S. HRG. 109–565

INDIAN EDUCATION

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON INDIAN AFFAIRS

UNITED STATES SENATE

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

ON

OVERSIGHT HEARING ON THE STATUS OF INDIAN EDUCATION

MAY 25, 2006

WASHINGTON, DC

(
INDIAN EDUCATION
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27–768 PDF 2006

S. HRG. 109–565

INDIAN EDUCATION

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON INDIAN AFFAIRS

UNITED STATES SENATE

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

ON

OVERSIGHT HEARING ON THE STATUS OF INDIAN EDUCATION

MAY 25, 2006

WASHINGTON, DC

(
COMMITTEE ON INDIAN AFFAIRS

JOHN McCAIN, Arizona, Chairman

BYRON L. DORGAN, North Dakota, Vice Chairman

PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico

CRAIG THOMAS, Wyoming

GORDON SMITH, Oregon

LISA MURKOWSKI, Alaska

MICHAEL D. CRAPO, Idaho

RICHARD BURR, North Carolina

TOM COBURN, M.D., Oklahoma

DANIEL K. INOUYE, Hawaii

KENT CONRAD, North Dakota

DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii

TIM JOHNSON, South Dakota

MARIA CANTWELL, Washington

JEANNE BUMPUS, Majority Staff Director

SARA G. GARLAND, Minority Staff Director

(II)
(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Statements:

Akaka, Hon. Daniel K., U.S. Senator from Hawaii ....................................... 3

Cason, James E., associate deputy secretary, Department of the Interior .. 3

Carothers, Cathie, acting director, Office of Indian Education .................... 5

Corwin, Thomas, director, Division of Elementary, Secondary and Vocational Analysis Budget Service .................................................................... 5

Dorgan, Hon. Byron L., U.S. Senator from North Dakota, vice chairman,

Committee on Indian Affairs ....................................................................... 1

Gipp, David, president, United Tribes Technical College ............................. 21

Kirsch, Beth, series producer, Between the Lions, WGBH Boston .............. 19

Marburger, Darla, deputy assistant secretary for policy, Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, Department of Education ........................ 5

McCain, Hon. John, U.S. Senator from Arizona, chairman, Committee

on Indian Affairs ........................................................................................... 1

Skenandore, Kevin, acting director, Office of Indian Education Programs . 3

Small, Ivan, board secretary, National Association of Federally Impacted

Schools; superintendent, Fort Peck School District, Poplar, MT .............. 16

Teba, Bernie, Native American Liaison, New Mexico Children, Youth

and Families Department ............................................................................ 19

Wilson, Ryan, president, National Indian Education Association ................ 15

APPENDIX

Prepared statements:

Cason, James E. (with attachment) ................................................................ 35

Chee, Leonard, chairman, Navajo Nation Council, Education Committee .. 43

Gipp, David ....................................................................................................... 48

Johnson, Florian Tom, dual language and cultural director, Dine language medium school, Window Rock Unified School District No. 8,

Navajo Nation, Fort Defiance, AZ ............................................................... 61

Kirsch, Beth ...................................................................................................... 33

Marburger, Darla (with attachment) .............................................................. 67

Small, Ivan ........................................................................................................ 79

Teba, Bernie ...................................................................................................... 94

Wilson, Jennifer, Federal projects coordinator .............................................. 61

Wilson, Ryan (with attachment) ..................................................................... 101

Wilson, William H., division chair, Hawaiian Language college .................. 175

Additional material submitted for the record:

Achieving Adequate Yearly Progress: A Study Of 16 BIA-Funded Schools 177

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INDIAN EDUCATION

THURSDAY, MAY 25, 2006

U.S. SENATE, COMMITTEE ON INDIAN AFFAIRS, Washington, DC.

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:30 a.m. in room 485

Senate Russell Office Building, Hon. John McCain (chairman of the

committee) presiding.

Present: Senators McCain, Akaka, Dorgan, and Murkowski.

STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN MCCAIN, U.S. SENATOR FROM

ARIZONA, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON INDIAN AFFAIRS

The CHAIRMAN. Good morning and welcome to the oversight

hearing on Indian education. One of the most important issues facing our Nation continues to be the education of our children. Providing a quality education for every child is critical not only to the

prosperity of our Nation, but to ensuring that each child reaches

his or her full potential.

However, these obligations appear to go unfulfilled for Indian

children. According to the 2005 National Assessment of Education

Progress report issued this week, only 18 percent of Indian fourth

graders scored at or above the proficient level in reading; 52 percent scored below basic levels. For Indian eighth graders, only 14

percent were at or above proficiency in math, with 47 percent

below basic levels and 17 percent at or above proficient in reading;

41 percent scored below basic levels.

Last summer, we held an oversight hearing on the same topic

and were informed that many developments were in the works to

improve Indian education. The committee was concerned that the

academic achievement of Indian children fell behind their non-Indian peers, but was pleased to hear the commitment from the Administration in changing those results.

I look forward to hearing what has been achieved since last summer, and welcome the witnesses.

Senator Dorgan.

STATEMENT OF HON. BYRON L. DORGAN, U.S. SENATOR FROM

NORTH DAKOTA, VICE CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON INDIAN

AFFAIRS

Senator DORGAN. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much, and

thanks for holding this hearing.

About 2 months ago, this committee and myself held a listening

session on youth and education issues at the Standing Rock High
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School in Fort Yates, ND. We were joined by tribal leaders from

throughout the entire region, and we heard from a good many people who spend nearly every hour of every working day with Indian

children. These were school administrators, child psychologists,

teachers, members of school boards, and members of the community.

I started that day in Fort Yates, in fact, Mr. Chairman, with

about 1 dozen students and a 1-hour conversation with no one else

present, just myself and 1 dozen students at the Fort Yates school.

It was a fascinating discussion to talk about their lives and the

issues they face.

Those students and their fellow students throughout Indian

country are our best guides on how to provide the tools for them

to succeed. One of the things that is important is that we do need

new textbooks and new classrooms. Those things are important,

but more than that, for many children on Indian reservations,

sometimes it is as basic as finding a bed to sleep in at night, having a drug and alcohol free environment in which to live, and

healthy food to eat.

The young basketball player on the Fort Yates basketball team

was homeless, sleeping in different houses every night, just finding

places to stay, and yet he was a basketball player on their high

school basketball team. Those are the kinds of things they confront.

I am really pleased today that the witnesses are a good cross-section of folks who will discuss many education issues to reflect from

the youngest to the oldest students. I have been a big fan of tribal

colleges, as you know, Mr. Chairman. So we have a lot to do with

respect to Indian education.

I want to tell you, you and I have had schedule issues in recent

hearings. The Energy Committee is holding a hearing at 10 o’clock

that I had requested be held on railroad rates and captive shippers,

so I have to go over to the Energy Committee. I apologize for that.

But one of the witnesses today was someone I had asked to join

us, and Mr. Chairman, thank you for your consent. He is Dr. David

Gipp. Dr. David Gipp has committed his life to education. He is one

of the premier education leaders in our country. He is the president

of the United Tribes Technical College in Bismarck, ND, a really

extraordinary institution. He is going to be on the second panel. If

Dr. Gipp would stand up just so that we all recognize Dr. David

Gipp. Thank you for being with us.

I don’t know whether I will be back from the Energy Committee

by the second panel, but I do want to give special recognition to

education excellence. We recognize it when we see it, and I certainly see it in Dr. Gipp and what is happening at the United

Tribes Technical College.

Again, the three key issues for us are always education, health

care and housing. Mr. Chairman, you have scheduled hearings in

a range of areas on all of these issues. Thank you for that leadership. Today, education is front and center and I appreciate all the

witnesses who will come and testify.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Senator Dorgan. We appreciate Mr. Gipp being here.

Senator Akaka.
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STATEMENT OF HON. DANIEL K. AKAKA, U.S. SENATOR FROM

HAWAII

Senator AKAKA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for

holding this important hearing.

As a former educator and principal in the State of Hawaii, I have

witnessed how the quality of education shapes not only our youth,

but also our communities. By holding this hearing, the committee

is taking a necessary step and leadership role in addressing a

range of issues associated with American Indian, Alaska Native

and Native Hawaiian education.

It is our responsibility as Government leaders to provide our

youth with the resources and tools they need to become productive

citizens and to fulfill their personal goals and ambitions. I am

pleased that the U.S. Department of Education has reported gains

in academic achievement of Native students. However, there is so

much more that needs to be done to better meet the needs of BIA

and tribal schools, especially regarding the recruitment and retention of highly qualified teachers, improvement of high school graduation rates, and the implementation of Native language and cultural programs.

As we develop solutions, we must be mindful of the unique challenges confronting our educators and our Native youth. Action and

investment in the preservation of Native languages is needed. Last

month, I introduced S. 2674 to promote the rights and freedoms of

Native Americans to use, practice and develop Native American

languages in order to ensure that children across the country are

given the opportunity to develop their Native language skills.

Language is the primary means by which a culture’s traditions

and shared values are conveyed and preserved. It is imperative

that we encourage our children to explore the uniqueness of their

culture and identity, while developing an understanding of the

world around them.

Language preservation requires partnerships to be forged that

link young and elderly and strengthen their sense of pride and

community. While I am unable to stay, Mr. Chairman, to hear testimony from our witnesses, I look forward to continuing to work

with all of you to better meet the educational needs of our youth.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Akaka.

Our first panel is James Cason, associate deputy secretary of the

Department of the Interior. He is accompanied by Kevin

Skenandore; and Darla Marburger, who is deputy assistant secretary for Policy, Office of Elementary and Secondary Education at

the Department of Education. She is accompanied by Cathie

Corothers, the acting director of the Office of Indian Education, and

Thomas Corwin, who is the director of the Division of Elementary,

Secondary and Vocational Analysis Budget Service.

Welcome, Mr. Cason. Please proceed. Welcome to the witnesses.

STATEMENT OF JAMES E. CASON, ASSOCIATE DEPUTY SECRETARY, DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, ACCOMPANIED

BY KEVIN SKENANDORE, ACTING DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF INDIAN EDUCATION PROGRAMS

Mr. CASON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
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I would like to take just a second and let Kevin introduce himself

and tell a little bit about him. This is his first opportunity to testify

in front of the Senate. He is currently the acting director of Indian

Education.

The CHAIRMAN. Welcome.

Mr. SKENANDORE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the

committee. Just a quick introduction. My name is Kevin

Skenandore. I am a third generation Bureau of Indian Affairs

[BIA] employee. My grandfather, Eli, was a carpenter. My father

was an administrative officer; 30 years ago, I went to the Intermountain Intertribal School to take a look at their school, and I

walked out with a job as a door maid. I worked through our system

in 30 years. I bring that perspective. It is an honor for me to testify

and to share the activities that are currently taking place in the

Office of Indian Education Programs.

I do think we have some interesting information that you would

like to hear about what we are doing in our Reading First programs, our FACE programs, and some of the programs that are

identified in our testimony.

Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much.

Mr. CASON. Good morning, Mr. Chairman and members of the

committee. My name is Jim Cason. I am the associate deputy secretary of the Department of the Interior, exercising the responsibilities of the assistant secretary for Indian Affairs. I am pleased to

be here to speak on behalf of the department and our Indian education programs.

With me, as you know, is Kevin Skenandore, who is currently the

acting director of the Office of Indian Education Programs [OIEP]

until Tom Dowd joins us as the director of OIEP on June 11. Kevin

comes from the field, as you know, and he is the education line officer at Fort Apache. He has been instrumental in helping us design

the management structures to improve our Indian education program.

As indicated in previous testimony, a comprehensive review of

the BIA educational system was conducted with a determination

that several changes needed to be made in order to improve the effectiveness of our educational services and programs provided by

our BIA-funded school system, and in order to ensure that no child

was left behind.

Based on this comprehensive review, it was clear to me that we

needed to make some major changes in the way that we structured

our OIEP leadership. The overall objective of our improved management structures changed the current organizational structure to

reflect today’s educational policies and the critical emphasis on improving student academic achievement, to reduce the span of control at the director and deputy director level, and to improve accountability. The improved management structure will provide

some enhanced senior leadership and accountability in BIA education programs.

Basically, what is involved there is to add a senior level of leadership in the program. Right now, there is basically none. And then

to stabilize our education line officer layer, and that is the closest

to the field management structure in the program.
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In response to the changing management responsibilities, OIEP

worked with tribes and tribal school boards to develop the Program

Improvement and Accountability Plan [PIAP] to improve the effectiveness of education services provided in bureau-funded school systems. The PIAP is basically an MBO process where we lay out

clearly the goals, objectives, tasks, and sub-tasks and make assignments and put them on a schedule so that we can actually very deliberately pursue improvements in the program.

The purpose of the PIAP is to structure OIEP’s approach to

meeting six critical educational objectives. Objective 1, is to achieve

adequate yearly progress at all BIA-funded schools. Objective 2, is

ensure safe and secure schools. Objective 3, is provide free and appropriate public education for all eligible students. Objective 4, is

improve administrative organizational management capability. Objective 5, is improve program financial accountability. And then objective 6, is improve communications.

Overall, our intentions are to provide improved communications

and coordination between all of the parties who must contribute to

the success of our Indian education programs. The improved management structure is intended to improve the management accountability of the education program. I firmly believe that the implementation of the improved management structure at OIEP, and

the final transition in the fall of the opportunity for change and improvement and accountability in BIA’s Indian education programs

has begun.

I am confident that with the changes, the enhancement of academic achievement in Indian students will take place. We are looking forward to working with the Department of Education, the

tribes, and this committee on Indian education.

Thank you for the opportunity to be here today to testify on

these important issues. I would be happy to answer any questions

you have.

[Prepared statement of Mr. Cason appears in appendix.]

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Cason. It is good to

have you back.

Mr. CASON. Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Ms. Marburger, welcome to the committee.

STATEMENT OF DARLA MARBURGER, DEPUTY ASSISTANT

SECRETARY FOR POLICY, OFFICE OF ELEMENTARY AND

SECONDARY EDUCATION, DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION, ACCOMPANIED BY CATHIE CAROTHERS, ACTING DIRECTOR OF

THE OFFICE OF INDIAN EDUCATION; AND THOMAS CORWIN,

DIRECTOR, DIVISION OF ELEMENTARY, SECONDARY AND

VOCATIONAL ANALYSIS, BUDGET SERVICE

Ms. MARBURGER. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman and members, on behalf of Secretary Spellings, let

me thank you for this opportunity to appear before you and to discuss the current status of Indian education. My name is Darla

Marburger. I am the deputy assistant secretary for policy in the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education. I am joined today by

Cathie Carothers, the acting director of our Office of Indian Education and Thomas Corwin, the director of the Division of Elementary, Secondary and Vocational Analysis, in our Budget Service.
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The CHAIRMAN. Welcome to both.

Ms. MARBURGER. Your request for the department to testify on

the matter of Indian education is very timely, with this week’s announcements from the department’s National Center for Education

Statistics. We released the first report of the National Indian Education Study or NIES. This report contains new information for us

on the educational progress of Indian students relative to that of

students of other major student populations.

Today I would like to share briefly with you the findings of that

study and some specific steps that we are taking to improve the

academic achievement of American Indian and Alaska Native students.

First, I would like to point out that the National Indian Education Study is a two-part study to provide information on the condition of American Indian and Alaska Native education. This information can then be used by educational agencies, schools, parents,

and others to develop education programs to improve the educational performance of Alaska Native and American Indian students.

The first part of the study, which was just released this week,

reports results from the department’s over-sampling of American

Indian students on the 2005 National Assessment of Educational

Progress [NAEP]. This was intended to generate adequate representation of Indian students in the NAEP. Without that, our

sample is really too small to draw conclusive results.

The study provides us with the most reliable and complete data

on Indian students’ performance at the national level in reading

and mathematics to date. It includes students from public schools,

private schools, Department of Defense schools, and BIA schools.

The second part of the study, which will be completed and released this fall, consists of an in-depth survey that gathers information from American Indian and Alaska Native students and

their teachers, and it covers demographic factors, school culture

and climate, the use of traditional language and culture in the

home, and teacher qualifications.

The results of part one of the study allow us to compare the academic achievement of Indian students to other students and to examine the achievement of these students over time and by region.

Data from the 2005 NAEP reading and mathematics show a consistent pattern of achievement results for American Indian and

Alaska Native students. While comparisons between Indian students and other students show that Indian students tend to score

lower than students in general, comparisons among racial and ethnic sub-groups show that Indian students generally achieved at a

level comparable to that of Hispanic students, and somewhat above

the level for African American students. The performance of all

three of these sub-groups tends to trail that of white and Asian

American-Pacific Islander students.

Our data also showed a small increase in the reading and mathematics achievement of Indian students between the 2003 and 2005

NAEP. While this is encouraging, we believe that most of these improvements are not statistically significant.

Other analyses document the continued achievement gap between Indian students and other students. The 2005 NAEP reading
7

data showed that among students who are eligible for free and reduced price lunches, Indian students scored lower on average than

all other students who were eligible for this benefit.

I should mention as well that the study allows us to look at performance by region in the Nation. The study compared Indian student performance in three different types of locations: Central city,

urban fringe or large town, and rural or small town. Those data

showed that at grade four, Indian students in central city locations

and in urban fringe or large town locations scored higher in reading and math on average than their Indian counterparts in rural

or small town settings. We had similar results at the eighth-grade

level in mathematics.

This is significant in comparison to our non-Indian students. In

those cases, reading performance was higher in urban fringe or

large town locations and rural or small town locations than in central cities.

The study provides comparisons in Indian student performance

across five national regions, as well as a picture of Indian student

achievement at the State level for seven States, which have at least

5 percent of the State student population as Indian students. Almost 50 percent of Indian students in the Nation reside in those

seven States, which happen to be Alaska, Arizona, Montana, New

Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and South Dakota.

The data allows us to see these comparisons. For example, they

showed that Indian students in the north central region had a

higher average score than Indian students in the Nation in both

fourth-and eight-grade reading, and that, for example, Indian students in Oklahoma had a higher average score than Indian students in the Nation in both fourth-grade and eighth-grade reading.

There are greater details to the study and also greater details in

the steps that we are taking to improve student education, but it

will be submitted in the official written testimony.

At this time, my colleagues and I will be happy to answer any

questions you may have.

[Prepared statement of Ms. Marburger appears in appendix.]

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Ms. Marburger. I read

your written statement last night and I appreciate it. Both written

statements will be made part of the record.

What is the degree of coordination between you and the BIA, in

your view?

Ms. MARBURGER. We have really taken steps to increase the level

of coordination, especially in the past year. We are having monthly

conference calls and are in the midst right now of planning a technical assistance conference that we expect will take place this fall.

That technical assistance conference has included additional

planning where we are together working on what content will be

covered and what is most needed by the BIA schools.

The CHAIRMAN. If you regard the level of Indian education where

I talk about it in my opening statement and a recent report, it

seems to me that this is a squeaky wheel. I would urge you to

make it a pretty high priority.

I understand that Native Americans are a small percentage of

students throughout America and you have large responsibilities,
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but where they are ranking by almost any determinant, they need

a lot of attention and help.

Something that puzzled me a bit about the NAEP report. It

shows that fourth-grade Indian students in rural areas and small

town locations did worse in reading and math than those in central

city or urban fringe areas. You point out that this is different than

the pattern for non-Indian students, who scored lowest in central

city locations. How do you explain this anomaly?

Ms. MARBURGER. I think part two of our study will help us with

that because it is going to give us more specific information regarding educators. I do have some ideas.

The CHAIRMAN. Give me one.

Ms. MARBURGER. I think a lot of it has to do with the quality of

the preparation of our educators in those rural areas and the quality of professional development in those areas.

The CHAIRMAN. In other words, what you are saying is they have

difficulty recruiting teachers for BIA schools? Translation?

Ms. MARBURGER. All of our rural schools have that challenge in

general.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you want to say something, sir?

Mr. CORWIN. Just to point out, most of the rural schools that are

educating Indians are not in the BIA system. But out on the reservation or areas around reservations, those are very challenging

environments in which to produce a quality education.

The CHAIRMAN. There are challenging environments in the inner

cities, too.

Mr. CORWIN. Yes; but I think what we might tease out, just to

guess about these new data, is that in the Native American context

the rural areas may provide some particular challenges that we are

not finding in other areas. It is new data to us. We clearly have

to take a more careful look at it.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, take a more careful look at it and report

to us as soon as you finish the careful look. I think it is an issue

that we need to try to pay more attention to.

Mr. Cason, as you know, this committee, thanks to the leadership of Senator Dorgan, has really been concerned about this youth

suicide issue. What are you doing on that issue?

Mr. CASON. Mr. Chairman, we are also very concerned about it.

We have been coupling together our law enforcement program. We

are scheduled to meet with the IHS Director, Dr. Grim, this afternoon to talk about that.

What we are trying to do is take a look at the causal factors that

might lead to suicide, particularly in our education system, and

then in the broader Indian community, and looking to identify

causal factors and looking at identifying what we can do about it.

I think, Mr. Chairman, it is reasonably fair to say that there are

some pretty difficult conditions on a lot of Indian reservations, high

unemployment, lack of infrastructure, lack of jobs, general economic poor conditions that lead to suicides at a higher rate.

The CHAIRMAN. I am sorry for interrupting, but I agree with everything you say, but that has always been the case. Now we are

seeing an increase in youth suicide. Go ahead.

Mr. CASON. That is fine. I was basically just saying that we do

recognize the same thing and we are looking into what might be
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possible causal factors. There has been a long term situation on Indian reservations that is conducive to a high rate of suicide, and

we are seeing if there is any incremental events. It hasn’t come to

my attention yet that there is an incremental event, but we are

looking.

