EAGLE BUTTE, S.D.— American Indian students could achieve more academically if their crumbling schools are fixed, more money is provided for teachers and supplies and tribes gain more control of what happens in classrooms, tribal officials said Friday at a congressional hearing.
Dayna Brave Eagle, education director for the Oglala Sioux Tribe, said the federal government has been unsuccessful while controlling the schools the past century.
“They have failed. It’s time now for the tribes to make decision for their future,” Brave Eagle said.
Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, (D-S.D.), held a field hearing on Indian education on behalf of the House Natural Resources Committee, which deals with Native American issues. She said testimony from the hearing will help Congress decide what changes are needed in Indian education when lawmakers reauthorize the federal school improvement law known as No Child Left Behind.
Herseth noted that less than a third of the U.S. Bureau of Indian Education Schools met annual progress requirements in 2007. Only a third of Indian students graduate from high school in South Dakota, far below the 75 percent overall graduation rate, she said.
Education officials said reservations have extremely high rates of poverty, unemployment, teenage suicide and alcohol and drug abuse.
Indian students also fall behind the average in academic achievement. For example, 76 percent of all South Dakota students scored as advanced or proficient in reading tests given last spring, while only 50 percent of Indian students were advanced or proficient.
