Integrating Native culture helps WASL scores (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/189453_wasltulalip04.html

Integrating Native culture helps WASL scores
Tulalip Elementary program shows gains

Saturday, September 4, 2004

By JENNIFER LANGSTON
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

A curriculum that incorporates Lushootseed language lessons, research
projects on Native canoe carvers and interaction with tribal elders
have contributed to dramatic test score gains at Snohomish County's
Tulalip Elementary School, officials believe.

Fourth-grade scores on the Washington Assessment of Student Learning at
the school where nearly four out of five students are Native American
still remained well below state averages last year.

Forty-three percent of the school's 222 students met reading standards,
30 percent met math standards, and 35 percent passed the writing test.

But that represents a big leap over the previous year, when 22 percent
met reading standards, 17 percent met math standards and 15 percent
passed the writing test.

"Our students are excited when they see their own culture and language
in the curriculum," said fourth-grade teacher David Cort. "When the
kids are reading their own literature instead of something out of a
textbook, they definitely become more engaged in learning."

He credited the school's partnerships with the Tulalip Tribes, which
provided Native language teachers and elders to teach a special
curriculum last year marrying Native American literature and cultural
lessons with state academic requirements. The school is on the
reservation west of Marysville.

That curriculum -- which requires finding teachers with that specialized
cultural knowledge and financial resources to pay them -- has been used
three of the last five years. Each time, there's been a noticeable rise
in WASL scores, Cort said.

Last year's fourth-graders were also the first to have had access all
four years to a computer and technology lab that the tribes helped
outfit. Students used it last year to produce a multimedia CD based on
a story about a Tulalip canoe carver, he said.

Don Hatch, a tribal council member and former member of the Marysville
School Board, said there's been a push reservationwide to instill
cultural pride in new generations of tribal members.

"Are we there yet? No," he said. "It's a slow process but we've got to
do just a little bit more every year."

Hank Williams, a Tulalip elder and police officer who frequently visits
classrooms, said a growing tribal police force has been able to focus
on truancy problems.

Money from the Tulalips' casino and business ventures has allowed the
tribes to increase their police force over the last five years from a
handful of officers to 17, he said.

They've been enforcing a new curfew law and following up on parents who
aren't making sure their children get to school, he said.

"Before, there was hardly anybody who cared ... but we've got people now
who can go in and say why aren't you in school?"

P-I reporter Jennifer Langston can be reached at 425-252-5235 or
jenniferlangston at seattlepi.com

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