The CHAIRMAN. The indicators we have is it is on the rise. One

of the things I want you to, and I think it is obvious, but one of

the things I think you ought to look at is this connection between

youth suicide on Indian reservations and the increased proliferation of methamphetamines.

Mr. CASON. That is one of the causal factors we are looking at.

The CHAIRMAN. All right. Thank you.

Senator Dorgan.

Senator DORGAN. Mr. Chairman, thank you.

Ms. Marburger, you have given us the description of the reports,

the two part study. I have read through this. You indicate that Indian education is struggling in some areas. You have just described

to Senator McCain some issues with respect to rural schools. The

report seems to me to say that young Indian students are lagging

behind all students generally in achievement. Is that correct?

Ms. MARBURGER. That is correct.

Senator DORGAN. And they are, however, generally on a par with

students from other ethnic groups, perhaps who are living in areas

of greater poverty in this country. Is that also correct?

Ms. MARBURGER. Yes, sir; at the same level, and in some cases

above.

Senator DORGAN. Mr. Cason, you have seen all the studies. In

fact, I had the GAO do an investigation of the condition of Indian

schools, particularly BIA-owned schools. They are generally in

tougher shape, less good repair than other schools across the country. Do you feel that that has an impact on Indian education and

is contributing at least in some part to these lower scores?

Mr. CASON. Yes.

Senator DORGAN. And what is being done about that? I ask you

the question with respect to BIA schools, but I recognize that the

gentleman, what is your name, sir?

Mr. CORWIN. Tom Corwin.

Senator DORGAN. His comment about other schools that are not

BIA, but nonetheless rural schools with predominant Indian students living near reservations, have very little property base, and

therefore not much of a funding base for the schools. I recognize

those schools are also in trouble. I have been in schools with 150

kids, 1 water fountain and 2 bathrooms. The kids are sitting in

classrooms with desks 1 inch apart, a building that is 100 years

old, portions of it condemned.

I have seen these schools and you ask yourself, is a little kid, a

third or fourth grade kid in that school getting the same opportunity for education than a kid is getting in a shining new elementary school in another area? The answer is no.

So what are we doing about this? We know the problem exists.

We have known that now for some years. What are we doing about

it?

Mr. CASON. Well, Senator, as you know from other testimony we

made in the context of appropriations, our Indian education system
10

contains almost 2,000 buildings of one sort or another, associated

with 184 schools or dormitory facilities. If you take a look at the

2,000 buildings we have a pretty wide range of condition of them.

Some of them are newly built and in very nice condition. Some of

them are very old and in decrepit condition.

Over the course of the last 5 years, the Administration with the support of Congress has basically invested about $1.5 billion in renovating the system. So there has been material improvement over

time for the system as a whole. However, there is still need that

has not been fulfilled yet and we still do have a number of our

buildings, somewhere on the order of 30 percent, that are still in

pretty poor condition and that continue to need improvement.

Senator DORGAN. Mr. Cason, do you have an evaluation of what

kind of investment is needed to bring BIA-owned schools up to par?

And if so what that would take year by year? And what percentage

of that we are now meeting with the President’s budget request?

Mr. CASON. I don’t have a specific figure, Senator. I know that

we have invested about $1.5 billion and we are on the order of

about 70 percent of the schools and facilities are at good or better

condition. I have not placed an estimate on what it takes to get the

other one-third.

Senator DORGAN. Shouldn’t we do that, though?

Mr. CASON. That sounds reasonable.

Senator DORGAN. A $1.5 billion expenditure, I understand that

number. What I don’t understand is what is not being done.

Mr. CASON. Okay. We would be happy to look into that and get

you an answer.

Senator DORGAN. If we had the money or if this was considered

a priority, for example, a bigger priority than repealing the estate

tax, just as an example, if we considered this a priority, what kind

of funding would be required to bring these schools up to par in

what period of time? How much per year are we underfunding

that?

So I think the committee would benefit from that and understand, then, what the shortfall is.

One other question. There is a great deal of unhappiness as you

know in Indian country about the BIA’s proposal to realign its education functions. That reorganization was something that was a

prominent part of the discussion at the listening session I held in

Fort Yates. Can you tell us what you are doing and why you are

doing it? I understand an injunction has been filed, I believe it was

yesterday, by some of the tribes in the northern Great Plains.

Mr. CASON. Yes.

Senator DORGAN. What is it that has persuaded you to do this?

Why are you doing it and what will you accomplish?

Mr. CASON. Okay. That is a great question, Senator. I would be

happy to talk about it.

Overall, what we did in looking at the Indian education program

is look at all the various components of it. One of the issues is

management. I would like to start off this answer with, there is no

one single bullet to address all of the ills that we have in our Indian education program to achieve success.

Right now, as an overall matter, two-thirds of our schools are

failing to meet AYP and that is clear that that is not the kind of
11

success rate that Congress or the Administration will find acceptable. So we started looking at all of the components of the Indian

education program to figure out what needed to be done.

Part of what we have done is produce the PIAP, the Improvement Accountability Plan and an MBO for making improvements.

One of the elements we looked at was management structure. In

looking at Indian education, one of the things that was abundantly

clear is there was a lack of senior management attention. We have

about 5,000 employees in this organization, and we had a total of

1 sitting senior executive. If you look at the Department of Energy,

they have about 1 senior executive for every 30 employees. In the

Department of the Interior, as an average, we have 1 for every 250

employees.

So on average, I was about 20 senior executives short in the Indian education program. So what we did is went to the Secretary

and to the Office of Personnel Management and asked for seven

new SESers as opposed to 20 to at least bring some senor management help into this program.

We also looked at a director’s position when shopping for a new

director. We have selected a person, Tom Dowd. He will be in in

about 2 weeks to start his leadership in the program. That was an

important element.

On the Education Line Officer layer, which is associated with the

lawsuit you just talked about and the complaints that you received

in the Dakotas, we have had extensive consultation with Indian

tribes in the Dakotas. Their consultation has gone over the period

of the last couple of years before we end up making decisions about

what to do.

On that education line officer layer, basically what we did is

looked at the number of dollars we thought we had available for

that layer; looked at what we needed across the country; basically

made decisions about relative staffing and workload associated for

each ELO office and what they needed for critical mass of technical

skills in an office, and then apportioned in a very objective, rational

way how much resources we had available for each set of schools

we had across the country.

Where we ended up is we originally had 22 education line officers with about 100 staff people. We ended up with 19 education

line offices with about 100 people, and what we are looking to do

is reconfigure somewhat, and in my opinion it is not a large reconfiguring, but reconfigure somewhat the location fo the ELOs,

what their tasks are. We are upgrading the staff to get higher level

people with more knowledge and more experience into the system.

We are moving toward the direction of having people that can provide technical assistance, rather than staff.

So that is basically what we are doing.

Senator DORGAN. Mr. Cason, that was everything I wanted to

know and more, a long description of what I am sure is something

you have put a lot of time on. I have to tell you that I am a little

bit perplexed when I hear that what we need to fix the system is

more senior executive management staffing. I mean, in fact I think

there is probably an inverse relationship between effectiveness on

the one hand and senior executives on the other in the Federal

Government, just because of the way bureaucracy works.
12

But having said all that, the reason I asked the question is the

concern about the line education function and what seems to me

to be a constant and an inevitable desire to centralize, rather than

decentralize. Particularly in our area and I am sure in other areas

as well, as they centralize more and more of these things and more

and more of these functions, you get farther away from the role of

educating.

But I will send you a list of questions, if I might, about this because I am curious about its impact and its effect. The tribes tell

me there was precious little consultation, but I will ask you some

questions about that as well.

Mr. CASON. We would be happy to answer all those questions.

Senator DORGAN. At the end of the day, the chairman and I are

interested in one thing: How do you effectively deliver the education that is needed by the students who desperately want to be

educated out there across the country? We have a responsibility.

We run schools on military reservations. I go to those schools on

air bases. We run those schools. Those schools are in good shape

by and large, and we run them well.

And then we have responsibility for another set of schools, the

BIA schools, and I am distressed that years after the GAO has said

that those schools are in miserable shape, by and large, one-third

of them are in miserable shape, that we have not really done the

things we should have done as trustees and as those responsible

for the education of these children. So I hope we can do more and

accomplish more.

Mr. Chairman, as I indicated, I have to go to the Energy Committee for a hearing that I had requested. I apologize that I have

to leave, but thank you for calling this hearing.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Dorgan.

Senator Murkowski.

Senator MURKOWSKI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I am sorry that I missed the testimony here this morning. I was

actually wearing my mother hat and taking care of my son’s enrollment for next year and buying the books.

The CHAIRMAN. A worthy cause.

Senator MURKOWSKI. A worthy cause.

Ms. Marburger, it is good to see you again. You probably know

where I am going to go with my question. I am going to again repeat my invitation that the Secretary of Education, Secretary

Spellings, come to Alaska. We have in the State, we have the highest proportion of indigenous people. As compared to any other State

out there, our statistics as they relate to achievement are not something to be proud of right now. We know we have some challenges.

We also know that we have made some successes in certain areas

when given the flexibility. I know that you have had an opportunity to come to the State and experience first hand some of the

challenges that we face out in the more rural schools in our villages. Again, I would repeat that invitation to the Secretary

through you to take the time to come up and see what we are dealing with.

I can’t stress enough the importance of that field trip. We will

continue to try to work with her schedule, but I would like you to

personally deliver that message back to her.
13

The question that I have for you this morning is how we can

within what we have before us, with No Child Left Behind, how we

can continue what I believe are the very important cultural immersion language programs that we have up north for our Yupik and

Inupiaq students.

We are seeing great success in some of these models in terms of

capturing the children’s attention for education. We are making

education more relevant, I believe, through use of their cultural

heritage languages, but No Child Left Behind put some limitations

on that.

I would like to hear your perspective in terms of what we can

do in the State to work with the department, work with the Alaska

Department of Education, to still boost those academic scores and

meet the standards so that we know that our kids out in the rural

villages are getting the education that they need, while at the same

time being able to focus through their Native cultural languages.

Can you speak to that for just 1 moment?

Ms. MARBURGER. Sure, I would be happy to. In the area of working with the Native languages and being able to still at the same

time monitor student achievement of the academic content standards, there needs to be some way of measuring that achievement.

We feel through our conversations with the various State officials

that the best way to do that at this time, given the various tools

available, is via accommodations to the regular test since there is

not an assessment currently available in the Native language.

While that is an option, I understand that is one that the State

has not chosen to pursue developing such an assessment, which is

difficult whenever you don’t have a lot of the tools available to be

able to develop that assessment.

So the next option available to us really is working on using accommodations and making sure that your teachers know those accommodations and are teaching with those accommodations for

purposes of assessing. Those accommodations need to be done in a

manner that doesn’t invalidate the assessments of those students.

