![[Table of Contents]](/icons/up.gif){kind=icon}
Team Reports--September 1998
How American Samoa is implementing the research findings in the National Research Council Report, "Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children."
The American Samoa Department of Education named reading improvement (K-12) its top academic priority beginning this school year. At the elementary level, instructional time for reading has doubled; a more promising program of reading instruction has been adopted; and regular, on-going reading in-service is provided. At the secondary level, each high school identified reading as a critical learning result in the restructuring process currently in progress. More specific standards and benchmarks to guide reading instruction are being drafted, and more authentic means of assessing students? reading ability were piloted last spring. The recently formed Office of Student and Teacher Services and the Division of Curriculum and Instruction are charged with providing coherent pre-service and in-service to teachers, with particular emphasis on critical areas such as reading instruction.
Two years ago, the American Samoa Department of Education (ASDOE) adopted a new reading program which was more closely aligned to the effective reading instruction principles outlined in the NRC Report than what had been in place the previous decade. Though pleased with the instructional quality of the program materials, it was clear that effective in-service training for a complex, integrated reading program, particularly in our island territory with its unique needs, had to be made more relevant and more intensive than that provided by the publisher. Thus, ASDOE began its own training for implementing the new program. It quickly blossomed into an intensive pre-service and in-service training program that moved beyond transitioning into a new program to encompass training in research-based, effective reading instruction that is highly tailored to our particular elementary student and teacher populations. Instructional materials from the newly adopted reading program serve as excellent resources for the training. As a result of this training, American Samoa?s elementary teachers are better equipped to manage an integrated program, and more importantly, have dramatically increased their awareness of effective reading principles and practices.
Dr. Laloulu Tagoilelagi
P.O. Box DOE
Pago Pago, American Samoa 96799
(684) 633-4240
E-mail: tagoilelagi@telco.com
[Arizona]