The governor has established by executive order a Task Force that will review and make recommendations on how to improve the public school system.
The order which was released yesterday said the state of public education in the territory doesn’t result in a sufficient number of graduating high school seniors having adequate skills in core subject areas of math, science, language arts and the trades to enable them, absent remedial course, to move on to higher levels of education or to join the workforce in a skilled trade.
Governor Lolo Moliga said this is a long standing and systemic problem affecting all grade levels, which has not been effectively addressed for decades.
He notes that most of the legal and structural framework for public education is rooted in laws from the 1960s and 1970’s
In addition, plans are not being converted into specifications which would result in immediate improvements.
The governor goes as far as saying that testing and measurement functions of DOE operate in a silo such that little feedback of test results is provided to teachers or students.
In addition, the metrics in all areas are set low relative to the standard of the rest of the world.
Lolo, whose background is education, declares, “It’s time to review the system with a view toward bringing in fresh thinking qualified and successful individuals from outside the traditional filed of education and promote the idea of new and if need be non traditional solutions to what are now old problems.”
The Task Force on the Future of Education in American Samoa is tasked with among other things:
- reviewing the report of the 2013 Governor’s Summit on Education and the Department of Education Five Year Comprehensive School Based Improvement Plan and pinpoint what has been implemented to date;
- compare governance models of school systems serving communities of comparable size to American Samoa;
- identify financing sources for vocational trades programs;
- recommend changes in the governance structure of DOE, and if deemed appropriate ASCC, and come up with statutory changes to achieve the recommended changes;
The task force which is now in effect has 90 days to conclude its work.