We are more than happy to have conversations and provide technical assistance in that area, to the State.

Senator MURKOWSKI. How can we facilitate that? Is that something where somebody from the department here in Washington

needs to come up to Alaska and work with the State Department

of Education, work with the teachers out in the areas. How do they

know what it is that they can do?

Ms. MARBURGER. I would need to be something that would be initiated by the State Department of Education. They would request

the assistance from us. We would be happy to come and to provide

that, and to work with them on being able to more thoroughly address the issue of assessing students who are being instructed in

their Native language.

Senator MURKOWSKI. Are there other Native immersion schools

within the BIA-administered schools, where you are trying to incorporate the immersion language, Native cultural languages as well?

Ms. MARBURGER. I will defer to my colleagues from BIA for that

answer.

Mr. SKENANDORE. There are. There is one particularly in Navajo,

Rough Rock Demonstration School.
14

Senator MURKOWSKI. Can you tell me how that school is doing

in terms of meeting the academic standards that have been put

out?

Mr. SKENANDORE. We can extract that information and submit

that to you. As a matter of fact, the most recent annual report from

the school will be due June 2.

Senator MURKOWSKI. I would look forward to that. One of the

challenges that I think we have faced with our Alaska Native students is this educational relevance. How is this geometry lesson,

how does it relate to the world of subsistence hunting and fishing?

For a lot of these kids, it is not making sense. It is making sense

when they have an opportunity to discuss these concepts in their

heritage languages and utilize them in their day to day world.

So I would be curious to know if any other pilot projects out

there are working and perhaps what tools and techniques they are

utilizing.

Mr. SKENANDORE. Could I add an additional response to that,

Mr. Chairman?

The CHAIRMAN. Sure.

Mr. SKENANDORE. We just completed a study called Improving

the Performance of Indian Schools. The study was just completed

yesterday. It ranked our top five achieving schools, our lowest five,

and also the Hopi schools, which all made adequate yearly

progress. It speaks to your concerns, Senator Murkowski. We can

deliver that product to you. It just became available today.

Senator MURKOWSKI. Great. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much.

I thank the witnesses. We look forward to continuing our work

with you on this very important issue. Thank you for appearing

today.

Panel 2 is Ryan Wilson, who is the president of the National Indian Education Association; Ivan Small, who is the board secretary

of the National Association of Federally Impacted Schools, and he

is also the Superintendent of the Fort Peck School District in Poplar, Montana; and Beth Kirsch, who is a Series Producer Between

the Lions, WGBH, Boston, MA. Ms. Kirsch is accompanied by Bernie Teba, who is the Native American Liaison, New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department in Santa Fe, NM. And David

Gipp, who is the president of the United Tribes Technical College

in Bismarck, ND.

I would like to mention to the witnesses that, with my apologies,

we are about to have a vote. Senator Murkowski and I will have

to go in a few minutes. In fact, Senator Murkowski, maybe if you

would want to go vote and then come back and take over for me

once the vote starts. Would that be agreeable?

I thank you very much. That way we won’t have to interrupt the

hearing.

Mr. Wilson, welcome and thank you for your good work, and

thank you for being here.
15

STATEMENT OF RYAN WILSON, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL INDIAN

EDUCATION ASSOCIATION

Mr. WILSON. Thank you, Chairman McCain. Good morning to

you.

My written testimony provides a comprehensive overview of the

issues that are affecting Indian education. I would also like to ask

your permission to submit some other documents for the record as

well.

The CHAIRMAN. Without objection, those documents will be made

part of the record, and all the written testimony will be made part

of the record, of all the witnesses. Thank you.

Mr. WILSON. Thank you. I appreciate that.

[Referenced documents appear in Mr. Wilson’s prepared statement in the appendix.]

Mr. WILSON. I would like to give you and the committee a panoramic overview briefly in these brief statements. Senator Murkowski expressed concern over immersion programs, as has Senator

Dorgan. Language revitalization is dear to our hearts.

The National Congress of American Indians, as well as the National Indian Education Association, has made it our number one

priority in education this year for the simple fact that our window

of opportunity is rapidly closing. At lightning speed, we are losing

our repository of language speakers, of fluent speakers, and once

that is gone, there will never be an ability again to reclaim or revitalize our languages.

As I said, at lightning speed we are losing them. Meanwhile, at

horse and buggy pace, we are making attempts to reclaim them

that are just not trading any kind of impact. We believe through

our research, through scientifically based research and best practices, that not only does language revitalization engender the sense

of cultural identity and resilience in our young people, but it also

elevates their academic success. We want to express a little bit

about that today, Mr. Chairman.

I want to take you on a mental flight, so to speak, maybe starting in Alaska. As she said, the Inupiaq people and their immersion

programs. We are so very proud of what they are doing over there

as well. We also have a school named Ya Ne Dah Ah. It is run by

the Athabascan people in the village of Chickaloon. These students

have graduated out of eighth grade over there and they are performing substantially better than all of their counterparts that are

going to school just 60 miles south of them in the city of Anchorage,

where they are receiving what we consider mainstream education.

Going on down to your great State of Arizona, we look at the

Rough Rock Community School there, which was the first contracted school by a tribe in America here, a 638. Our colleague, Mr.

Skinadore from the BIA, will get you that data, but I could tell you

now those students are doing better than their Navajo counterparts

as well on those mainstream tests.

As is the Navajo students that are Fort Defiance in the immersion school there, which is actually a public school on Navajo land.

If we can go on north up to Browning, MT, our great leader in this

movement of revitalization, Darrell Kipp and the Piegan Institute

has also sent many, many students on into Browning school system, the Browning High School over there, and they as well have
16

achieved substantially better than their counterparts, the Blackfeet

students that are going there.

Let’s go on over to the great State of New York, the Akwesasne

Freedom School, which recently won a major award by Harvard

University, Mr. Chairman, just for the incredible impact that they

have made on their community. We have a young girl there that

we are also very proud of, named Curry Ramson, who just received

a Gates Millennium scholarship and will be attending college as

well.

So not only are these schools being acknowledged by some of the

elite universities across America, also some of the most innovative

funders in the philanthropy world have taken a great interest in

them as well. What they have found is that this is a great commitment and this is a great investment.

What we have seen throughout Indian country is that these innovative approaches are outpacing that which has been achieved by

the Department of Education and the BIA. What we would like to

see is the Congress take hold of this and invest and really make

a substantial impact on these schools.

We are so very pleased that Senator Akaka introduced S. 2674,

the Native American Language Act Amendments. We would also

like to thank the cosponsors of that, Senator Inouye, Senator Baucus, Senator Johnson, and of course Senator Dorgan. We believe in

1992 when Congress created that Native American Language Act

and enacted it, it ushered in joyous daybreak to a long, long dark

night of apathy when it came to revitalizing these languages. This

particular bill, we ask for a markup as soon as possible and we also

hope for swift passage of it because we believe it will really do

something and etch across the pages of history in Indian education

really a new day.

It is going to give us the tools that need to not only carry on our

sacred heritage and our way of life, but elevate academic achievement. Right now, Senator, all the education research, and you have

just seen it by the report that was released, and you are going to

see it by the BIA report. I haven’t reviewed that yet, but when it

comes out you are going to see what we have been doing isn’t working. It has been a commitment to mediocrity.

We want a commitment to excellence and we believe this is the

way forward on that.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[Prepared statement of Mr. Wilson appears in appendix.]

The CHAIRMAN. It hasn’t been working for a long time, has it?

Mr. WILSON. Absolutely, it hasn’t.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, sir.

Mr. Small, welcome.

STATEMENT OF IVAN SMALL, BOARD SECRETARY, NATIONAL

ASSOCIATION OF FEDERALLY IMPACTED SCHOOLS, AND SUPERINTENDENT, FORT PECK SCHOOL DISTRICT, POPLAR,

MT

Mr. SMALL. Thank you.

Good morning, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. My

name is Ivan Small and I am the Superintendent of the Poplar

Public School District in Poplar, MT. I thank the committee for in-
17

viting me to testify, and I have submitted my complete testimony

to the committee for consideration.

I currently serve as the Secretary of the National Association of

Federally Impacted Schools. NAFIS represents the needs of children in Federally connected school districts. I also represent over

120,000 Native American children as president of the National Indian Impacted Schools Association.

My purpose is to share with you the issues faced by federally impacted public schools proudly serving 120,000 American Indian

children. The Impact Aid Program provides the lifeblood for public

school districts that, like Poplar, have a high percentage of students who reside on land we cannot tax. Without impact aid funding, our district would not open its doors.

Our students face four challenges: First, meeting the standards

of No Child Left Behind; second, our overwhelming facility needs;

third, the impact of State equalization; and fourth, the effect of the

changing demographics of the Impact Aid Program.

So how well are we helping the Indian child meet the challenges

of No Child Left Behind? It is important to first note that, although

the BIA school remains the most visible symbol of Indian education, 93 percent of American Indian students attend public or private schools.

We are grateful today for the opportunity to give our children a

voice. The Indian student’s potential is not being realized. Though

he develops cognitive skills similar to other children, he achieves

below the national norm tests. In addition to generational poverty,

geographical isolation, and a myriad of community problems, he

often attends a rural school deficient in resources and unattractive

to highly qualified teachers.

Additionally, large numbers of Indian students alternate between

BIA and public schools, much as military-dependent children alternate between the Department of Defense and public schools. The

Department of Defense, at the insistence of Congress and with the

support of many members of this committee, has made considerable progress toward addressing this issue. It is time we also establish a formal partnership between the public schools and the BIA

schools serving the same children. This one Indian child concept

will help the Indian child navigate two totally separate and different systems.

Mr. Chairman, the second issue is the deplorable condition of

many of our buildings, primarily due to a negligible tax base. Last

year, the entire impact aid community—to protect basic impact aid

funds—suggested to the House and Senate that they redistribute

$27 million from construction to basic operations, barely maintaining a stable funding stream.

Much like the Significant Facilities Report done by the Department of Defense in the late 1980’s, called the Dole Report, a similar

study of our facilities by the GAO would illustrate to this committee, Members of Congress, and the American public the stark reality our students face daily in their halls, cafeterias, playgrounds,

and in their classrooms.

Issue number three is equalization. Section 8009 of the Impact

Aid Program allows a State to credit a district’s impact aid payments against their State aid receipts. Currently, New Mexico,
18

Alaska, and Kansas meet the section 8009 criteria. The problem,

Mr. Chairman, is that in these States, equalization is more a matter of equalizing down, holding down State aid and penalizing our

children, while equalized impact aid payments can keep tax rates

down for shopping centers and golf courses.

We hope that this committee, sometime before the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, would hold

at least one hearing on this subject.

Finally, we are deeply concerned about the changing demographics of the Impact Aid Program. Mr. Chairman, all 1,400 impact aid school districts receive money from the same pool. Thus,

when changes occur to one category of districts, causing a drain on

program resources, all districts are affected.

