Glenn I. Latham

The milieu of Indian education remains the object of inquiry by educators, historians, social scientists, and the Federal Government, to name a few (Szasz, 1983; Latham, 1985). Facilities, curriculum, training, recruitretention, and competencies of personnel; student achievement; drop-out rates; cognitive functions; and the effects of cultural and ethnic diversity on learning persist as areas of study about which much continues to be written and from which flows an ever increasing stream of needs (Simpson-Tyson, 1978; Chaves, 1982; McShane & Plas, 1984; Witthuhan, 1984; Lin, 1985; Deyhle, 1985; Mayfield, 1986; Walker, 1988). This is another of those studies, but one which focuses entirely on needs at the building and classroom levels.

Over a five year period (1982-1987), using ethnographic and microethnographic research methods (Murray, Anderson, Bersani & Mesaros, 1986), 1 have studied BIA Indian education programs on 17 reservations in Arizona, Idaho, Mississippi, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. ‘Me purpose of the study was to determine from direct in-class observations, and interviews with school personnel and students, what needs of an instructional and management type appeared to be the most common across BIA Indian education programs nationally. Table I contains the distribution of in-class observations by grade level, and Table 2 displays the distribution of interviews by subjects.

TABLE 2
The Distribution of Interviews By Subjects

From these observations and interviews, 13 persisting instructional and management needs emerged.

Following is a detailed discussion of each of the 13 needs.

Time on task is a topic of considerable interest in education today - as well it should be (Rosenshine & Berliner, 1978; Stallings, 1980; Goodlad, 1984). Though assessing time-on-task, including levels of academic engagement, is an imprecise matter, the technology does exist to measure with sufficient accuracy how students spend their school time. In the great majority of BIA classes that I observed, a typical hour of school was interrupted by a plethora of distractors and non-instiuctional activities. Regardless of grade level, as illustrated in Figure 1, more time was spent in non-instructional activities than was spent in instructional activities.

In total, the data suggest that less than one half of a student’s day is spent on instructional tasks. Add to this the time lost to non-attention during instruction, one can conclude that during an entire school year, students in BIA Education programs are academically engaged only about one-third of the time intended for instruction. (See Figure 1).

In a word, students in BIA schools typically experience a more relaxed, less demanding educational environment. The relationship between teachers and students tends to be informal and is frequently on a first name basis. Students are more at liberty to move about the classroom at will, radios and tape players are more apt to be broadcasting, and freedom to leave the room for unspecified, non-vital reasons is more available.

Such an environment typifies Indian education as "easy." Without a single exception, every Indian student interviewed told me, "I can do more than is expected of me" (including behaving better).

This study reflects the findings of others on this matter: a disproportionately large number of minority students are inappropriately classified as learning disabled (L.D.). Ysseldyke, Algozzine, and Richey (1982) reported that "the number of minority and low socio-economic status children thought to evidence academic difficulty and behavior problems was at least twice as high . . ." as for other students. Given such circumstances, regular educators in BIA schools have an easily accessible conduit for the removal from their classes of students who are difficult to teach and manage; hence, a disproportionately large number of Indian students become classified as L.D. and are placed in special education. As noted in a study conducted at the Institute for Research in Learning Disabilities, University of Minnesota (1983),

Unemployment among Native Americans runs as high as 85%, and ranges between 40% and 85% throughout the country. Despite this grim reality, there are almost no prevocational and vocational training opportunities available for students in BIA schools. Occasionally, one will find crafts, woodworking and metal working programs, and industrial arts programs, but these are no substitute for bonified vocational preparation.

Simply stated, educational programs available to Indian students in BIA schools are woefully lacking in their ability to prepare their students in any systematic, well defined way, to assume a competitive posture in the job market.

Although working relationships between regular and special education are generally good, there is little evidence of any plan or policy to assure that the two programs proceed in a coordinated way. Cooperative efforts tend to be on a teacher-by-teacher basis rather than as an initiative of the system. The IEP (Individual Educational Plan) process does bring regular and special educators together, but this tends to be on an intermittent basis, only as it relates to a particular student, and is generally aimed at removing students from regular education and placing them into special education. The process, paradoxically, ultimately acts to put distance between special education and regular education; i.e., once placed in special education, the child is no longer of concern to regular education.

