By Sherry Posnick Goodwin
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Native Americans have fought hard to have their heritage and viewpoints reflected in school curriculum. No Child Left Behind jeopardizes that progress, say teachers like Melodie George at Hoopa Valley High School in Humboldt County and Clyde Hodge at Daniel Webster Middle School in Stockton. |
For years, Gerald Howard taught a Native American history class at Bishop High School. But not this year. Even though the Inyo County school serves 70 Native American students, the class no longer exists.
"It's too bad," says Howard, a member of the Bishop Union High School Teachers Association. The class was designed for juniors to look at U.S. history from a Native American perspective. The students who took the class enjoyed it and thought it was relevant."
The course began with looking at archaeological evidence from the years prior to the colonial period and worked through the conquest period, the formation of the United States, westward expansion and the effect on different groups of people throughout the country.
Despite its popularity, the class was canceled. "There was concern about the standardized test that students have to take in the spring," says Howard, who belongs to the Paiute tribe. "The school is trying to improve test scores, and there is worry about students being exposed to information meeting U.S. history standards."
A likely victim of the No Child Left Behind Act and the standardized testing movement, the class's fate reflects a nationwide trend in Native American education that many find disturbing.
"What spells success for Native American students?" asks an article titled "Catching Up Without Letting Go" in the Christian Science Monitor
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"Certainly one answer would be improvement in their reading and math scores, which lag significantly behind those of their white peers. But many educators also seek to give native students a solid grounding in their unique cultural traditions and history. And some worry that this is a goal that will lose out as an unintended consequence of the 2001 federal education law known as No Child Left Behind."
A recent report issued by the National Indian Education Association and the Center for Indian Education, Arizona State University, takes the position that NCLB is actually leaving Native American students behind and contributing to a "crisis" in Indian education. According to the report, titled "No Child Left Behind in Indian Country," NCLB does not fit or respond to the needs of native communities, especially those in rural areas. Among the findings:
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The few successes that have been achieved have been at the expense of native language and culture classes, as well as music, art, vocational classes and other programs.
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Native American students may be "internalizing" the system's failures as their own personal failures when they are blamed for low test scores.
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The law does not take into account different learning styles.
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The impact of NCLB has "clearly shifted the uses of Title VII [funds for Native American education] to focus on remedial programs typically supported by Title I" funding.
NCLB's "highly qualified teacher" requirement has certainly had an impact on Hoopa Valley High School. Located on the Hoopa Reservation in Humboldt County, it's the only public high school in the state that currently teaches Native American language classes Yurok and Hupa.
Klamath Trinity Teachers Association member Melodie George, who teaches the Hupa class, says it's difficult for teachers at her site to receive certification in native languages.
"There is nowhere where you can get a certificate or credential like a Spanish teacher gets to teach Spanish, because that doesn't exist for native languages," she says. And that's despite the fact that such classes meet the UC requirement in the world language category. "But that doesn't mean you aren't qualified to teach."
Tribal elders, however, cannot get certified for being masters of their languages under NCLB, even though in some cases they may be among the few who are fluent in a language bordering on extinction. When that's the case, they can offer instruction if a certified "teacher of record" takes responsibility for the class, which does happen at the high school on occasion.
George says that language classes ranging from beginning to advanced at her school have maintained the fluency level of languages as elders have passed on. Her students realize that they are being entrusted with keeping the languages alive.
"They know the responsibility is huge when they take this class. This is not a casual class," she says. "For a lot of them it's like therapy when they walk through the door. We have lots of discussions about deep issues and cultural miscommunications.
"We have the same problems as inner-city schools, like generational poverty and the prevalence of drugs and alcohol. Those problems are not necessarily solved in the classroom, but the classroom turns out to be the place where discussion begins. There is the advice of thousands of years of elders encased in the language. And the more students learn about the language, the more they learn about their own identity."
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Dave Etnire |
Recently the high school was taken out of NCLB's Program Improvement status and is no longer facing sanctions. The elementary school, however, faces sanctions even after meeting its targets on the state's Academic Performance Index and showing academic improvement. Teachers there worry that the campus could be taken over by state officials insensitive to the needs of Native American students.
Del Norte High School in Crescent City had a Tolowa language class at one time, but that teacher has since left to operate a charter school for Native Americans. (
See related story.) The school wants to replace the teacher, but has had difficulty meeting NCLB standards.
