Tribes say No Child Left Behind leaves no room for culture (fwd)

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Tribes say No Child Left Behind leaves no room for culture

By JOHN SENA | The New Mexican
August 10, 2007
http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/66427.html#

Native American officials make plea for change to Sen. Jeff Bingaman at
hearing

Native American officials and educators told U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman,
D-N.M., that the federal No Child Left Behind Act does not recognize native
cultures and languages, and limits the ways schools can use them in their
curriculums.

Bingaman was in Santa Fe on Friday to conduct a hearing of the Senate
Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, which has jurisdiction
over federal education law.

The hearing was part of an effort to seek public input on the
reauthorization of No Child Left Behind and specifically on how it affects
Native American students.

“I’ve come across nothing that would enable me to be a proponent of the
act,” said James Mountain, governor of San Ildefonso Pueblo.

Mountain said he’s heard from teachers in the Pojoaque school district,
where many San Ildefonso pupils attend classes, that the act does not take
into account cultural differences and has forced schools to focus strictly
on English, leaving no room for native languages. “Once we lose our
language, we lose our culture,” Mountain said.

Maggie Benally, principal of the Navajo Immersion School in Fort Defiance,
Ariz., said her school is an example of what can happen when schools use
native language as a tool. Pupils in grades K-2 there learn only in the
Diné language and switch gradually to an English-language curriculum after
that.

The school has made adequate yearly progress under No Child Left Behind for
the past three years, Benally said. “Language and culture have a positive
effect on student achievement,” she said.

If lawmakers reauthorize the act, Benally said, they need to leave room for
schools to incorporate language and culture. The government also should
encourage and fund ways to make sure Indian schools have enough
high-quality teachers, she said.

State Secretary of Education Veronica Garcia said schools in isolated rural
areas, where many tribal and pueblo schools are located, often have
difficulty recruiting teachers. The government needs to support ways to
encourage Native Americans to become teachers so they can return to teach
in their tribes and pueblos, Garcia said.

The law also disregards tribal sovereignty by forcing schools to adhere to
state academic standards, said Samantha Pasena, a recent graduate of the
Santa Fe Indian School.

In addition to issues facing Native Americans, the panel also brought up the
concern that under No Child Left Behind, special-education students are
forced to take the same tests as regular students.

“A lot of specifics were brought up that I had never heard before,” Bingaman
said after the hearing. He said would take concerns about maintaining
culture in the face of the federal law back to Washington.

No Child Left Behind requires testing of students in grades three to eight
and at least one grade of high school. Proponents of changes to the law
argue there should be different methods of assessment, including a growth
model that follows the progress of individual students.

Gov. Bill Richardson, who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination,
has said he will work to get rid of the law if he is elected.

Supporters of the law say changes might weaken it and undermine the
accountability it was intended to establish.

Contact John Sena at 995-3812 or jsena at sfnewmexican.com.