As the nature of the U.S. military quickly changes, the demographics of the Impact Aid Program will change dramatically.

Due to three ongoing Department of Defense initiatives, impact

aid will be forced to absorb tens of thousands of military-dependent

children, a fact ignored by the Administration’s fiscal year 2007

budget. One such initiative is global re-basing. Over 70,000 uniformed service personnel will return stateside from bases overseas,

with an estimated 32,000 to 42,000 school-age children. Impact aid

will have to absorb the cost of these children, reducing basic support payments to all.

Because of these initiatives, NAFIS projects an annual increase

of $36 million to $46 million for five years just to maintain basic

payments. Mr. Chairman, this will penalize all federally impacted

districts. Our challenges are sizable and will require significant efforts by everyone. We can honor our commitment to our children

by providing them the highest quality education possible, and we

at NAFIS and NIISA are committed to this goal.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[Prepared statement of Mr. Small appears in appendix.]

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much.

There are only 3 minutes left to go in the vote, so Senator Murkowski has been able to go vote. So we will have to come back, so

we will have a very brief recess. I know that she is on her way

back, and then we will go to Ms. Kirsch.

Thank you for being here. Thank you for your testimony. She

should be here in just 1 minute.

The committee stands in recess for a few minutes until the arrival of the Senator from Alaska.

[Recess.]

Senator Murkowski [Presiding]. All right. We will be back on

record.

I again apologize for the jack in the box routine that we do

around here. I know that so many of you come from relatively far

distances and I know you have a lot to say. Please do know that

we do listen, sometimes in not the most consecutive order, but we

do appreciate your being here.

I understand, Mr. Small, that you had finished your testimony.

Mr. SMALL. Yes.

Senator MURKOWSKI. With that, then we would go to Ms. Kirsch.

Welcome.
19

STATEMENT OF BETH KIRSCH, SERIES PRODUCER—BETWEEN

THE LIONS, WGBH BOSTON, ACCOMPANIED BY BERNIE

TEBA, NATIVE AMERICAN LIAISON, NEW MEXICO CHILDREN,

YOUTH AND FAMILIES DEPARTMENT

Ms. KIRSCH. My name is Beth Kirsch, and I thank you for the

opportunity to speak before the committee today about the American Indian Head Start Literacy Initiative that we have done with

Between the Lions. I am the Series Producer for Between the

Lions, which is an award-winning PBS children’s series that was

created specifically to help children learn to read.

In addition to broadcasting the series, we have a very strong

commitment to reaching those children who are most at risk for

reading failure. We began our efforts in Mississippi, which as many

of you know, has among the lowest literacy rates in the country.

We are now working with American Indian tribes in New Mexico

and Montana.

We decided to reach out to New Mexico because we saw a need

based on reading scores, which you heard a bit about today. We

also saw it as an opportunity to work with many different tribes,

and we felt that would be ideal for creating a model that could then

be offered to other tribes outside New Mexico.

We also decided to focus our efforts on preschool because so

many children enter kindergarten well behind their peers in vocabulary and letter knowledge, and even such basic concepts of how

do you hold a book and know when to turn the pages and reading

from left to right. When kids start out so far behind, it is just very,

very hard for them to catch up.

To start this project, we invited Head Start directors to an initial

meeting in New Mexico, and there was great enthusiasm for what

we hoped to do because they saw the importance of increasing literacy among their kids. They also expressed a very strong interest

in helping to shape the materials that we planned to offer so that

they would be culturally sensitive and would succeed in their classrooms.

Eleven tribes agreed to participate. At the beginning of the

project, we spent time with directors, with teachers and with cultural specialists from the tribes to get their input on the content

and the approach of all the materials. At their suggestion, with our

partner KNME, we created several new segments of Between the

Lions that featured American Indian children, so that the kids

would see themselves and their environment reflected in the materials that they would be using in their preschool centers.

The tribes also gave us significant input on the research design

and the measures, again so that they would be culturally relevant.

What we provided to each Head Start classroom that participated was a set of three DVDs, which had 16 of our nationally

broadcast shows edited specifically for preschool age children. We

provided a DVD player. We provided a teacher’s guide, which has

extensive lessons that are also tried to Federal Head Start outcomes; a classroom set of 32 children’s books. These books are just

a sampling, but again, we made a focus on including authentic

American Indian literature, stories set in the Southwest, as well as

popular children’s books.
20

They also got a bin of classroom materials, which included alphabet strips, bins of letters, poems, songs, et cetera, and then we provided training and ongoing support throughout the school year.

I want to just show a sample from the DVD segment. Each of the

DVDs has Five to six of our edited shows. They can watch the

whole episode. They can do scene by scene, so after they have

watched a show, if they want to repeat a song or focus on a specific

skill, they can do that. What I would like to show is one of the segments we filmed in New Mexico, which we filmed in the Cochiti

and Ysleta Pueblos.

[DVD presentation.]

Ms. KIRSCH. The project also has a research study as part of it.

We will be announcing the full results in a meeting in New Mexico

next week. What we have seen are very significant gains in key literacy areas, including letter knowledge, picture naming, which is

a measure of oral language and vocabulary, and phonemic awareness, which is a very important foundational skill in literacy, how

you blend the sounds together to make words.

But perhaps the most promising funding, especially in contrast

to some of the other dismal statistics we have heard earlier today,

is that as a result of the project, the number of children at risk for

reading failure based on a tool called the Get Ready to Read

screener, decreased from 39 percent to 12 percent, and the number

of children scoring above average increased from 23 percent to 64

percent.

We are interested in expanding these materials. Right now, we

have 16 lessons. We would like to expand it to 32 for use in the

full school year. We want to expand the use both in New Mexico

and with tribes nationwide.

The success of this project has benefitted greatly from the support of Native American leaders in the State, and the key person

who helped make the project a success is Bernie Teba, so I would

like to turn it over to Bernie Teba for a few remarks.

[Prepared statement of Ms. Kirsch appears in appendix.]

Mr. TEBA. Thank you, Madam Chair.

My name is Bernie Teba. I am the Native American Liaison for

the New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department. I have

been working with tribes and tribal organizations for over 20 years.

I did submit written testimony for the record, so I am not going

to repeat that, but the New Mexico No Child Left Behind data

shows that American Indian children are at the bottom in terms

of reading, math and science scores.

I have seen the enthusiasm of kindergarten and first graders.

Because they don’t have literacy skills, they start falling behind

and become frustrated, and either drop out or fall further behind.

So I strongly believe that early English literacy intervention is a

critically needed step in the education of our Indian children.

Our data shows that this program does work. We provide the

tools to a community-based program. Head Start is basically our

flagship for early childhood development at the community level.

So I strongly urge this Committee to provide the resources to continue programs like this and strengthen programs like this. So

Head Start should be a priority, especially tribal Head Start, be-
21

cause again it is the first learning step for our Native American

children.

I would finally like to publicly thank Senator Domenici for his

initial sponsorship of the appropriation that made this project possible, and also the communities that we are working with, the 11

tribes that we are working with. It is an evidence-based program

and because I do work in the State of New Mexico, we have a preK program.

This past legislative session, the legislature provided 150 percent

increase for pre-K funding. Unfortunately, none of our tribes submitted under pre-K, so that is one of the things that I will be working on. It is to get programs like this funded by State government.

But it is a Federal trust responsibility, so I again urge the Committee to consider funding programs like this.

Head Start is within the Department of Health and Human

Services. I am not sure if the BIA or the Department of Education

is talking to Head Start, but it is a critical component for education

of our Indian children.

Thank you.

[Prepared statement of Mr. Teba appears in appendix.]

Senator MURKOWSKI. I will finally go to Dr. Gipp.

STATEMENT OF DAVID GIPP, PRESIDENT, UNITED TRIBES

TECHNICAL COLLEGE

Mr. GIPP. Thank you, Madam Chair.

I appreciate the opportunity to be here on behalf of tribal higher

education and United Tribes Technical College, of course, in Bismarck, ND.

I also want to commend our chair and our vice chairman, Senator Dorgan from North Dakota, for allowing us to be here.

I will summarize my remarks and ask that our record statement

be placed in the record, if that is at all possible.

Senator MURKOWSKI. The full statement will be included in the

record.

Mr. GIPP. Thank you very much.

Let me focus, then, on some of the summary remarks that are

in that testimony, and a lot of the statistics and data that I am

going to talk about in general are in that testimony as well.

I just want to point out that culturally appropriate higher education by and for American Indians and Alaska Natives really

works. It is important that we make this a part of our policy in

tribal higher education throughout America.

It is deserving of the full support of Congress and the executive

branch. Indian people and Alaska Natives today want quality, culturally appropriate higher education as never before. We are busy

building that through the 35 different tribal colleges and universities that we have had since the early 1970’s.

United Tribes Technical College has been operating since 1969.

We are a campus-based institution that is on an old military fort.

We have two early childhood centers and a K through 8 elementary

school on that campus. We serve over 1,100 students and we have

grown about three times in the past 4 years to those 1,100 students

and 500 children.
22

I look at this total number of students that we serve across

America, the 35 different tribal colleges serving close to 35,000 students of the 180,000 or 175,000 American Indians that are attending various colleges and universities across the Nation.

We know that we are the fastest growing population when it

comes to this area in terms of service. It is very, very critical, then,

that Congress takes a hard look at how we can be assuredly provided the resources to give those opportunities to our various kinds

of students that are up and coming.

Our college educated Indian population is contributing to our national and tribal economies as well. When I look at this kind of

thing, we have many different kinds of programs, both at the certificate, the two year and the four year levels, as well as some

graduate programs that are coming up through all of these institutions.

It is very important to look at the 2000 census and see that the

percentage of the Indian population that had college degrees was

less than that of the national average. When you look at the 25

percent or 27 percent that have college degrees in the United

States, we only see about 11.8 percent the Native Americans that

have completed.

And so it is very important that we deal with this unacceptable

set of statistics. The tremendous growth of higher education has its

price, and we know that the tribal colleges and universities are

only funded at about 75 percent of the authorized amount in the

Tribally Controlled Community College Assistance Act. In the case

of United Tribes, we have been left out of the budget for four times,

five times coming up with the upcoming fiscal year, and so it is the

same case with the Crownpoint Institute of Technology.

And yet we have the data and the statistics to show that we do

a good job. We have 90 percent placement rates. We have about an

80-82 percent retention rate. We have good data and statistics to

show and prove the Office of Management and Budget and the Department of the Interior that we are doing a great job when it

comes to the challenges of meeting the educational needs of our

students.

This assistance is very, very vital for all of us. So we ask that

the Congress take a hard look at what kind of policy needs to be

in place, as well as the appropriate kinds of appropriations.

I have attended just yesterday and the day before the National

Indian Budget Task Force, or advisory board, that includes tribally

elected officials and the BIA about things like the 2008 budget. I

have attended these and I have met with the Office of Management

and Budget. We know that we meet the data requirements that are

part of what they call PART.

