(MintPress) – “American Indian and Alaska Native students need a top-flight education in order to fully participate in a 21st century economy, and the wide and persistent gap between our fourth- and eighth-grade Native students and their peers highlights that we need to do more to help these students,” said Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education, last week after the U.S. Department of Education’s National Indian Education Study (NIES) revealed that the achievement gap between Native American students and their peers has remained unchanged in many subject areas over the past few years and has even widened in some areas.
While reading scores remained about the same as they were in 2009, the last year the study was completed, the achievement gap in math has become more pronounced, as test scores of non-Native American students increased while those for Native American students did not change.
But as history reveals, Native American students have been let down by the U.S. educational system for years. And this disturbing trend persists, despite recent governmental efforts aimed at helping to educate Native students.
The current research on Native Americans in U.S. schools
The study, which has been administered every two years since 2005, is designed to describe the condition of education for American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) students in the United States. The government says that the aim of the study is to provide educators, policymakers and the public with information about the academic performance in reading and mathematics of AI/AN students. Specifically, it looks at the test scores of fourth- and eighth-graders across the country, to collect such information. Nationally, AI/AN students make up 1 percent of all students in grades four and eight.
The 2011 National Assessment of Educational Process discovered gaps for Native American fourth- and eighth-grade students in math.
According to the results of the study, in 2011, AI/AN students scored 16 points lower on average in math than other students at grade four, and 19 points lower at grade eight. The score gaps for both grades in 2011 were not significantly different from the gaps in 2009, but were larger than the gaps in 2005.
Scores in reading, the other subject which was looked at, were also lower for Native American students.
At both grades four and eight, average reading scores for AI/AN students in 2011 were not significantly different from the scores in 2009 or 2005. Native American students scored 19 points lower on average in reading than non-AI/AN students in 2011 at grade four and 13 points lower at grade eight.
“For too many American Indian and Alaska Native students, progress in closing the achievement gap has been too slow,” said Joyce Silverthorne, Director of the Office of Indian Education. “This report provides a key opportunity for increasing our understanding of the challenge and fostering the collaboration necessary to erase the achievement gap.”
Historical perspective
Children taking part in the study were enrolled at both public and U.S. Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) schools, whose enrollment of more than 48,000 American Indian children has become a focus of the Obama administration’s education reform efforts. There are 183 BIE schools located on or near 64 reservations that serve approximately 41,000 students in 23 states.
The BIE is a division of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. It operates tribal schools for Native Americans in the United States.
The history between Native Americans and the U.S. educational system has been tenuous.
Scholar and activist Thomas R. Hopkins, who has been working in the field of educating American Indians and Alaska Natives since 1953 in roles at the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the University of New Mexico, wrote in his 2009 book, The Education of American Indians and Alaska Native, An Historical Sketch, “Following colonial times, and even though the BIA was established in 1834, for many years the U.S. military had responsibility for Indian Affairs. It should not be surprising that Indians, not necessarily Alaska Natives, grew to distrust Eurocentric education. Even if the cultural “bridge” had been established, it is unlikely Indians would have trusted the schools.”
Hopkins, who also taught within the BIE schools for years, explains that in the United States “from the earliest colonial times Eurocentric style schools were superimposed on all Indian and Alaska Native people. For generations, young Native American children were forcibly removed from their homes, and sent to boarding schools to be educated. The schools were established in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, first by Christian missionaries of various denominations.
“Most Indians over age 40 are products of an Indian boarding school system designed ‘to kill the Indian and save the man,’ in the words of a 19th century administrator. From 1880 to 1970, hundreds of thousands of Indian children were taken from their families on the ‘res’ and sent to boarding schools, often in different states. They were given haircuts, uniforms, non-Indian names and ordered not to speak their native language — even though many couldn’t speak English. Those who violated the English-only rule were often beaten or assigned latrine duty, according to Indians who attended the schools,” an article in The Sacramento Bee, detailing the history of the boarding schools relays.
Critics have pointed out that while the BIE schools are very different today and offer a curriculum similar to public school, many are underfunded.
Today, BIE schools aim to strengthen the identity of Native students through education about Native language, culture, values and traditions. As the NIEA has said, “[D]ata has proven that language and culture based education results in improvements in student academic achievement, engagement, attendance and civic responsibility.”
Current attempts at reform
Earlier this year, a new Obama administration policy codified in Executive Order 13592, which focuses on improving instruction and curricula for American Indian and Alaska Native children and directs federal agencies to divert some of their funding toward that purpose,
said Colin Kippen, Executive Director of the NIEA, who testified before the U.S. Department of Education’s National Advisory Council on Indian Education (NACIE) about the need to fully fund and implement the Obama administration’s Native education reform plan contained in Executive Order 13592.
In Executive Order, President Obama stipulates, “Federal agencies must help improve educational opportunities provided to all AI/AN students, including students attending public schools in cities and in rural areas, students attending schools operated and funded by the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Indian Education (BIE), and students attending postsecondary institutions including Tribal Colleges and Universities. This is an urgent need. Recent studies show that AI/AN students are dropping out of school at an alarming rate, that our Nation has made little or no progress in closing the achievement gap between AI/AN students and their non-AI/AN student counterparts, and that many Native languages are on the verge of extinction.”
The document also expresses a desire for Native students to have an opportunity to “learn their Native languages and histories and receive complete and competitive educations that prepare them for college, careers and productive and satisfying lives.”
The NIES study also found that 56 percent of all fourth-grade AI/AN students and 63 percent of eighth-grade students reported knowing some or a lot about their tribe or group’s history. These percentages were higher in BIE schools than in public schools.