Neglected Responsibilities: America's Failure to Support Native Alaskan Students

When the United States purchased Alaska from the Russian Empire in 1867, it did not simply grow by 663,000 square miles; it also accepted responsibility for the people living within its new borders. But America has not fulfilled its responsibilities. Today, 142 years after becoming subjects of the United States and 50 years after becoming its citizens, students from Alaska’s Native communities still lag behind those from other ethnic backgrounds. On average, Native students score more than two grade levels below their white and Asian-American peers in both reading and mathematics (National Conference of Native American State Legislators 12-13), and their test scores have remained stagnant while other students’ have improved (McCarty 15-17).

Test scores are not the only indication that Native students are doing poorly. They also face institutional challenges which block them from being able to obtain a quality education. One of these is learning disabilities. Native students in Alaska are 50% more likely to be placed in special education programs for general learning disabilities compared to other students (National Center for Culturally Responsive Education). These designations are usually based on a student’s academic progress relative to their peers (NCNASL 15), treating the symptom of underachievement rather than its cause.

Treating the symptoms isn’t working. A 2007 study by the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center found that only 42% of Native students in Alaska graduate from high school, compared with 70% of white Alaskan students (4). Native students in general are also expelled from school at higher rates than non-Native students, and are much less likely to pursue higher education (NCNASL 14-16)1. Alaska Natives make up one-fifth of Alaska’s school-age population (McDiarmid et al. 8), and yet their needs are not being met through current education policy. The fact that Native Alaskan students are academically so far behind other groups of students indicates that the United States has not fulfilled its duties in caring for these people, and that changes need to be made to ensure that these students have the opportunity to succeed.

While unacceptable, it is certainly understandable why federal education policy has trouble dealing with Native Alaskans. Rural Alaska offers a number of challenges to education policymakers because of its size and diversity. Alaska is a massive and sparsely populated area, with a statewide population density less than 2 people per square mile and even less in distant areas.  Within that space, there are twenty distinct Alaska Native languages recognized by the Alaska Native Language Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (“Mission”). These languages are spoken by an estimated 110,000 people (Alaska Dept. of Labor), and over a quarter of Native children live in homes where their language is spoken more often than English (DeVoe iv). While Hispanic and Asian/Pacific Islander students are more likely to speak another language at home (DeVoe 106), the sheer number of indigenous languages and the small populations speaking each of them makes it much more difficult for the federal government to address the language needs of Native students than those of other groups.

Rather than making advances in this area, however, the No Child Left Behind Act marked a significant setback in language and cultural awareness. While Section 7115 of the Act claims “special regard for the language and cultural needs of [Native] students” (NCLB), the act eliminated the entire concept of bilingual education. Everywhere that the word “bilingual” existed in federal law was replaced with references to “English Language Acquisition” (McCarty 13), clearly demonstrating Congress’s intentions with regard to indigenous languages. From 1968 to 2002, the Bilingual Education Act was a major source of funding for culturally and linguistically integrated education programs in Native schools; removal of bilingual education funds has for all practical purposes eliminated these programs (McCarty 13).

This elimination has had clear and measurable effects on Native achievement. Teresa McCarty, an educational anthropologist at Arizona State University, observed a school in the Lower 482 which serves 600 Native American students in grades K-12:

Between 1988 and 1998, students in the program consistently improved their oral English and English reading scores as measured by a locally developed reading assessment, student portfolios, and standardized tests. Meanwhile, the students were becoming bilingual and biliterate in the Native language and English. (19)

After NCLB was implemented in 2002, the school lost its bilingual education funding and was required to implement a phonics-based English reading program. In the years following, standardized test scores at the school sharply declined – in some cases over 50% (McCarty 19-20). This data supports the assertion of the Alaska Federation of Natives that native-language instruction is “intrinsic to community wellness, cultural survival and subsistence” and “vital to the processes of teaching and learning” (AFN). Yet bilingual education has been systematically reduced and eliminated through the provisions of NCLB. It is understandable and reasonable for federal education policy to encourage proficiency in English, but this cannot be done at the expense of Native students and communities.

Teachers in rural Alaskan schools obviously play an important role in integrating Native languages and cultures with curriculum standards, yet this is another area where federal policy fails to consider the needs of Native communities. One of the requirements of NCLB is that teachers be “highly qualified” to teach their subjects – in high school, this means that teachers must have a graduate degree or academic major in every core subject that they teach (Girard 2).  However, this is an impossible requirement for many Alaskan schools.  About 240 of the roughly 300 high schools in Alaska have student populations under 100, and many are much smaller (“Rural Alaska” 1). These schools cannot hire separate teachers for every area of instruction, and certainly cannot afford to bring in staff with multiple master’s degrees. It is clearly ridiculous to expect that every subject be taught by an individual with an advanced degree in that area. This is not to say that Native students do not deserve highly qualified teachers; rather, the definition of who is highly qualified needs to be reevaluated. Federal law, however, has little recognition for the rural and Native perspective.

The Department of Education did make a small effort to provide for rural school districts in its Small Rural School Achievement Program. The SRSA is a grant program for rural schools which included a one-year extension of the deadline for “highly qualified” certification to “veteran teachers in sparsely-populated districts with fewer than 600 students” (Eppley 3).  However, this program does not solve the problem of unrealistic qualification standards; it simply pushed back deadlines for the existing standards. Delaying implementation of impossible requirements is a useless endeavor.

NCLB also made provisions for states to certify teachers through a program called “High Objective Uniform State Standards of Evaluation,” or HOUSSE. This program allows existing teachers to request Highly Qualified status based on various types of education experience (American Institutes for Research). While this program has undoubtedly been valuable to many teachers, it was designed a temporary measure to prevent veteran teachers from losing their jobs based on a lack of academic degrees. The program will eventually be phased out (Eppley 4), and cannot be seen as a long-term solution.