Stockton, which has the largest Title VII Indian education program in the state, once offered 12 native languages for its students, who have more than 90 different tribal backgrounds. Funding for those classes, however, has dried up. Still, Native American teachers feel fortunate to have the state's only high school Native American literature class and a certified teacher who provides Indian education programs in the district's classrooms.
Teachers say that the provision of NCLB that requires support professionals or paraprofessionals to be "highly qualified" and take college courses for certification will also affect Title VII-funded Native American aides in the classroom, and could cause many of them to leave the profession.
"The Indian community embraced No Child Left Behind in the beginning, despite a distrust of public education," says Marty Meeden, a member of the Palmdale Elementary Teachers Association and chair of the American Indian/Alaska Native Caucus of CTA. "But tribes have seen that NCLB is not really helping Native Americans as a whole. And that's partly because of certification. Some tribes had language classes going on in the school and those instructors had to be 'highly qualified.' In most cases the instructors were elders of the tribe and could not get certification. So Native Americans were punished by NCLB instead of helped."
For several years, Meeden collected information on indigenous people in his locale to supplement the district's third-grade curriculum. The social studies textbook lacked details about local Indian people in the Southern California area, so the mentor teacher developed a study guide on how native people in the High Desert interacted with animals, plants and the environment before the arrival of the Spaniards. Today, his curriculum is seldom used in Palmdale schools. "There is such an emphasis on reading and math," says Meeden. "We've lost a lot when it comes to social studies."
Dave Etnire, a teacher at Mountain Empire Junior High School near the Mexican border in San Diego County, is trying to improve academic achievement and also provide cultural curriculum for Native American seventh-graders in his "peer mediation" class. In addition to teaching study skills and computer use, he devotes class time to helping students increase their knowledge about their heritage, which he believes will boost their self-esteem.
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CTA American Indian/Alaska Native Caucus Chair Marty Meeden works with students in the computer lab at Buena Vista School in Palmdale. |
"We talk about cultural identity a lot," says Etnire. "A lot of kids have been influenced by MTV and rap, which has an impact on their native culture. One girl in my class wins awards for native dancing and others don't do it at all and would rather listen to rap music. These kids are caught between two worlds, and we try to talk about it. We don't say one way is right and another is wrong, but we talk about it and make comparisons. The kids seem to like it."
Etnire, a member of the Mountain Empire Teachers Association, has asked for help with curriculum from the area's Viejas Band of Kumeyaay Indians. He encourages tribal members to visit his class and discuss such topics as native language, ceremonies and tribal sovereignty. A recent discussion focused on the "Seven Needs of Life" for Native Americans water, food, shelter, air, society, territory and spirituality. Etnire used it as a springboard to discuss tribal heritage and customs. His class also has an "intervention component" with guest speakers some of them from Native American health agencies discussing issues like drugs, alcohol and domestic violence.
Teachers argue that cultural and language programs often make school more relevant for Native American students and can help reduce truancy and dropout rates, which some estimate to be as high as 40 to 50 percent. Even though schools can fail to make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) by having too high a dropout rate under NCLB, cultural programs are being put on a back burner. While there has been no official study, Northwest Regional Laboratory found that school attendance increased from 68 to 97 percent and family connections were strengthened when native culture and language classes were introduced at Fort Hall Elementary School on the Shoshone-Bannock Indian Reservation in Idaho.
In 1986, Stockton's Native American dropout rate was 98 percent. Now the district boasts just the oppositive -- a graduation rate of 98 percent. The addition of Native America programs is credited with bringing about the reversal, says Dale Fleming, program specialist for the district's Title VII program. "When we first started, we would discuss graduation. Now we discuss whether they should attend UC Berkeley, Arizona State or Stanford. It's a whole different ballgame these days."
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Learning native languages can help students connect with their culture and feel less isolated, says Kathy Wells, who teaches at Sequoia Middle School in Pleasant Hill. |
The program, which includes four paraprofessionals, sponsors a science camp every June. There is also a very active parent group. To keep it going and to help parents feel positive about school, staff conducts home visits. Weekly cultural activities for students and their families range from beadwork and weaving to painting and tutoring. Language classes are in the planning stage. The group also holds powwows outside of school.
