Pacific Resources for Education and Learning (PREL) has announced two new contracts to provide consulting and development services to the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM).
The work for one contract, valued at $400,000 and to be performed by PREL’s Pacific Assessment Systems and Services, is to provide consulting services in the development of K–12 reading and writing assessments during the period August 2007 to August 2008. Specifically, PREL will work on the development of FSM national reading and writing assessments for grades prekindergarten–3, 4–5, 6–7, 8, 9–12, and the college preparatory program, for a total of 14 tests.
Each FSM state approaches language development differently and has different policies on the introduction of English language studies (for example, English is not used as the medium of instruction until grade 3 in Kosrae, grade 4 in Chuuk and Pohnpei, and grade 5 in Yap). Recognizing that fact, the FSM Standards Development Working Group (SDWG)—consisting of representatives from the FSM Department of Health, Education and Social Affairs, each of the four state departments of education, and PREL—agreed to have four language arts standards and clustered the benchmarks as noted above.
Work for the second contract—valued at $150,000 and to run from August 2007 to August 2008—will be performed by PREL’s Center for Learning and Teaching and will involve the development of grades K–8 career education and grades 9–12 technical education standards for the FSM national government.
After collecting, reviewing, and synthesizing any existing career education standards from the FSM national and state governments and from organizations such as the National Career Development Association, PREL will convene and facilitate meetings of at least three career education experts from each FSM state (one each for grades 1–6, 7–8, and 9–12) to develop draft career education standards.
As well, PREL will review current FSM labor market data to understand the current composition of the FSM labor market, determine projected growth rates for key occupations, and identify occupations for which there is a documented shortage of FSM applicants. The next steps will be to convene and facilitate a focus group of at least two vocational experts per state to identify and agree upon the occupational clusters around which technical education standards will be developed as well as convene and facilitate meetings of at least one cluster expert per state (16 participants for 4 clusters) to develop draft standards for each of the cluster areas. PREL will be carrying out this work in collaboration with the College of Micronesia—Federated States of Micronesia (COM-FSM).
After both the career education standards and the technical education standards have been reviewed and approved by the FSM national and state governments, distribution and national workshops on the approved career and technical education standards will begin.
PREL is an independent, nonprofit 501 (c)(3) corporation that works in partnership with the Pacific educational community to provide quality programs and products developed to promote educational excellence, including professional development and educational materials. In addition, PREL administers the Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Pacific, 1 of 10 Regional Educational Laboratories funded through the Institute of Education Sciences of the U.S. Department of Education. With a commitment to ensuring that all students have an equal opportunity to develop a strong academic foundation, regardless of circumstances or geographic location, PREL serves the U.S.-affiliated Pacific islands, including American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) (Chuuk, Kosrae, Pohnpei, and Yap), Guam, Hawai‘i, the Republic of Palau, and the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI).
For additional information about this media release or PREL and its work please contact Jackie Burniske, Executive Director, Center for Information, Communications, and Technology by telephone at (808) 441-1300 or by email at burniskj@prel.org.
(Posted Tuesday, April 29, 2008)