[lg policy] Most American Indians Receive English-Only Instruction

[Harold Schiffman]

Most American Indians Receive English-Only Instruction
By Mary Ann Zehr on June 30, 2010 10:46 AM

Most Native American and Alaska Native students receive their
instruction entirely in English, says a report released today by the
U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences. The
study found that at least 87 percent of such students in grades 4 and
8 received instruction in core subjects only in English.

But at Bureau of Indian Education schools, run by the U.S. Department
of the Interior, Native American students are less likely to be taught
only in English. At those schools, attended by about 10 percent of the
country's Native American students, 46 percent of Native American 4th
graders and 49 percent of 8th graders reported receiving instruction
only in English.

Although not much teaching in Native American languages is going on in
the schools in Indian country, some children may still hear their
native languages spoken by teachers, a principal, or other staff in
the school. But the federal study found that's not the case with many
Native American or Alaska Native students. Seventy-seven percent of
4th graders and 82 percent of 8th graders said that people at their
school "never" or "hardly ever" speak their native languages.

I wrote about the study, which looked at academic achievement of
Native American students and cultural aspects of their education, in a
story published this morning.

The study found that Native American students' scores on the National
Assessment of Educational Progress remained flat from 2005 to 2009. In
my reporting for that article, I interviewed Charlie Rose, the
Education Department's general counsel, who has been participating in
consultations with tribes across the country on how to improve
education for Native American children.

He said that many tribe members are pushing for the next
reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act to give
a higher priority to the preservation of Native American languages and
culture than has been true with the No Child Left Behind Act.

The report had a chart that contained some interesting information
about what percentage of Native Americans or Alaska Natives who take
the NAEP reading test are English-language learners (on page 23 of
Part I of the report). The proportions of Native Americans taking the
test who are ELLs vary greatly between states.

For example, on average, 8 percent of Native American 4th graders who
took the reading test in 2009 were ELLs. In Washington state, only 1
percent of Native Americans who took that test were ELLs while in New
Mexico, 34 percent were. I'm not sure what's behind the wide variance
in those statistics between states, but I think it's worth noting.

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/learning-the-language/2010/06/most_american_indians_receive.html

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