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WASHINGTON - The National Indian Education Association has joined a group of civil rights-minded education advocates in calling for congressional action to ensure that school districts and states have the funds needed to collect accurate data on minority student achievement and progress. To a packed room in the U.S. House of Representatives Rayburn House Office Building March 26, NIEA board member Quinton Roman Nose, Cheyenne, made the case that educational data collection for Indian student success falls far behind that of non-Indian students. ''I think there's a lot of work to be done,'' Roman Nose said, noting that he's the director of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes' education department. ''We're so mobile and moving around that data collecting is very complicated.'' Roman Nose added that with more than 560 tribes nationwide with members all over the country, the public education system sometimes understandably has a difficult time identifying Native students. In turn, it is difficult to come up with strategies to improve overall Indian educational performance. Often, too, Indian students make up such a small percentage of the student body in a particular school that their results can't be assessed in a statistically meaningful way. Historically, small sample sizes have made it difficult to assess the performance results for Indian populations. The NIEA, along with leaders in the Washington, D.C.-based Campaign for High School Equity, a coalition of organizations representing students of color, believes that with talk of reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act in the air, now is the time to get Congress' attention - and to target increased appropriations to be able to perform some better data collection. Members of the Bush administration have said reauthorizing NCLB in 2008 is one of their priorities. The act, signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2001, is aimed at improving the performance of primary and secondary schools by increasing the standards of accountability for states, school districts and schools. However, the mandate has been under funded since almost day one, and data collection involving minority students has been one of several major areas of concern. ''Making education decisions that affect all students without the benefit of fully disaggregated data ignores the unique needs of students of color,'' Michael Wotorson, director of the coalition, said during the briefing. Wotorson said that without strong data systems, educators, parents, policy-makers and advocates have no real way of knowing graduation rates for students of color and low-income students. The coalition's main argument is that accurate data can help close achievement gaps. It's well-known that educational achievement levels are lower for Indians than for their white, Hispanic and black counterparts. Research also indicates that American Indian and Alaska Native students have a dropout rate twice the national average - the highest rate of any U.S. ethnic or racial group. The NIEA's position on data collection involving NCLB reauthorization will perhaps be surprising to some Indian educators. Many tribal communities have questioned whether applying strong Euro-centric academic pressures to young children is really best for Indian students. Roman Nose said in an interview with Indian Country Today after the briefing that the NIEA has worked hard to get non-Indian educators to understand that the policies of NCLB may not always work best for helping Indian students succeed. ''Here's a solution,'' he said. ''If the No Child Left Behind Act is reauthorized, they need to designate tribes in the same way the act currently recognizes the importance of localities and states in developing public education models.'' In that way, tribes would have more control over developing standards to help Indian students. ''The problem is, we don't have the money to develop the idea. But I think it could happen.'' Beyond data collection, Roman Nose pointed out during the briefing that there are already some models for helping diverse groups of American Indian students feel more comfortable in their schools. He mentioned Montana's ''Indian for all'' education program as one such avenue that he'd like to see tried in Oklahoma, his home state. The idea behind ''Indian for all'' is that uniquely Native concepts, such as tribal sovereignty, should be included in the overall public school curriculum so that both Indian and non-Indian students are aware of such policies. Roman Nose said that integrating tribal culture into public school curricula leads to more successful students. The longtime educator also let the audience know that tribes have for centuries known how to take care of their kids. ''Throughout history, each tribal nation took care of its own people. And they did not leave any child behind.'' |
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