Profiles of the Regional Educational Laboratories

Pacific Resources for Education and Learning

Mission

To strengthen culture, increase literacy, and improve quality of life locally, nationally, and globally.

Regional Problem Areas to be Addressed

PREL serves 10 U.S. affiliated entities with varying political status including a state, a commonwealth, a territory, and 4 independent nations in free association with the United States. The region is spread across 4.9 million square miles of ocean, islands, and atolls. It is geographically vast and diverse, and many outlying areas are remote and not easily accessible. Economic conditions in the region are typically below U.S. poverty levels, and disproportionate percentages of the population are undereducated and unemployed. Pacific languages are predominant in most of the entities; thus, many people are English-as-second-language learners.

PREL's Board of Directors (which includes the chief state school officers from the 10 entities served by PREL) identified the top 3 critical problems challenging Pacific education as follows:

• Problem 1: In the Pacific, significant numbers of students are not reading independently in either English or their home languages by the end of third grade (staff contact: Tim Donahue).

• Problem 2: Low-performing schools in the region have difficulty improving student learning in part because they lack adequate or appropriate assessment systems and accountability processes (staff contact: Don Burger).

• Problem 3: A significant percentage of teachers in the Pacific region do not have the necessary content knowledge or pedagogical skills to create high-performing learning communities (staff contact: L. David van Broekhuizen).

PREL will use a holistic and integrated approach in addressing the problem areas of reading, assessment and accountability, and professional development. Working intensively with a small set of schools to build procedural knowledge and document successful practices and strategies, PREL will test that knowledge by transferring it to a larger set of schools and promote the use of this knowledge broadly throughout the region.

PREL will work with Pacific departments and ministries of education to identify approximately 13 Co-Development Partner (CDP) Schools, at least 1 elementary school in each entity served by PREL, to serve as primary research and development sites. PREL will work collaboratively with these schools on an ongoing and sustained basis. Generating and supporting site-based solutions to the problems identified as major issues in the Pacific region, PREL will guide and support the efforts of Pacific educators to create high-performing learning communities. Support to each site will include the development of a school-based school improvement plan focusing on reading and assessment, in-class teacher guidance and support, development of first-language and/or English reading materials and assessments, and additional professional development.

PREL will also work with approximately 25 Collaborative Partner Schools throughout the Region. These schools will have access to the learnings from the work in the CDP Schools while also serving as pilot sites to determine the efficacy and replicability of the strategies, practices, and materials developed and implemented at the CDP Schools. The entire school-improvement process will be driven by research and guided by formative evaluation. It will include curriculum, instruction, and assessment components focusing on reading and assessment and accountability while adhering to PREL's quality-assurance protocols and practices to ensure high-quality work.

PREL will partner and work collaboratively with the other regional-educational laboratories as well as institutions of higher education, national research centers (e.g., Center for the Improvement of Early Reading Achievement, Center for Research on Education, Diversity and Excellence, and Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing) and professional agencies and organizations (e.g., National Association of State Boards of Education, American Educational Research Association, and the International Reading Association), and state education departments and ministries, engaging in meaningful and in-depth investigation of educational issues of importance to school communities, not only in the Pacific region but throughout the nation. PREL's most important partners are the schools, communities, and educational professionals in the entities it serves in the U.S. affiliated Pacific.

National Leadership Area

Curriculum and Instruction Related to Reading and Language Mastery (staff contact: Tim Donahue). PREL's work in the national leadership area of curriculum and instruction related to Reading and Language Mastery will focus on improving reading and literacy instruction by facilitating access to appropriate, high-quality teaching and learning resources on the World Wide Web.

In response to the current problems associated with the overwhelming amount of reading and language-mastery information now freely available via the World Wide Web, PREL will design, develop, and maintain a Web site that will find, organize, and interrelate information resources on reading and language mastery. The Web site will feature a virtual reference interview using natural language to match the user's interest with the most appropriate information.

The Web site will be conceptually based and organized around a two-dimensional matrix that features a user-friendly interface. Teachers, administrators, curriculum specialists, and parents will be able to easily access information and resources pertaining to:

• ensuring excellent learning environments that maximize reading success;

• promoting the use of effective strategies in literacy development in the early grades;

• increasing teachers' content knowledge and skills in providing reading instruction; and

• accommodating the literacy needs of English language learners.

A panel of nationally recognized experts in the areas of reading, assessment and accountability, professional development, and English as a second language will ensure that all Web sites and pages included in the matrix will provide high-quality, research-based information resources.

Key Accomplishments

Learning from what has come before and building on that knowledge is a powerful paradigm in the Pacific region. During the previous 5 years of the Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Program, PREL conducted valuable and informative research that guided its efforts to support the Region's education community in striving for excellence, while also providing information leading to changes in education policy.

PLUS Study. One of the most important research endeavors of the previous REL contract was the Pacific Language Use in Schools (PLUS) Study. The PLUS Study examined literacy instruction and achievement in Pacific languages and English. As a result of this study, a database containing research and information on current reading instruction was compiled. The database is a valuable resource that will inform the literacy improvement efforts to be implemented during the current REL contract. Additionally, Pacific-language reading assessments in nine indigenous languages were developed for the study and are currently being used as a measure of initial first-language literacy in several Pacific entities. PREL's work in the development of these reading assessments was groundbreaking. The majority of entities in PREL's region did not previously have any measure of first-language reading achievement. PREL's work in literacy in both English and Pacific languages continues into the next REL contract. PREL staff will continue to support the development of valid, reliable, and relevant reading assessments both for classroom use as well as for entity-wide testing.

Improving literacy During the previous 5-year contract, PREL developed a series of print and multimedia products related to improving literacy efforts in linguistically diverse contexts. PREL utilized a combination of these products in schools, institutions of higher education, communities for training, and other professional-development endeavors related to literacy. The research series included Language Use at Home and School, Teacher Diversity: Implications for Professional Development, and Literacy in Indigenous Communities. Among the multimedia products are the Reading Aloud to Children bilingual tapes, which give parents guidance on how to read with their children, and the Pacific Area Language Materials (PALM) CD-ROM, a compilation of hundreds of stories, legends, and other literacy materials in Pacific languages. In response to regional needs, PREL will continue to provide support in the development of first-language reading materials and their use to improve literacy instruction.

Upcoming Products and Events

Pacific Educational Conference. The conference is one of the largest gatherings of Pacific educators featuring hundreds of presentations by regional practitioners (Summer 2001, Guam).

School renewal process. PREL will work to develop a school renewal process that is research-based and designed and developed specifically for schools in the Pacific region. This will include process templates to align curriculum, instruction, and assessment with student-learning standards (Pilot in Fall 2001).

Literacy series. The production of a monograph series on critical topics addressing creation of literacy-focused high-performing learning communities. These may include a framework for effective professional development in the Pacific region, research papers on improving Reading Outcomes in the Pacific region, and research papers on developing quality Assessment/Accountability Systems in the Pacific region (Winter 2001).

Early-reading guide. This guide will help assess a school's early-reading program and will include templates for teachers to monitor and track student progress in reading in the early grades; reporting formats to communicate student progress in reading achievement to parents; and a sampler of formative assessments for early reading achievement in English as well as in the home language of bilingual learners (Pilot in Fall 2001).

High-frequency word lists for the 10 predominant languages in the pacific region. Lists in these languages are not presently available, but are crucial to the development of early literacy. The lists will be derived from the PALM CD-ROM developed during the previous PREL contract (Winter 2001).

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This page last modified August 29, 2001 (jer)