We also heard that the BIA plans to cut higher education scholarships by 100 percent in the year 2008 in its upcoming plans. We

know that they are going to cut higher education scholarships in

fiscal year 2007. We know that they are not going to include

United Tribes and Crownpoint in fiscal year 2007.

So we ask to assure that the Congress make sure that these

funds are there if we are going to have any kind of viability for

tribal students who attend any of the tribal colleges, as well as
23

mainstream universities and colleges throughout the United

States.

We particularly want to point out the programs that are available not only through the BIA scholarships, but also through the

Pell Grants, the Department of Labor’s Workforce Investment Act,

the Carl Perkins Programs under section 116 and 117 of the Vocational Education Programs, as well as the TRIO Programs and the

higher education programs enabled under the Higher Education

Act that go through the Department of Education.

We believe that we need to be a major part of what is going to

be happening in 21st century learning when we talk about the

need for better facilities, institutional financial stability, and the

use of technology and the access to that technology for learning

purposes. We know that the return on investment is about a 20 to

1 return when we talk about all of these kinds of things.

We also would urge that Congress take a hard look at the Executive Order passed or put into place by President Bush. We believe

that many of the Federal agencies that participate under the White

House Executive order on Tribal Colleges and Universities needs to

be better, better implemented. We believe that there are existing

resources that do not need to have to cost additional dollars that

could be done more efficiently. We urge that Congress urge the Administration to use these resources and these tools more effectively

in dealing with Indian country.

I want to thank you very much for the opportunity to be here,

and we appreciate this time.

[Prepared statement of Mr. Gipp appears in appendix.]

Senator MURKOWSKI. Thank you, Dr. Gipp, and thank you to all

of the panelists that have joined us here this morning.

I think the common theme, at least from those that I have heard

from this morning and in reading the testimony of the other two

gentlemen, it is all about how we make education relevant to our

American Indian and our Alaska Native children, to encourage that

learning so that they rise up through the academic ladder and

hopefully ultimately in some of the colleges that are available to

them.

Mr. Wilson, I appreciate your being here and all the good, good

work that you do on behalf of the National Indian Education Association. I am sorry that I missed your comments, particularly recognizing the efforts that we are making in Alaska with the immersion programs.

I had an opportunity to go out to Chickaloon and go into a very

small school, but an opportunity to talk with and meet the young

students there who were, it was not a complete immersion program, but speaking in their Native cultural language, and an enthusiasm about school and about being there. You can tell when a

child, particularly when they hit about fifth or sixth grade, if they

are not enthused about school, it shows in their whole body. It

shows in how they conduct themselves in the classroom.

These kids were genuinely happy to be in school. There was a

love for what they were doing that was just very transparent. I

would agree with you that Congress does need to look at how we

can facilitate such immersion programs, such language programs to

get that love for learning across to the children.
24

Ms. Kirsch, I so appreciate what you are doing at the early stage

in preparing the children for school, kind of instilling in them the

love for learning, but really to be ready to learn. I could not agree

with you more that it is these programs that get the kids excited

about what they are doing and comfortable with school, that are a

predictor of how they are going to feel about school.

We have good Head Start programs in Alaska. I had an opportunity to visit an Even Start program out in Hoonah, a small Native village down in Southeastern Alaska, where I learned that it

is not enough to just deal with the, I guess you would call it the

pre-literacy or the early learning literacy, but to help the parents

with their literacy skills as well. Because what we were finding

was that many of these parents could not read to their children.

So we can encourage the children all we want to read at home,

have your parents read, but if the parents are not literate themselves, so what I learned through this Even Start program was

that if we can provide for the literacy for the adults to work with

their children, it kind of empowers the kids, too, to be helping their

parents, but it also helps them with economic opportunities and

jobs.

The question that I have for you, Ms. Kirsch, recognizing that up

in Alaska we have literacy rates among our Alaska Native preschool children is very, very low right now. Do you have any plans

with Between the Lions to work with Alaska Head Start directors

to kind of replicate this program. Are you more situated down in

the South/Southwest, or do you have opportunities elsewhere?

Ms. KIRSCH. Well, we went to New Mexico really as a pilot. Right

now, we are very interested in working with other tribes. We started working with the Cree Tribe at the Rocky Boy Reservation in

Montana. There is an American Indian Head Start Directors Conference in Washington, DC in June, and we are hosting a luncheon

and inviting Head Start directors from those States that have large

American Indian populations in Head Start.

So we are very interested in working with other States. We feel

now that we have had the research, we have a sense that this can

really work and it makes a difference not just for the kids, but for

the teachers themselves, when they find that the material helps

them organize their day, gives them a way to plan and conduct literacy activities.

The teachers have also said that there has been a lot more parent involvement as a result of them doing the project. One of the

teachers gave us an example of a parent picking up a child one day

and the child saying to their dad, ‘‘You are big and I am little.’’ And

the dad says, ‘‘Oh, how do you know that?’’ And he says, ‘‘We have

been learning about big and little today. We watched Little Big

Mouse and a lion is big and the mouse is little.’’

And so the parents became interested in what they were doing

in the program, and so there has been a lot more conversation

about it. What we found in the work that we are doing in Mississippi is that many of the teachers there are not literate. It is not

just the parents. It is the teachers. We didn’t come across that in

New Mexico as much as in Mississippi. And the teachers themselves are learning more about reading and the sounds the letters

make and strategies for becoming good readers themselves.
25

Senator MURKOWSKI. I will throw this out to any of you here at

the panel. How important is it, at the same time that we are trying

to encourage literacy and academic achievement, how important is

it that we have the parental involvement in terms of coaching with

the homework or just being supportive at all about approaching

school? Mr. Wilson?

Mr. WILSON. Yes, Senator; if I may. It is imperative. It is critical.

What we see in the schools is that, and you heard it from the Department of Education today and from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, that the environmental conditions are inextricably linked to

academic success. We know those problems and issues in the home

don’t just stay in the home, and they don’t stay on the school bus.

When those children get off of that school bus, they come into the

schools.

But there have been so many historical barriers to inclusiveness

with parents in Indian education, and that is what we are trying

to remove as well, those barriers. A lot of that goes into local control, tribal control, functional school boards, and parental outreach

into the communities, strong after school programs that engage

parents. All those factors you see in mainstream communities have

not been replicated in tribal communities because of a lot of these

barriers. A lot of them, unfortunately, have been driven by Federal

Indian policy and education policy as well. But we have to attack

that and really remove that and not use it as an excuse.

But those children in their homes, and if their parents are not

there, it just isn’t going to work. There is going to be a disconnect.

Mr. TEBA. Madam Chair, I can speak from personal experience.

I have five children. Four of them are grown. With our youngest

child, she is currently in the sixth grade. We did things a little

more differently. We got involved as parents. My child is in the

sixth grade. She was tested at the 12.3 reading level. It was because of parental support, us getting involved. We didn’t do that

much with our older children. They struggled. So it does make a

difference to have parents involve.

Senator MURKOWSKI. Mr. Gipp, did you want to make a comment?

Mr. GIPP. Yes; I was just going to point out that that is the kind

of model we use at the United Tribes Technical College, is the family model, if you will, and all of the issues that relate to both learning, education, counseling, all of those things. In other words, we

are basically educating the child in the early childhood centers, in

the case of elementary schools, and the adult attending post- secondary classes.

But also providing the supportive services, both for adults and

children, so that the whole family can really begin to learn how to

interact appropriately and become supportive of each other as they

learn both academically, socially and vocationally, and building a

model that includes a wraparound system of bringing the resources

to the family so they can pick and choose and learn how to do that

in more effective constructive ways.

That is the kind of thing that we really employ when we talk

about education, as well as learning.

Senator MURKOWSKI. How do we disseminate the information?

You can identify some best practices. You can identify things that
26

need to be done, but how do you get that out? For instance within

the National Indian Education Association, how do you use that as

a forum, Mr. Wilson, to advance the ideas, the best practices,

whether it is out to the teachers or out to the local school board

in an area?

Mr. WILSON. Well, part of the problem with that is the standard

best practices that we have all been looking at have been non-Indian models. So there has always been a difficulty in implementing

those in tribal communities.

What we do at our convention is, you know, we get anywhere

from 3,000 to 5,000 people coming to it. We do create a venue there

for tribal best practices to be disseminated at that convention. The

constituency that we represent deals with virtually all the 600,000

Native American children in America here that are going to school.

There is really serious jurisdictional issues between tribal grant

schools, Bureau of Indian Affairs schools, public schools, our friend

here, Mr. Small, who deals with impact aid schools, and tribal

lands and all of those.

So what we are interested in is, wow, and I think the Department of Education will be addressing this, their Office of Indian

Education, with their own best practices. We do want to advance

those. We do want to get those out there.

Senator MURKOWSKI. Let me ask you about that, though. You

have identified some best practices, but you recognize that it is not

necessarily consistent with the model that is currently being used

for other schools across the country, that don’t deal primarily with

American Indian or Native children. Do you get pushback from the

Department of Education saying your model doesn’t replicate what

we envision coming from the Department of Education?

Mr. WILSON. I am glad you asked that, Senator, because the actual truth is there is a huge effort to only advance scientifically

based research. What we are saying is, we still need time, they

need research dollars. I am specifically talking about those immersion schools and what they have created and how they do longitudinal studies in tracking those young people as well.

But what we have seen is an all out effort to really, through this

methodology that only acknowledges reading and math and adequate yearly progress and what that means, which is just geared

toward these tests. Now what has happened is there is this proliferation of just coaching the test, teaching the test.

There has been a national alignment of curriculum, regardless of

what schools they are, to meet those State standards and that information which is on the test. That is not, I repeat, it is not allowing for innovative and creative approaches, or acknowledging in

tribal communities those best practices that really incorporate cultural integrity in education. I am specifically talking about these

immersion schools.

Senator MURKOWSKI. Does the department say, well, there is

flexibility within the regulations, we can figure it out; or is it, no,

it just doesn’t fit because your scores obviously indicate that your

school is not meeting AYP?

Mr. WILSON. You could actually ask that question better than

myself, because what you have done with Secretary Spellings and

prior to that Secretary Paige, you have negotiated with them; you
27

have worked with them to create flexibility. As a U.S. Senator, that

could huge effort. Imagine little tribal communities trying to navigate just these incredible obstacle and bureaucracy in doing so. It

is very cumbersome. It is very difficult.

We were told that. We were also several years ago, there was

even money appropriated by the Department of Education, I believe $10 million, to help work with tribes to create their own

benchmarks and assessments, and through negotiated rulemaking

with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, to really have an assessment

that would meet those unique needs.

Unfortunately, that effort failed. That never came to light. What

was adopted eventually was the State standards at the Bureau of

Indian Affairs schools. We really believe we are at a point with our

capabilities that we should be able to in tribal communities, specifically those that have a critical mass of tribal learners, create their

own assessments and their own tools and their own measurement.

