Review of \u3ci\u3e Native Americans in the School System: Family, Community, and Academic Achievement\u3c/i\u3e by Carol J. Ward

The title of this volume promises more than the content delivers. The heart of the book is information from Ward\u27s 1992 University of Chicago doctoral dissertation, which focused on the social and cultural reasons leading to students dropping out of school. Her first two chapters provide a good review of research on dropouts and Indian education; the following six focus on the results of her 1987-1989 study of 698 Northern Cheyenne, Crow, and white high school students attending the Colstrip Public, St. Labre Catholic, and Busby Tribal Schools in Montana. Fifty-two percent of the students in this study were Indian, with a dropout rate of 45%

Resources for Families, Communities, and Schools to Help Native Students

This list of annotated resources is designed to help Native American and Alaska Native students succeed in school by healing them from the effects of long-term cultural genocide. Alcoholism, substance abuse, and family literacy are seen as particularly important issues to address when helping Native students do better in school. Vol. XII, Issue 4, Summer 2001 Educational levels: Undergraduate lower division, Undergraduate upper division, Graduate or professional, General public

Affirming identity: The role of language and culture in American Indian education

With the passage of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001, the United States spent millions upon millions of dollars in a largely unsuccessful effort to close the academic achievement gap between American-Indian and some other ethnic minorities and mainstream Americans. NCLB’s focus on teacher quality and evidence-based curriculum and instruction and subsequent reform efforts have largely ignored the negative effects of American popular culture and assimilationist, English-only educational efforts on Indigenous children, which can attack their identity and lead to cultural disintegration rather than assimilation into the dominant culture. This article examines recent American Indian and Hawaiian efforts at language and culture revitalization in schools and how those efforts have helped students to develop a strong sense of identity and show more academic success. These recent efforts focus on human rights and are in line with the United Nations 2007 Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples