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Native Americans and achievement gap

school choice
CustomizationEducation ReportingPrivate SchoolsSchool ChoiceTeacher Empowerment

Teacher-led micro schools, ESAs create opportunity in Native American education

Matthew Ladner April 15, 2019
Matthew Ladner
school choice

Students at Hadassah John’s school on the San Carlos Apache Reservation in Arizona participate in hands-on activities to spark curiosity. John opened the school to give families an alternative to their F-graded district public school.

I had the opportunity recently to visit a new, small private school on the San Carlos Apache Reservation in Arizona. The school illustrates an education trend that is providing a new avenue for addressing America’s largest achievement gap.

The United States has done very poorly by Native Americans, including but hardly limited to K-12 education. Starting in the late 19th century, a group of “Indian Schools” was established. Authorities forcibly separated families and attempted to forcibly assimilate students, even beating them for speaking their native language. In addition to being barbaric and illiberal, these and other federal efforts have left Native American students with the largest achievement gap in the country.

The opposite of foreigners creating schools and forcing children to attend them is to have the community create its own schools and give families the opportunity to enroll. Arizona’s suite of charter and private choice policies has been expanding these opportunities over the years, and there has been progress.

As the chart above shows, Arizona has been making greater academic progress across all student subgroups than the national average, including with Native American students. The challenges, however, remain daunting. Many reservation areas are rural and remote, making it difficult to launch and maintain charter schools. All Arizona racial/ethnic subgroups scored equal to or above the national average on eighth-grade math and reading in 2017 except Native American students. Despite the gains, these students have yet to catch up to their peers nationally, much less to those peers’ Anglo averages.

A new school on the Apache Nation, however, points to a new hope. A Democratic senator from Arizona’s Navajo Nation pushed legislation through years ago making residents of Arizona reservations eligible to receive an Empowerment Scholarship. In January 2019, a small group of these students began participating and created a new private school.

Hadassah John, the school’s teacher, attended Apache reservation schools. She became inspired to start a new school because public schools in the area were low-performing, and her students experienced bullying and a lack of academic challenge. The local school district spends well above the Arizona state average but earned a letter grade of F from the state. Parent reviews, and even a teacher review, on the Great Schools site are scathing. John felt the community needed an alternative.

“I believe a child cannot learn if, one, they do not feel safe; and two, if they are not understood. This alternative offers each child (a chance) to learn at their own pace. They do not have to feel insecure or inferior to the student sitting next to them,” John noted.

Students at John’s schools focus on hands-on projects. On the day of my tour, a visiting Stanford graduate student was assisting them with designing and printing 3-D objects. They obviously were having fun.

John, who runs the school from a church campus, has raised $5,000 to purchase supplies and technology. She hopes to add a second class of students in the fall, and despite many obstacles, may be on the forefront of a new teacher-led model of education.

In her words: “If there is no joy in what you do or believe, it is harder to carry with you. There are a lot of challenges I have faced since Day 1. I have used each challenge thrown at us as a brick to help build a bridge for students to cross from hopelessness over to success and education.”

When I shared with John that I recently heard a 44-year veteran teacher relate on a radio program that “the joy has been strangled out of the profession,” and that the problem in education is not a lack of money, she responded with a quote from Albert Einstein: “It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.”

From what I saw during my visit, it looks like joy is fully awake at this new school.

April 15, 2019 0 comment
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John McCain
Education Savings AccountsSchool Choice

Bill would create education savings accounts for Native American children

Travis Pillow March 18, 2016
Travis Pillow
John McCain

U.S. Sen. John McCain discusses the Native American Education Opportunity Act in a video by the American Federation for Children, a school choice advocacy group.

Parents on Indian reservations would be able to control the funding the federal government spends educating their children, and use it for educational options of their choice, under legislation filed in Congress this week.

The bill, by U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., would allow parents to receive 90 percent of the funding that would have otherwise been spent educating their children in schools run by the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs.

The money would be channeled through existing state education savings account programs, allowing parents to pay for private school tuition, textbooks, or other education-related expenses.

In a statement, McCain said the schools the bureau runs for Native American children are costly for taxpayers, but often underperform academically.

“I believe that encouraging private schools to compete with BIE schools can improve K-12 education, even in the most remote parts of Indian Country,” he said.

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March 18, 2016 0 comment
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Achievement GapBlog AdministrationCharter SchoolsCustomizationEducation ResearchParental ChoiceSchool Choice

Florida’s school for the “unconquered”

Ron Matus August 2, 2012
Ron Matus

Some charter schools aim to save kids. Some aim to save cultures – and the kids along with it.

A new report from Harvard education researchers highlights three charter schools that offer cultural immersion for Native American students, including a K-8 charter on a Seminole Indian reservation in Glades County, Fla. The school’s name, Pamayetv Emahakv, means “our way,” which sums up the school’s goal: Preparing more than 200 students for the higher education they’ll need to succeed anywhere in the 21st century while at the same time holding on to Seminole culture and values.

“We turned our back on our way to go and learn the other way,” Michele Thomas, a school administrator and parent, told the researchers when they visited earlier this year. “So, now with this school we have to look back this way now. We have the education down, we have lots of college education in this community, but our language has suffered, our young people are not fluent speakers.”

Some education researchers think the approach of the Seminole charter and the two others in the report could help Native American students elsewhere who are not faring well in traditional public schools. According to the report, which was prepared for the National Indian Education Association, American Indian students have the highest absentee rate among minority students and the second-highest suspension and dropout rates.

“These three schools … all share a broader vision of transformative community change,” wrote the Harvard researchers, Eve L. Ewing and Meaghan E. Ferrick. “The establishment of a school serves as a means for mobilizing and empowering the local communities to assess their own needs and determine their own solutions. By doing so, community members not only improve educational outcomes for their children – they are also making a profound expression of self-determination and tribal sovereignty.”

The motto of the Seminole school boldly echoes that: “Successful learners today, unconquered leaders tomorrow.”  (The Seminoles call themselves “the unconquered” because even after three wars with the federal government, over half a century, they never surrendered.)

The charters in the Harvard report are part of a national movement by Indian and other native communities to use charter schools to help resurrect and maintain their indigenous cultures.

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August 2, 2012 0 comment
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