In class, Fleming presents Native American perspectives on history, nutrition and science using native plants and animals.
There is also counseling to meet students' emotional needs. "I talk about their options and how they shouldn't let anything hold them back. I talk about different ways to get financial aid. I do a lot of work telling them they are valued people and that they should not put themselves down."
"One of the keys to reducing the dropout rate with Native American students is to make them feel like they belong in school and are a valuable part of the school community," says Kathy Wells, a member of the Mount Diablo Education Association who serves as vice chair of the American Indian/Alaska Native Caucus of CTA. "A lot of our students feel very isolated, and feel that what they are learning doesn't relate to who they are. Making a connection is really important."
Wells, a science teacher in Pleasant Hill, is especially concerned about the potential loss of Native American languages. They're close to extinction in some cases because, at the turn of the century, students were forcibly removed from their homes and taken away to boarding schools for assimilation purposes. There they were punished for speaking in their own language. As a result, entire generations of Indians are not fluent in their own language. Students were also forced to reject traditional dress and religion.
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Stockton's Title VII program specialist Dale Fleming discusses a Native American artifact during a visit to Joy Christian's literature class at Franklin High School. |
"My grandfather went to boarding school where he was taught only English. I never heard him speak more than three words in his native language, which was Dakota," says Wells. "Our culture is wrapped up in the language and the words that we use. It's a link to our ancestors and a way for us as American Indian people to communicate with each other in a traditional way. And those languages are a resource we could lose very quickly."
Like other minorities, a large number of Native American children are in special education, says Joseph Giovannetti, an associate professor of Native American studies at Humboldt State University and a member of the Tolowa tribe. Under NCLB, many are subject to the same proficiency standards as mainstream students, which puts them under pressure to raise test scores to avoid having their school labeled "underperforming."
"NCLB is also underfunded," says Giovannetti, a California Faculty Association member. Two-thirds of all districts will receive less Title I funding this year than they received last year, he points out.
"No Child Left Behind is unrealistic because it does not address structural problems in society, such as gross disparities of income. It's a game of blaming the victims -- students are told they have to try harder, and teachers and administrators are being threatened. Once schools are put on a list, there is a reactionary response, with people asking, 'Who's responsible?'"
Despite all the emphasis on test scores, there's no way to tell if Native American students are improving statewide. Schools and districts only count Native Americans as a subgroup if they make up 10 percent or more of the population. "Unfortunately, Native Americans are not usually significant subgroups. So, it follows that native students may not be getting the help they need," says Judy Martinez, the consultant on native Americans for the California Department of Education.
Even in Stockton, which has the largest Title VII funding in the state, they're not considered a "significant subgroup," says Clyde Hodge, a Native American who teaches language arts at Daniel Webster Middle School. "Our Native Americans are outperforming some other groups, but when it comes to the API test, no matter what their greatest achievements are, it's not considered statistically significant."
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Making presentations for their classmates are students Zoila Bahena (right), Jonah Lopez (middle) and Joycelyn Thompson (left). |
Martinez says the state will eventually track whether native students are improving academically in districts where they do constitute a subgroup. Until then, she says, the only way to gauge that would be to analyze test scores district by district.
NCLB measures success in the terms of American cultural values, such as "winning," and discounts Native American cultural values, says Joy Christian, who teaches Native American literature in Stockton and belongs to the Saux/Fox and Chickahominy tribes.
"By whose standards do you choose what is best for a person?" she asks. "Is a person who takes years learning to weave a blanket, make a drum or do beadwork, and makes a good living out of this gift, a failure? Is the person who has a natural ability to write poems, make music, paint a picture or sculpt a statue a failure? Is the person who is happy where they live with the things they need a failure? Why must others try to make people fit into their world and work perspective? Why must we expect everyone to go to college, live in a big house and have many worldly items if this truly doesn't make them happy?"
Native Americans fought hard during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and '70s to have their heritage and viewpoints represented in school curriculum. They worry that NCLB jeopardizes these gains.
"There is an overall sense … that profound changes are underfoot in native education and that the native education community has only just begun to sense the impacts and dangers incumbent in both the intended and unintended consequences of the NCLB statute upon the future of Native American education," notes the "No Child Left Behind in Indian Country" report. "It gives reason for pause and reflection."