So again, I am going to use that word, there is a disconnect between the letter of the law and that flexibility that is written in

there, versus actual reality. There is a gap between that promise

and fulfillment in reaching that.

Senator MURKOWSKI. Ms. Kirsch.

Ms. KIRSCH. I just want to speak a little bit to the research. One

of the efforts that we made with this project was in developing the

materials to make sure they were culturally relevant.

But we also made an effort on the research for some of these

very reasons. Just for example, if you are trying to measure a

child’s mastery of vocabulary and their language skills, if you use

a standardized test like the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, and

you have a picture of a typical house that most people in this room

would recognize as a house, a child in Cochiti Pueblo might not recognize that as a house. So they are not going to say that that is

a house. It will show that their language skills are in deficit.

One of the things that we did is we sat down with all the research measures that we were contemplating using, with representatives from the tribes, and looked at all the pictures. If something is a hat, but it is called a cap, or vice versa, we really tried

to select pictures that were going to be culturally relevant. There

were certain tribes where their children cannot point to certain

animals. So even if that is the right answer on the test, they are

not going to point to that.

So I think there is also an issue with the research measures

themselves and how culturally relevant those measures are and are

they really capturing all of the skills, particularly in literacy, that

the children do have at that age.

I think the challenge even in creating these materials, the tribes

that we worked with at the end were very, very grateful to have

had the opportunity to help create them, because what they said

is generally they are handed materials, whether it is from Head

Start or elsewhere, here is the curriculum to use, and they haven’t

had any hand in what those materials are going to feel like and

look like, and how they can anticipate them being used in their

classrooms.
28

So I think that is just another important thing to look at overall

in terms of best practices on materials or even the assessments

that are being done.

Senator MURKOWSKI. It is such a key point. I think perhaps

those that are not familiar with very distinct ethnic groups that

have unique aspects to them. I am thinking specifically of our Alaska Natives. When I go into the classroom in some of the villages,

and you look at the little alphabet board up there that has the animal attached to the letter ′′A,’’ it is a very different series of pictures than what I experienced as a kid growing up in a more urban

setting. It is pictures that these kids can relate to, whether it is

the berries or the animals or the whale, or whatever. But they can

relate to them instead of having it be some foreign thing that the

do not understand.

When you get into a standardized test and it is asking a question

that uses the word ‘‘sidewalk,’’ and you are a child that has never

seen a sidewalk, doesn’t have any idea what it is, you might be

able to get to solving the story problem, but your mind gets hung

up on what is a sidewalk. And these are things that we do need

to take into account as we are talking about how we assess the

children; how we provide for a meaningful measure.

This, I think, gets to your point, Mr. Wilson, about having some

flexibility. It is difficult to take a Federal standard like we have

with No Child Left Behind, and just evenly apply it across 50

States and say, ‘‘this is how we test our children.’’

My kids, both of my boys were part of a two-way Spanish immersion program from the time they were in kindergarten through the

time they left the school. It is one of those where you kind of hold

your breath for the first couple of years because, quite honestly, it

doesn’t seem like they are doing as well in their English testing as

you would like them to be. As a parent, you are concerned that you

might be jeopardizing that academic opportunity.

But about midway through third grade, the statistics show that

that child is evenly matched up in the Native language, the language that you speak at home, and the language that you are

learning there. After that, the kids blast off the charts in terms of

their academic proficiency in two languages.

We talk a lot here in Congress about how we need to encourage

our kids in science and math and technology. That is a huge part

of being a competitor in a global society. But equally advantageous

to us is when we can speak multiple languages. If a multiple language includes your Native cultural heritage language, that again,

expansion fo the mind, the brain, I only see it as a win.

But it is a struggle. In my son’s school, we had to fight every

year for continued funding because it was a pilot program. People

thought we were experimenting with our children’s education. And

it wasn’t until they got through about six years of the program and

students were achieving and doing very well, that the school board

finally said maybe this is a program that we want to keep around.

What they have done is they have expanded it, and the waiting list

to get into this public school is year after year. It draws students.

So the successes are there with immersion programs in languages such as Spanish. We have Japanese, we have Russian now

in the Anchorage school district. So it ought not to be such a strug-
29

gle to get immersion programs within our Native cultural languages. And yet it seems that it is that way, that it is still being

viewed as pilot and too experimental.

I would like to think that we have the research back there. That

is why I was interested in Mr. Cason’s studies to understand how

other immersion schools are doing.

I am talking too much. I ask if any of you have any final comments that you would like to make this afternoon?

Mr. GIPP. Madam Chair, the only thing I would like to reiterate

is the need for the Committee to look at the issues of higher education, particularly in the area of, you mentioned research, and

then the research that is ongoing through some of our tribal colleges and universities. Some of those include the issue of language,

culture and those kinds of things.

While I can’t go into them here because of a lack of time, we are

doing significant things when it comes to language and culture and

history, and the restoration of those things back to communities

through the tribal colleges and universities.

The second part, of course, is research in academia itself, in

things like food and nutrition. We are doing a lot of work in the

area of food and nutrition, as are other tribal colleges, because of

the issues such as diabetes and because of the issues of health and

those dire circumstances that we have all heard about out in Indian Country.

There is a very, very critical role for tribal colleges and universities in this arena, and there is a whole list of things that are ongoing right now that can be, and I think need to be amplified in

terms of resources available to them.

To do that I think is also essential to assure that higher education scholarships and technical training resources are available

to students to do this kind of work, to enable them to learn better.

Right now, we have seen really a loss in terms of the priority by

the Federal government, particularly the Bureau of Indian Affairs,

in this arena. I mentioned that they are planning to wipe out higher education in the year 2008. The endowments for tribal colleges

are scheduled to be eliminated 100 percent by next year. I have already mentioned these other cases.

Senator MURKOWSKI. Is that the President’s budget then?

Mr. GIPP. This is the President’s budget incoming from the Department of Interior. We need to assure that these resources stay

in place and in some cases need to be amplified.

I have students today, I was talking to one last night, a White

Mountain Apache student who is not getting the resources to attend summer school, for example, right now at our college. Our answer is, you keep on going, we will find the resources somehow, so

that you can have the scholarships to go on. This thing is immediate.

I have seen so many GS-15s come in and talk to us at OMB and

at the Department of Interior, and the parade of speeches the last

two days. Give me 1.5 GS-15 FTE positions, and I will fund 200

students for eight weeks, Madam Chair.

Senator MURKOWSKI. Thank you. I appreciate your comments. I

don’t know which GS-15 is going to volunteer back here.

Mr. Wilson?
30

Mr. WILSON. Madam Chair, again thank you for your time. Like

yourself, I am a parent of three children in a school system. My one

daughter goes to Mescalero Tribal School in New Mexico. While she

is not a Mescalero, I always say she is a captive down there, and

I am always worried about her, but they go to such a beautiful

school.

And then my son is in Seattle public schools where I reside. And

my youngest daughter is in a Native American Montessori School

in Portland, Oregon that is funded by the Department of Education. So it is an interesting experience. I share your concerns as

a parent.

I want to thank you for carrying on the commitment of your father as well, who was a pioneer in this immersion effort and this

revitalization effort. We don’t like to use the word ‘‘preservation.’’

It is like we want to put our languages out there and make them

dynamic and living, not in a jar or on a shelf somewhere in a museum or anything like that. We want them living and real. Your

family has really had that commitment.

The sad, tragic truth of this whole matter is that tribal America,

we are the only people really subjected to Federal policies to quash

their languages, to kill these languages. We have an opportunity

here. As I said earlier before you came in, it is closing rapidly. We

are in the last, last minute, the 59th minute of the last hour, I

should say, if we are going to do this and change this. We really

have to reward, as you said earlier, contextual learning, experiential learning and expeditionary learning that reaches the same

goals that we are all desirous of. So I applaud you on that.

Prior to you coming in as well, Senator Dorgan and Chairman

McCain had issues with the report that came out about rural

schools and how our young people were doing there. We asked the

Committee on Indian Affairs to look into that, because the simple

truth is there are very few incentives now for highly qualified

teachers to come out into our communities, to come out into these

rural areas.

As you know, our Nation’s highways and roads carry people far

away from where we actually live. They never see these conditions.

It is unfortunate, but what is facing those young people there, they

don’t have after-school educational opportunities. They don’t have

high quality libraries. They don’t have these state of the art facilities and technology. They don’t even have housing for teachers.

As you said so many times, you have places in Alaska where you

have teachers residing in closets on campus. This shouldn’t be, and

this is part of the lack of equal opportunity that is facing our young

people.

What was also mentioned was this issue with the brick and mortar and the BIA school construction. I would urge the committee

to form a commission to look into this because the tribes keep

blaming the BIA for dragging their feet on the brick and mortar,

and the BIA keeps saying that the tribes aren’t ready with their

impact studies; they are not ready with their blueprints; they are

not ready with these things.

In the meantime, the cost of construction is going up exponentially every day. Every hour it is getting higher. If we don’t solve

this now, it is never going to get solved in a proper manner and
31

we are going to be having this same discussion year in and year

out. The priority list keeps changing. As we are building these new

ones, other buildings are crumbling and we are going to be spending more and more money on that.

Chairman McCain asked, what would it take; what would that

investment take to fix these schools now? I urge you guys to form

that commission to look into that because right now everybody is

pointing fingers and nobody is coming up with those solutions for

how we need to keep moving on that backlog.

Finally, it was mentioned about suicide before you came in as

well, and this epidemic. This is not an epidemic, what is happening

now. This is a continuation of something that has been very sad

and tragic in our country, only now there is more media on it; there

is more attention on it, because the Committee on Indian Affairs

has taken a serious interest in it.

Where my mentor, Dr. Gipp, is from, they had an epidemic outbreak there back in 1997 and 1998. Assistant Secretary Glover

tried to address it at that time. Here we are, all these years later,

Mr. Cason is expressing concern on that as well. But what have we

actually done? What is the safety net that we have created for

these children?

I will tell you, there is a finality in hanging yourself or shooting

yourself, but there is also a slow death in alcoholism and drug use

and these other things. It is just the same. It is suicide.

What we have to do is get back to this culture, our languages,

and this whole sense of resiliency, and bicultural competence and

bilingualism creates the healthiest minds. The best that we have

in Indian country comes from those people that can fluctuate

smoothly between these both worlds.

So I would just leave you with that final note. I thank you for

your time, your commitment. We appreciate it.

Senator MURKOWSKI. Thank you.

Mr. Small, just very briefly because we are going to have to conclude.

Mr. SMALL. The National Association of Federally Impacted

Schools and the National Association of Indian Impacted Schools,

also support the S. 2674 of language survival. It is a proven fact

that children do learn, just as you say, in two languages. Window

Rock, AZ, under Superintendent Deborah Dennison, last year made

AYP and they had a full immersion school, and have done very

well. She has since moved on to another school.

