Exploring the Readiness to Measure Readiness in U.S.-Affiliated Pacific Territories

• In Event: Roundtable Session 4
  In Roundtable Session: Increasing Access for Asian Pacific Islander American Students: The Challenge of College Readiness

Abstract

Concern about the readiness of students to enter college and be successful is not confined to students, educators, and policymakers on the mainland United States. The issue of college readiness is high priority to education stakeholders across the U.S.-affiliated Pacific including the territories of American Samoa, Guam, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI).

States such as Hawaii have created leading and lagging indicators of readiness using various high school achievement measures and college entrance success measures. Though college readiness is of concern to education stakeholders across the United States territories, they have not yet undertaken the task of creating or calculating a set of indicators similar to those found in Hawaii.

Two separate studies, in cooperation with the respective departments of education, sought out the available data within the Pacific Island territories to recreate those indicators found in Hawaii as a means of creating baseline information of readiness among students using traditional measures. This paper presents the preliminary results and challenges of these studies. In addition to providing research on the US Pacific Island territories, specific attention considered regarding the issues surrounding implementing college readiness measures for the various Pacific Islander and Asian ethnic subgroups in the territories. Examining issues on the US Pacific Islands in addition to national mainland data is important given the high proportion of Pacific Islanders and Asian Americans in K-16 institutions in the territories, and this endeavor also furthers the symposium’s goal of highlighting underrepresented groups.

Author

• Richard Choe Seder, Emergent Policy & Systems, Inc.