FIRST, the good news. The Public School System has reported that all local public schools are now WASC accredited, and that the CNMI is the only jurisdiction in the Pacific that has achieved this honor. This is good news indeed and PSS and the Board of Education should be commended, particularly the principals and the teachers whose hard work and dedication had made this accomplishment possible despite the government’s cash-strapped condition.
Now for some bad news. Pacific Resources for Education and Learning earlier disclosed that based on test results, a lot of PSS students are still “struggling” with the English language. In other words, CNMI students are being provided with the standard U.S. education system but they are not performing well academically. Why?
PSS might say—and it will always say—that it needs more money, but the WASC inspections have shown that local public schools are already providing an adequate, if not an excellent, educational system.
So why can’t most PSS students perform better or even as good as their counterparts in the private schools?
A public school teacher once noted that parents who pay tuition are more concerned about their children’s academic performance. Perhaps the key then, according to this teacher, is parental involvement. He is right. The government, however, can do no more than urge parents to care enough about their children’s education; it can always try to make more students want to learn more, but in the end that is a choice that students and their parents have to make, regardless of whether the children are enrolled in public or private schools. The important thing is that everyone should continue to seek improvements, and this is why the administration’s recent presentation on the Governor’s Education Excellence Initiative should also be considered as good news. What the governor has offered is nothing less than the most comprehensive and detailed education reform proposals in CNMI history, and one of their more exciting aspects is the premise that new ideas are needed and will be continually sought. Hence the charter school proposal and the grants that will be awarded to students and teachers that will come up with recommendations that could improve academic performance. Coupled with the federal No Child Left Behind program, the governor’s education initiative will certainly lead to more improvements in PSS—provided, of course, that the administration finds the money for its implementation.
The CNMI government, in any case, has done almost everything to provide quality public education and it now intends to do more. It is now time for parents to realize that they should NOT expect the government to do everything for their own children. It is not enough to have an administration brimming with new ideas. The CNMI also needs more parents willing to try out what is perhaps the most revolutionary idea ever—more involvement in their children’s education.
