PRIME Grant Report to Board Looks At Strategies for Teaching Math to Indian Students

Seven years ago, the National Science Foundation (NSF) provided funding for a new approach to teaching math to Indian students in Rapid City. Tonight, Dr. Ben Sayler of Black Hills State University and Dr. Suzie Roth from the Rapid City Area Schools will report to the Board on the successes and disappointments of this project and what researchers learned in the process.

A Gatekeeper Curriculum

Math is sometimes described as a “gatekeeper” curriculum. Whether you like it or not, if you get math in high school it’s a sign that you will probably graduate. As a group, Indian students in Rapid City in 2002 were not succeeding in math. As a result, many were not graduating.

To turn this situation around, the Rapid City Area Schools formed a partnership with Black Hills State University and TIE to launch a five-year Mathematics and Science Partnership aimed at reducing the achievement gap between Native American and non-Native students. Project PRIME (Promoting Reflective Inquiry in Mathematics Education) received grants funds from the NSF to provide professional development for teachers, support alternative testing for students and finance data analysis to evaluate the program.

Research has shown that the greatest single factor affecting student achievement across the board is the quality of the teacher. A teacher’s ability is in part shaped by the training they receive. For this reason, the Rapid City Area Schools and many districts across the country have increased their investment in professional development. Assessing the value of these professional development efforts, however, is often challenging because so many factors affect student achievement — especially when its measured on a single, high-stakes test like the Dakota STEP.

With the PRIME grant, however, NSF provided additional funding at the end of the five-year grant so that the project leaders could do a deeper analysis of the data they collected from students and teachers in the project. As a result, PRIME has the potential to offer District leaders an extraordinary analysis of what works and why in math education. Sayler has intimated that the data that he and Roth will share tonight will offer provocative insights.

Tonight’s Rapid City Area Schools Board of Education meeting will begin at 7:30 p.m. tonight to allow board members to attend Parent/Teacher conferences. The meeting will be held in the Council Chambers at the City/School Administration Center at 300 Sixth Street. A copy of the agenda is here: Board Agenda 11509

Readers interested in background on the PRIME grant can read Ben Sayler and June Apaza’s 2006 report here: PRIME – paper by SaylerApaza. A comprehensive analysis of the issues in math education for Indian students was developed by Inverness Research in September 2007:   PRIME – getting numbers dance Inverness Res 2007.

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. Read the rest of this entry »