HAGÅTÑA (The Guam Daily Post) — With a passing rate of over 75% for high school students who attend Eskuelan Puengi, Guam Department of Education officials want to recruit more ninth and 10th grade students to enroll in the night school program, but at the same time, they’re challenged with teacher recruitment.
Historically, Eskuelan Puengi has focused on students who are about to graduate and older students – such as second-year seniors – but, according to Joseph Sanchez, GDOE deputy superintendent of curriculum and instruction, the focus has been expanded.
“We’re really trying to talk to the schools about recruiting more ninth and 10th graders or first- and second-year students because that’s where we are seeing a lot of the failures,” Sanchez told The Guam Daily Post.
He attributed the failures to school disruptions brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, which, according to Post files, led to students falling behind by two grade levels.
“The failure rate in the ninth grade and the failure rate in the 10th grade … is as much as 20% to 30%. That’s really high. In some cases, in COVID-19, it was as high as 40% to 45%,” Sanchez said.
There are many factors that led to the high failure rate, he said, including leniency in student attendance during the pandemic.
“When students are missing their classes, or they are not getting the credit in ninth or 10th grade, it gets harder for them as they get older,” Sanchez said. “So when they get to the third year or fourth year, just imagine they are supposed to be a junior or a senior but yet, they have these sophomore credits that they are trying to catch up with. That’s really tough to do.”
GDOE implemented accelerated learning programs to include Eskuelan Puengi for credit recovery and, according to data provided by GDOE, 76.47% of the students who attended the program in school year 2022-2023 and the fall session of school year 2023-2024 have passed.
Here’s the breakdown:
- SY 22-23 Fall Session A: 1,067 students enrolled, 77.80% passed.
- SY 22-23 Fall Session B: 959 students enrolled, 74.10% passed.
- SY 22-23 Spring Session A: 1,257 students enrolled, 77.30% passed.
- SY 22-23 Spring Session B: 1,135 students enrolled, 72.80% passed.
- SY 23-24 Fall Session A : 1,176 students enrolled, 79.30% passed.
- SY 23-24 Fall Session B: 1,005 students enrolled, 77.50% passed.
School year 2023-2024 Spring Session A is currently underway and Session B is scheduled to run from Feb. 26 to March 7.
Sanchez said he anticipates similar enrollment numbers for the upcoming session.
“We were happy to meet the increase from an average of 1,500 to 2,000, all the way to 4,000 students. For teachers, we pretty much doubled the teaching pool for the summer. A lot of teachers stepped up and said, ‘OK, we’ll work over the summer.’ Eskuelan Puengi also, when we increased from spring to fall, we were happy to have teachers willing to teach in the fall,” Sanchez said.
However, he did recognize the perennial challenge the department faces with teacher shortages.
“Our challenge overall is we just don’t have enough teachers,” Sanchez said. “Even when we had the budget for it – where we said we were going to try to put more money in these areas – we didn’t have enough teachers. It’s tough to recruit beyond our pool.”
George Washington High School is seen Monday, Feb. 19, 2024, in Mangilao. GWHS is one of six sites hosting the Guam Department of Education Eskuelan Puengi.
