Navajos turn sights on schools (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

Deseret Morning News, Tuesday, November 15, 2005
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,635161241,00.html

Navajos turn sights on schools
Navajo Nation steps forward and creates its own department of education

By Deborah Bulkeley
Deseret Morning News

For many American Indian youths, the educational outlook is bleak. In
some cases, youths are more likely to drop out of high school than to
graduate.

[photo inset - Students are bused in to Monument Valley High School,
located on the Navajo Indian Reservation south of Blanding. San Juan
School District]

The Navajo Nation has taken a step towards putting education into its
own hands by creating a department of education.

Leland Leonard, Navajo tribal education director, said there hasn't been
much improvement for Navajo youths since No Child Left Behind became law
in 2001. In 2004, the State Office of Education reported that just under
71 percent of American Indian youths in Utah graduated from high school.

"The states and the (Bureau of Indian Affairs) are not doing it,"
Leonard said. "This is an initiative of exercising our sovereignty, our
inherited right to reform the educational system on the Navajo Nation."

Leonard said in July the Navajo Nation amended its Title 10 education
code to create its own department of education and is also establishing
a school board. The department will look at the "unique language and
culture and incorporating those into the curriculum" over the next
decade at about 180 schools in the Four Corners region.

"The Navajo language and character development, those are all essential
tools our kids need to learn," he said.

Shirlee Silversmith, Indian education specialist at the State Office of
Education, said the Navajo Nation already had an education director,
and the restructuring provides more authority in areas such as
accessing data.

"There would be a greater direction for cooperation as well as
collaboration," she said. "A lot of this is based on sovereignty rights
of tribes. It puts our American Indians in a unique status that will
allow tribes to establish themselves as state departments of
education."

Many tribes, she said, conduct their own research and analysis of data
so they can better assist students and parents.

"The Navajo Nation is probably one of the largest tribes across the
nation and is in the forefront as far as developing and establishing
themselves as a tribal education department," she said.

[photo inset - Seniors at Monument Valley High participate in the
school's annual homecoming parade. San Juan School District]

Silversmith said every Utah tribe has an education director, and she
believes that eventually, the others may move in the same direction as
the Navajos. She pointed to a charter high school on the Uintah-Ouray
Indian Reservation in eastern Utah as another empowering move.

Toni Turk, federal programs administrator for San Juan School District
in southeastern Utah, said his district's graduation rate is about 95
percent. Last year, his district reported five dropouts — three were
American Indian, two were white.

The San Juan School District educates 1,643 American Indian students,
the overwhelming majority of them Navajo. San Juan is unique in Utah,
in that more than half of the district's 2,921 students are American
Indian. There are Navajo students in 11 of 12 schools, some of which
are adjacent to or on the reservation.

"Their role is to support public education," Turk said. "They were
emphatic about the fact this is not intended as a takeover of public
education, nor is it a raid on the resources.

"To some degree this is going to impact most of the schools in the
district," he said. For some schools, in which nearly all students are
Navajo, "they are going to have much bigger involvement."

Turk said San Juan is already doing some things that would fall under
the new accountability standards, such as teaching the Navajo language
in grades K-12 and incorporating cultural instruction.

"In Navajo language and culture instruction, they see us as a partner.
They would like to have other districts emulate the San Juan District."

Cameron Cuch, former Ute education director, said that tribe's charter
high school is in its seventh year of opening doors for youth
achievement.

Cuch said the reservation's dropout rate has ranged from 60 percent to
80 percent since the 1960s, and the charter school is helping reduce
that rate. More American Indian students graduate from the school than
from both off-reservation public high schools in the area, he said.

[photo inset - Kasfondra Morgan, left, and Mariah Taylor are dressed up
for Navajo Culture Day at Monument Valley High School. San Juan School
District]

"It's within our own community, and kids are getting a lot more
opportunities than they are in other high schools," he said. Youths
have more opportunities to participate in sports or take field trips,
such as last year's trip to the Sundance Film Festival, he said.

There's also the matter of being able to teach tribal priorities, such
as caring for people and protecting lands, wildlife and water rights.

"When we operate our own schools, we can instill that sense of
responsibility into young people," he said. Leaders hope they'll
continue their education and return to serve as teachers, lawyers,
doctors, or in whatever profession they choose, he said.

Research into tribal education has found that students who have support
from traditional families and communities have a more positive
educational experience, said Carol Ward, associate sociology professor
at Brigham Young University and author of "Native Americans in the
School System: Family, Community and Academic Achievement."

"Many tribes have responded to the complexity of schooling for Native
American students," she said. "They have responded by saying 'I think
we can do schooling better.' "

That happens by integrating culture and language into the curriculum in
a way that makes education more relevant, she said.

Ward looked at three schools on the Northern Cheyenne reservation in
Montana in the late 1980s and early '90s — a public school and a
Catholic school, both off the reservation, and a community tribal
school. Her research found that students who went to their local tribal
school did better, in large part because of increased parental
involvement.

"The interaction between parents and kids and the school . . . the
relationships they have can create a really positive environment," she
said. "When the parents are involved, that tells the kids, 'This is
important.' "

[photo inset - Wanda Ketchum, a White Mesa Ute Indian and elementary
aide at Blanding Elementary School, works with Robert Turk, a
fifth-grade teacher at Blanding. The district's graduation rate is
about 95 percent. San Juan School District]

She said parents also help to bridge the cultural gap at schools where
most teachers aren't American Indians. At schools where students were
bused from their community, it was more difficult to establish that
relationship. She said the tribal school's dropout rate was just over
half, but for just the students from the town where it was located, it
was only about 10 percent.

"What the Navajo Nation is also trying to address, is more people be
involved in schooling and their own work," she said, "more of a
partnership between the community and the school."


E-mail: dbulkeley at desnews.com

© 2005 Deseret News Publishing Company