It's part of a National Indian Education Study being carried out by the National Center for Education Statistics on behalf of the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Indian Education. The study analyzes the progress of Indian students in thousands of schools throughout the nation.

The study sample will include students attending public, nonpublic, and Bureau of Indian Affairs schools, according to center officials. There are more than 250,000 Indian students, ages 5 to 18 years inclusively, enrolled in public, private, federal and BIA schools in the U.S. However, the study will not report results by type of school.

A special report detailing American Indian student results in reading and mathematics will be available from the center in spring 2006.

The Problem

Though historically, small sample sizes have made it difficult to assess the performance results for this population, the results to date have indicated that achievement levels are lower for Indians than for their white, Hispanic and African American counterparts. Research also indicates that American Indian and Alaska Native students have a drop-out rate twice the national average—the highest rate of any U.S. ethnic or racial group.

Many educators want to reverse those trends, but Indian educators in particular say that they also want to be sure that NAEP tests are accurately measuring Indian student performance.

National Indian Education Association President David Beaulieu, Ph. D. (White Earth Chippewa), says that the increased sample size measurement will help educators learn a lot more about Indian students and how they are performing in schools.

Researchers with the Department of Education agree: "The Department of Education recognized that the sample size of American Indian and Alaska Native students in previous [National Assessment of Educational Progress] assessments led to a high degree of standard error and limited the comparison to other student populations," says Jeff Johnson, the coordinator of the project with the Office of Indian Education. "In order to decrease the standard error on the sample and ensure reliable estimates of student performance, the [study] was designed to collect data from a larger sample of American Indian and Alaska Native students."

Culture's Role

The role of culture in teaching Indian students is an area that many educators have deemed of great importance. Beaulieu, for one, says it is necessary for more researchers to explore how culture and language affect the educational experience of Indian students. "Too often, we study how kids are doing in math and reading, but we never look at how schools can be more effective for students in terms of language and culture."

Researchers have found that there can be dangerous consequences for Indian students when educators fail to appreciate Indian languages and cultures: historically, Indian students have been over-identified as learning disabled, mentally retarded, or have been more likely to be subject to disciplinary actions.

For example, members of the Rosebud Sioux Tribal Council have clashed with school officials in the Winner School District, in Tripp County, South Dakota recently. They say that because non-Indian teachers with the district do not attempt to understand Indian youth issues, the school has unfairly sought criminal prosecutions of Indian students for minor school misconduct. And they are upset by a high Indian student drop-out rate.

"Academically capable Native students often drop out of school because their needs are not being met, while others are pushed out because they protest in a variety of ways how they are treated in school," according to Northern Arizona University researcher Jon Reyhner who has written an overview of Indian education. "Teachers need to understand the dynamics of how children are socialized both into their home culture and into the school culture."

Reyhner also says that too often superficial attempts are made in schools to provide an Indian curriculum through a Thanksgiving unit or a Native American Day, rather than developing a culture-based, culture-embedded curriculum that permeates both the school day and the school year

Organizers of the National Indian Education Study anticipate that 250 schools per grade will be sampled across the nation for the 2005 survey in order to gather information about the educational experiences of American Indian students and the role of Indian culture in their education. According to officials with the center, the survey will ask questions of American Indian and Alaska Native students in the fourth and eighth grades, as well as their teachers and principals. Organizers estimate that the student survey will take approximately 15 minutes to complete, while the teacher and principal surveys will take about 25 minutes to complete.

Effects of NCLB

Even educators at many of the nation's 185 BIA schools (federally-operated institutions of learning for Indians) are concerned that No Child Left Behind will usurp cultural teachings. Past studies have shown that students at these schools were more likely to have received instruction in American Indian/Alaska Native courses than their peers who were enrolled in non-BIA public schools.

Some Indian educators say the culture problem has already gotten worse under the law: "Even in programs that usually support culturally-based learning, there have been reductions in enriched teaching because of No Child Left Behind," says Beaulieu. "Our education programs become less enriched when we are so focused on tests."

Beaulieu is hopeful that the Indian Education Survey results will provide an avenue for understanding how Indian culture interplays with educational performance. The complete results of the 2005 survey are scheduled to be available in summer 2006.

Making Up for Lost Time

Organizers of the federally-funded American Indian Education Study say it is intended to assist the United States in continuing its relationship with, and fulfilling its responsibility to, American Indian and Alaska Native peoples with respect to the education of their children.

Taslima Rahman, a researcher who helps oversee the project, notes that the study was designed in consultation with a technical review panel composed of American Indian and Alaska Native educators and researchers from across the country.

The first part of the study will be based on the performance of American Indian and Alaska Native students at approximately 5,000 schools nationwide. Both parts will be conducted in a representative sample of schools selected from states across the nation. Results will be reported for American Indian and Alaska Native students for the U.S. as a whole, as well as for regions and states that have a high proportion of American Indian and Alaska Native students.

Money Now, Money Later?

Recalling his time as Director of the Office of Indian Education during President Bill Clinton's second term, Beaulieu recalls, "It was a tradition to try to find monies to oversample the diverse Indian population."

The current study is expected to cost approximately $3 million through 2006. No decision has yet been made by the Department of Education as to whether it will be an ongoing measure. Beaulieu says that budget requests to Congress for educational research should automatically include funds to over-sample the Indian population. Otherwise, he argues that the data gathered simply does not provide an accurate picture of the approximately 500,000 Indian learners in the U.S. today.

"I think it's vital that in developing a study, it actually reflects good science and also provides good information about our Indian students," says Beaulieu. "It should be an issue of priority to understand our children's educational needs."

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Rob Capriccioso is a former staff writer for Connect for Kids.