Education Briefs
Education Briefs
Chuuk
Former University of Guam professor, Dr. Ione Wolf, on a recent visit to the Federated States of Micronesia found that there were few books available to local public school students in Chuuk. On her return to Guam, she teamed with Soresen Pacific Broadcasting, which operates popular Guam radio stations Power 98, The Rock 105 and K-57, to sponsor a book drive. The August 4 fundraiser was so successful that they had to close up early as so many people showed up to donate books they ran out of space in the container. The U.S. Army’s Reserve Charlie Company of the 411th Engineering Squadron located in Santa Rita provided transportation of the books to the dock, while Mobil Oil Micronesia loaded the books on its oil tanker for delivery to Chuuk.
American Samoa
The H.J. Heinz Foundation has donated $100,000 to American Samoa’s South Pacific Academy as part of a nearly half a million dollar grant to the private school. The Heinz Corporation owns the StarKist cannery in Samoa. The school will receive $100,000 a year for the next four years. The grant will go towards capital improvements and expansion projects and will include the construction of more school buildings and a media library center. Heinz Corporation official Barry Mills said the Heinz Foundation last year granted about $5.9 million to almost 950 organizations. He said the Foundation receives over 3,000 letters each year requesting applications for grants.
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American Samoa’s public school students achieved very low scores in the mathematics component of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which is administered by a division of the U.S. Department of Education. With an average score of 195 among 8th graders, American Samoa was the worst performer by a wide margin. Guam and District of Columbia were the closest to American Samoa, with scores of 233 and 234. The national average was 274. While disappointed with the results, American Samoa’s Department of Education director Dr. Sili Sataua says educators now know where public students stands “so we can work towards improvements.”
DOE officials said students have done much better on other nationwide assessments, and they believe the NAEP scores were so low because the NAEP test makes extensive use of word problems, which are more difficult for American Samoa students because English is usually their second language.
Samoa
A large number of Samoan students attending the University of the South Pacific flunked their courses this year, prompting a visit to the Suva campus by officials from Apia to encourage the students. The percentage of students who failed was reported in the Fiji media as about 75 percent. A variety of reasons were advanced for the problems, including lack of studying, distractions on the college campus, and the ongoing political problems in Fiji, among others.
