational newsletter, it said that the CNMI was designated a high-risk grantee in 2003 but after working with the department’s Management Improvement Team and taking an active approach to school improvement and academic achievement issues, the high-risk designation was removed in 2004.

PSS director for finance Richard Waldo said the CNMI is one of the few states that were removed from the high-risk list in a span of only six months. Some states and territories are up to now still at high-risk, making it almost a permanent status, like what has happened with Guam, he added.

The success story of the CNMI was also highlighted in other pages of the newsletter under the No Child Left Behind Fast Facts, with a title “A Success Story from the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands Public School System.”

“Because of geographic remoteness that impeded department monitoring visits and its failure to submit annual audit reports for a number of years, the CNMI PSS received a designation of high risk in 2003,” says the two-paragraph account. “The Department’s Management Improvement Team worked aggressively with CNMI PSS to provide technical assistance and its high-risk status was removed in 2004.”

While the CNMI has significant challenges ahead, it said, it has taken an active approach to school improvement and academic achievement. With the expectation of meeting the NCLB deadline of August 2006 for having highly qualified teachers, to date 593 teachers have attained a bachelor’s degree or higher, with 73 percent receiving full certification and 23 percent having two-year provisional certifications. It also said that 71 percent of elementary teachers and 60 percent of high school teachers are teaching in their content areas.

Additionally, the CNMI has developed two main student achievement goals: students will score at the 50th percentile or higher on the Stanford Achievement Test or SAT10 by 2010, to be achieved by increasing scores by five points each year; and 80 percent of the students will read at or above their grade level by 2008. The report added that overall, 22 percent of all CNMI students scored at the 50th percentile or higher in 2004 on the SAT10, up from 18 percent in 2003. Reading scores in grades three through five experienced a gain from the 6.4 percentile in 2002 to the 7.5 percentile in 2004, and math scores improved from the 7.6 percentile to the 8.4 percentile.

The visiting USDE officials were chief financial officer Jack Martin, Secretary’s Office representative Phil Maestri and Mark Robinson. The officers left the islands in the afternoon of the same day.

Inos said their one-day visit served as positive news for the CNMI because, had the USDE officials opted to stay longer, that would mean there was a problem with the PSS.