We talk about facilities. Mr. Wilson has asked about taking a

look at the facilities in the BIA schools. We serve 93 percent of the

Indian children in the public schools. Our facilities are in need

also. Along with that study, just as I say in my testimony, we really need a GAO study on that issue, and especially the issue of

equalization of our impact aid funds.

Senator MURKOWSKI. Thank you.

Mr. SMALL. Thank you.

Senator MURKOWSKI. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you. I appreciate your testimony this afternoon.

With that, we stand adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 11:20 a.m., the committee was adjourned, to reconvene at the call of the Chair.]

(33)

APPENDIX

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD

PREPARED STATEMENT OF BETH KIRSCH, SERIES PRODUCER, BETWEEN THE LIONS

Hello, my name is Beth Kirsch, and I’d like to thank you for the opportunity to

speak before this committee. I am the series producer for Between the Lions, the

award-winning PBS children’s show created specifically to help children learn to

read.

In addition to the broadcast series, which reaches 4 million weekly viewers nationwide, Between the Lions is committed to reaching those children most at risk

for reading failure. We began with a project in Mississippi, which has the lowest

literacy rates in the country, and most recently have been working with American

Indian tribes in New Mexico and Montana. The results so far have been very encouraging, and I will tell you more about the work we’ve done in a minute. First

I’d like to give you a little more background about Between the Lions.

The television series premiered in April 2000 and airs daily on PBS stations

around the country. To date, we have produced 90 episodes, all focused on building

children’s love of reading and improving key literacy skills, such as phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, comprehension, and fluency. The series is produced by

WGBH—the public television station in Boston, along with Sirius Thinking in New

York, and Mississippi Public Broadcasting.

Between the Lions was created with reading experts from around the country,

and every character and segment of the show draws on scientific research about

how children learn to read. Scientifically based research has also demonstrated that

children who view the series gain more literacy skills and at a faster rate than children who don’t watch the show. Between the Lions was one of the first new PBS

series supported by Ready To Learn funding, and we are very grateful to Congress

for continuing to support the Ready To Learn program.

Through our initial work with two communities in Mississippi, we learned three

important lessons:

No. 1. It is essential to focus attention on preschool literacy, because so many children enter kindergarten well behind their peers—in vocabulary, letter knowledge,

and even such basic skills as knowing how to handle a book. When you start out

so far behind, it is very, very difficult to catch up.

No. 2. Preschool teachers often have little or no early childhood education or

training in how to teach literacy. In fact, many are not even aware of the critical

role they play in helping children become good readers once they enter kindergarten.

No. 3. Preschool teachers need easy-to-use, sequenced materials that help them

plan and carry out literacy activities.

With all this in mind, we decided to create a project for American Indian children

in New Mexico, because we saw a tremendous need based on national reading

scores, and because we would have the opportunity to develop our materials with

the input of many different American Indian tribes. We saw this as a pilot that,

if successful, could then be offered to other American Indian Head Start programs.
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When we first presented the idea to tribal Head Start directors we were greeted

with much enthusiasm as well as a strong interest in helping us shape the materials so that they would be culturally appropriate to each of the tribes. In partnership with KNME, the public television station in Albuquerque, we spent considerable time with directors, teachers, and cultural specialists from the tribal Head

Start programs, getting their input on the content and approach for all the materials we provided. In fact, at their suggestion, with KNME we filmed several new

segments featuring American Indian children, so they would see kids like themselves in familiar landscapes reflected in the materials they viewed. The tribes also

gave us significant input on the design of the research study and the measures that

were used, again to make sure they were culturally sensitive.

For example:

• A typical drawing of a house would be instantly recognizable to anyone here,

but that’s not what a house looks like in Cochiti Pueblo. So, a standardized test

might show that that child doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘‘house.’’

• Some tribes have prohibitions against children pointing to pictures of certain

animals, so a child won’t point to that picture even if it’s the right answer. We

avoided pictures of any animals that fell into this category.

Eleven tribes agreed to participate in the project, which began in fall 2004, with

Federal funding that Senator Domenici helped secure. For each of their Head Start

classrooms we provided:

• A set of 3 DVDs, with 16 of our episodes edited so that they were better suited

for preschool children.

• A DVD player.

• A teacher’s guide, with extensive lessons designed to meet Head Start literacy

outcomes and state preschool standards.

• A companion set of 32 children’s books, 2 per lesson, carefully selected to feature many authentic American Indian stories based in the Southwest.

• A bin of classroom materials, including alphabet strips, poem charts, songs,

magnetic letters, word cards, flannel boards, et cetera.

We also provided considerable training for the Head Start teachers, to familiarize

them with the materials and how to carryout the lessons. KNME and WGBH provided follow-up support and visited the classrooms throughout the school year.

Dr. Deborah Linebarger, assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania,

conducted a research study to determine whether this intervention improved the

children’s early literacy skills. She will be presenting her full findings at a meeting

with the tribes in New Mexico at the end of this month. The initial findings are

very positive, with the participating children making statistically significant gains

in several key areas of literacy, such as:

• Letter knowledge.

• Picture naming: Oral language/vocabulary.

• Phonemic awareness: blending sounds to make words.

Perhaps the most impressive finding is that the number of children at risk for

reading failure decreased from 39 percent to 12 percent, and the number of children

scoring above average increased from 23 percent to 64 percent, based on the Get

Ready to Read screening tool.

The Head Start teachers have told us that they have seen a real difference since

they began using the Between the Lions materials. The children use more complex

and expressive language, they’re enthusiastic about what they’re learning, and the

teachers find it easier to plan and organize their day.

We are seeking to expand the materials from 16 lessons to 32, to cover a full

school year. We are also interested in expanding the project within New Mexico, and

to other American Indian tribes nationwide. Already we have begun working with

the Cree Tribe at the Rocky Boy Reservation in Montana.

Since the beginning of the project, we have benefited from the support of Native

American leaders in the state. One of the people who has helped make the project

a success is Bernie Teba, who will talk more about the impact of this Between the

Lions American Indian Head Start Literacy Initiative in New Mexico.

Thank you for your interest.
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PREPARED STATEMENT OF WILLIAM H. WILSON, CHAIR, HAWAIIAN STUDIES DIVISION

KA HAKA’ULA O KE’ELIKOLANI COLLEGE OF HAWAIIAN LANGUAGE UNIVERSITY OF

HAWAI’I AT HILO

Aloha members of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. My name is Dr. William H. Wilson. I am a division chair within the Hawaiian language college establish by the State of Hawaii to provide education through the medium of the Hawaiian language. Our college includes a B.A. program, a teacher certification program,

a master’s program, and a Ph.D. program planned to begin this fall. These programs

are all taught through the Hawaiian language and are the first programs of their

kind in the United States. In addition, our college includes a preschool through

grade 12 laboratory school which provides education in the model called Native

American Language Nest/Survival School Education. The college operates in consortium with the non-profit ’Aha Punana Leo, Inc. which runs 11 Hawaiian language

nests throughout the State while providing additional support to the entire preschool to graduate school Hawaiian medium school system.

My testimony is provided as supportive information relative to the academic benefits of education through Native American Language Nests and Native American

Language Survival Schools. Our Hawaiian language college and the affiliated ’Aha

Punana Leo are among the most experienced entities relative to Native American

Language Nest/ Survival School Education in the country.

Native American Language Nests and Native American Language Survival

Schools have been very successful academically. Normally, Native American students, including Native Hawaiian students, have a higher drop out rate, than other

students in surrounding communities. Yet our laboratory school program, and Hawaiian language survival schools statewide, have a very high rate of high school

graduation—100 percent at our laboratory school. Similar results exist for the model

nationwide.

Native American language survival schools also have a high college attendance

rate. The rate of college attendance for students from our laboratory school is 80

percent. Again similar rates are occurring for other places using the model. The students who are going on to college are succeeding and remaining in college to graduate. We not only have students enrolling in local colleges and universities, but also

students in major national and international universities. Our laboratory school has

former students in such well known universities as Stanford, Loyolla Marymount,

and Oxford.

With less than 100 high school students, our laboratory school this past year won

a State robotics contest, had State champions in athletics, and had 2 of the 10 students chosen statewide from approximately 10,000 eligible Native Hawaiian students for a summer science biomedical science program at Harvard.

While the academic record of Native American Survival Schools is impressive, the

reasons for establishing these schools and the Native American Language Nests go

beyond improving academic performance. As others have testified, Native American

languages, and thus the cultures dependent on those languages, have been nearly

exterminated by compulsory schooling forbidding use of Native American languages.

For many Native American peoples, the extermination of traditional languages is

also an issue of religious freedom. Schooling that results in eliminating a child’s

knowledge of a traditional language prevents that child from participating in traditional religion conducted in the language upon reaching adulthood. By teaching

through the medium of Native American languages, the Native American Language

Nests/ Survival School model assures the survival of Native American languages.

The right of indigenous peoples to schooling through the medium of their own languages is recognized and assured by advanced democracies such as Great Britain,

New Zealand, and Finland and even Third World countries such as India and

China. The United States recognizes the importance of this educational right of indigenous minorities as part of its support for emerging democracies in other countries. Indeed, the United States developed an Interim Iraqi Constitution that established a constitutional right for education through their own languages for the indigenous peoples of Iraqi such as the Turkomen, Kurds, and Assyrians. These indigenous minority peoples had formerly been forbidden education in their own languages by Saddam Hussein who insisted on sole use of the majority national language—Arabic. These indigenous language education provisions were voted into the

subsequent Iraqi Constitution by the Iraqi people themselves.

Native Americans, including Native Hawaiians, are fighting today in Iraq in support of that Iraqi Constitution guaranteeing government provision to indigenous

Iraqi children of schooling through their own indigenous languages. The sad fact,

however, is that the Native American soldiers fighting in Iraq do not have access
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to comparable education through their own Native American languages for their

own children back in the United States.

While the United States has indicated its own support for the democratic ideal

of the choice of education through their own languages for indigenous peoples

through the Native American Languages Act of 1990, that policy statement has

been largely ignored. The Native American Languages Act has been thwarted by

those who have been disregarding the act, including Federal education officials,

States, school administrators, and colleges. In addition Federal funding targeting

schools taught through the medium of Native American languages does not exist.

The result is that Native American languages continue to be diminished and

exterminated while children who could benefit academically from Native American

language education continue to flounder in the schools.

Changes need to be made in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act as well

as in the Higher Education Act to reflect U.S. policy regarding Native American language medium education as expressed in the Native American Languages Act to assure that U.S. Native American language policy is carried out. Furthermore, dedicated funding for Native American Language Nests and Native American Language

Survival Schools is desperately needed to maintain existing programs and expand

them to served more Native American languages and children.

You have in the Congress three bills that can provide needed dedicated funding

for Native American Language Nests and Native American Language Survival

Schools, namely S. 2674, H.R. 5222, and H.R. 4766. I strongly urge that Congress

make use of these vehicles to provide support to Native American Language Nests

and Native American Language Survival Schools this session.
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