District Struggles to Educate Indian Students

Addressing the needs of American Indian students is critical to the District's educational program.

Nearly one in five children enrolled in the Rapid City Area Schools is Indian. Meeting the educational needs of these students poses special challenges to teachers and administrators in the District, as well as to the community as a whole. The data suggests that we are not doing very well when it comes to meeting these challenges. On the annual Dakota STEP test, the gap between the achievement of Indian students and all others is substantial and, in some cases, growing. Truancy and absenteeism are high, and Indian students continue to drop out of high school at an alarming rate.

Over the last several years, the District, with financial support from the Bush and Vucurevich Foundations, has endeavored to deepen its understanding of the issues facing Indian students and to develop programs that will lead to increases in student achievement within this important community. A new strategic plan for American Indian Education ratified last year by the Board of Education articulates eight key goals that aim to erase the gap between Indian and non-Indian students on standardized tests and in graduation rates.

Eight Goals for Indian Education*

• Improve student achievement and address cultural awareness.
• Strengthen data collection and analysis for programming and evaluation and increase student and parent access to technology.
• Hire and retain American Indian staff at all levels.
• Increase Indian participation in all extra-curricular activities and strengthen extra-curriculars that appeal to Indian students.
• Work with parents and the community to improve attendance.
• Increase graduation rates among Indian students by enhancing opportunities for relevant, real-life learning.
• Address the emotional and spiritual needs of Indian students by developing mentoring and wellness programs

* These goals have been paraphrased for our readers.

Progress on Implementation

ACADEMICS — Implementation of the new strategic plan began this year. In the academic arena, advanced classes in Lakota have been developed. Parents were invited to review curriculum materials and recommend ways to make these materials more culturally sensitive. This summer, Indian Education staff and teachers will begin looking at the State’s content standards with an eye to making the benchmarks more culturally relevant to Indian students. For next fall, lesson plans will be developed for the social studies curriculum that integrate American Indian history and the contributions of American Indians to the overall history of the United States and the world. The District will also expand cultural training programs for non-Indian staff to help them understand issues affecting Indian students.

DATA & TECHNOLOGY — Good data collection and analysis is critical to improving Indian education and increasing the overall accountability of the system. This year, the District has been working to develop a catalog of reports that analyze student test scores, attendance rates and graduation trends. The District is also striving to provide more opportunities for Indian students and parents to have access to technology by installing community access computers at North Middle School and General Beadle Elementary. The District is also disseminating information to Indian parents about the District’s overall Technology Plan.

NATIVE STAFF — Recognizing that Indian students need Indian role models at school, the District is working to not only recruit and retain Indian staff, but also to encourage more people in the Indian community to enter the profession of education. The District has an onoing partnership with Oglala Lakota College (OLC) to recruit and train American Indian teachers and staff.  This year, six teacher candidates from OLC have interned and student taught in the Rapid City Area Schools.

SCHOOL & CULTURAL ACTIVITIES — By increasing Indian student participation in extra-curricular and cultural activities, the District hopes to deepen the connection between Indian students and the school community. With increased promotion, American Indian participation in sports at Stevens and Central High Schools this year has increased, particulary in football, basketball and gymnastics.

ATTENDANCE — Students can’t learn if they are not in class. To improve attendance among Indian students, the District has been recruiting parents as partners in the learning process. North Middle School, along with Knollwood, General Beadle and Horace Mann Elementary schools, has hosted family and cultural events during the day and evening along with math and literacy programs. The District also tried to survey parents this year to assess transportation issues with an eye to helping more students get to school. Unfortunately, the response to the survey was minimal. The District has been more successful in its collaboration with community organizations and other government agencies concerned with keeping the community’s youth in school. A coalition of organizations, including SANI-T, the Center for Restorative Justice, court services and other community members have been collaborating with the States Attorney’s office to reduce truancy. The District is also working to provide after school programs for students.

RELEVANT, REAL-LIFE LEARNING – Launched several years ago, the Partnership Rapid City program seeks to provide all students with real-life opportunities to apply what they learn in school in the community. This initiative is especially important for at-risk students who are often turned off to traditional academics. With support from the Vucurevich Foundation, Partnership Rapid City provided internships and apprenticeships to a number of Indian high school students this year to help set them on a career path after graduation. With support from the Minneapolis-based Bush Foundation, the District also hired four graduation coaches and a coordinator at Central High School to keep students working towards their diploma. These coaches have also begun working with eighth grade students to smooth their transition to high school and help them develop academic goals.

MENTORING & WELLNESS - Recognizing that children are less able to learn if they are hungry or distracted by other physical or emotional problems, the District has developed programs to try and focus on the whole child. This year, Central High School created a Health Cluster cohort with funding from the State of South Dakota. The elementary schools have also leveraged the State’s Nutritional fruit and vegetable program to try and give students greater access to healthy foods. Along with the Rural American Initiative organization, the District has also recruited American Indian mentors to work with students in the classroom.

Evaluation Strategies Missing

At a recent school board meeting, the District’s Director of Indian Education (Title VII) Dolores Riley presented an update on the progress on the Strategic Plan for American Indian Education. The report included data highlighting the gaps between Indian and non-Indian student achievement on the Dakota STEP test in the 2006-2007 and 2007-2008 school years. While there was some improvement in elementary and middle school scores in reading and math, there was a dramatic decline in student achievement among Indian high school students (11th graders). School board members expressed some concerns about this drop-off. Board members Leah Lutheran and Bret Swanson said they would have liked to see a deeper analysis of the data to understand why the scores had fallen so dramatically at the high school level. Riley replied that the Administrative staff has not had a chance to do this deeper analysis, despite having the test results for nearly nine months.  

Since 2001 American Indian students as a percent of all children attending Rapid City Area Schools has increased from 15.9% to 18.5% in September 2008.

The discussion between Riley and the Board highlighted a missing element in the District’s strategic plan — the lack of data-driven criteria for evaluating success or failure for the various initiatives outlined by the plan and the absence of measurable goals. Data-driven program evaluation has long been a systematic weakness within the District: as strategic plans come and go, the District’s activities are reported, but there is little effort to tie expenditures and activities to outcomes or real changes in student achievement. For years, the Board has repeatedly asked the Administration to provide a cost-benefit analysis of its various educational initiatives, including the adoption of the Middle School concept, block scheduling at Central High School, literacy programs, and professional development, but these studies have not been completed. The lack of measurable objectives and evaluation critieria in the American Indian Education Strategic Plan suggests that several years from now the District may still be struggling to understand what has worked and what hasn’t and why.

Read the Rapid City Journal’s coverage of the presentation on Indian Education. Also, check out the recent editorial by the Journal on the subject. For more information on Indian Education programs or to contact the director, Dolores Riley, visit the program’s webpage.