There is little evidence that overall school planning contains goals to which special education can relate. How teachers conduct their special education classes, and what they teach, tends to be idiosyncratic to the teachers: they do "their thing."

A review of IEPs for special education students revealed that, generally, they were legally in compliance with P.L. 94-142; however, they were seldom used by teachers, regular or special education, as guides to instruction. In fact, they appeared to have little, if any direct effect on instruction. This scenario is not at all unique to BIA schools as observed by Morgan and Rhode (1983):

There is only spotty evidence of active parental involvement in the education of their children - typically four percent or less. The attitude of parents tends to be passive: "The schools know best. I really have nothing to offer." This situation is exacerbated by boarding school placement.

One should not interpret this finding to mean that parents are generally disinterested, or not caring. Rather, it seems to generate from a long-standing attitude among Indian parents that the BIA is there to take care of such needs, and "There is really no need for me to be involved. They are the experts."

It is generally safe to say that parents living on the reservations are less accessible (fewer phones, long distances to travel over bad roads, and so on), rely on the BIA to represent them, and are less inclined to see themselves as serving a formal role in the education of their children.

Teacher isolation is physical, social, and/or professional, and need not be a function of geographical remoteness. Teachers working in urban BIA schools are nearly as inclined to express concern over "isolation" as are teachers working in Indian schools in geographically remote settings. I am reminded of a group of teachers who wanted me to spend some time with them after school "to just talk about what’s happening in education in America. We are so isolated at this school," they said. The school is located in one of the nation’s largest metropolitan areas!

Isolation evidences itself in ways that keep teachers from interacting with other educators generally, and even from fellow educators within their own system. The flow of ideas is seldom refreshed; political, cultural, and interpersonal problems take precedence over professional matters and the improvement of instruction; and teachers begin to feel "locked in" to a system where the education of children is perceived to be secondary to other agenda addressed by the decision makers.

Though it may be too grand a notion to hope to eliminate the effects of teacher isolation, it is altogether reasonable that through educationally oriented leadership, and through the creative use of communications technology, the effects of teacher isolation in Indian schools can be remarkably reduced.

High rates of staff turnover (administrative and teacher) is generally common in BIA schools, with annual rates of turnover in some schools approaching 100 percent. Although a single metric representative of staff turnover in BIA schools nationally would be difficult if not impossible to compute, my data reveal that any given school within the system can expect a 25% to 75% turnover of staff annually. It is also likely that 70% to 90% of a given school’s staff is actively seeking employment elsewhere, and about 65% of a given school’s staff has remained at that school no more than two years.

Reasons most commonly given for seeking employment elsewhere include (in random order):

Given the nature of the setting, high staff turnover in BIA schools will likely always be a problem, but ways need to be found to reduce the effects of turnover, possibly through better staff orientation and inservice training, and through the training of local boards of education and administrative staffs about how to create and support a more professionally and personally rewarding school environment.

Inservice training is regarded at all staff levels as extremely important, but not very effective. The major problems interfering with effective inservice training are:

These circumstances are certainly not peculiar to the BIA. The research on inservice education bears out the general ineffectiveness of inservice training activities (Smylie, 1988). This should not incline decision makers away from providing inservice training, however. On the contrary! Rather, the inclination should be in the direction of providing effective inservice training (Kelly & VanVactor, 1983; Showers, Joyce & Bennett, 1987; Joyce, Showers & Rolheiser-Bennett, 1987).

Although valid, reliable data relative to mid-year transfers are difficult to derive, it appears to range from a low of 10% at the elementary level to up to 30% at the high school level. Students living near public and private schools are more inclined to transfer from one school to another. Students in boarding schools occasionally change boarding schools, or return to a reservation school or nearby public school. Also, this vacillating tends to be more characteristic of students experiencing academic/behavioral problems. It was also observed that students from more stable homes, and who were more academically and socially successful, were inclined to enroll and remain in public schools rather than BIA schools. As a consequence, there tends to be a disproportionately larger number of special education students enrolled in BIA schools.

Generally, BIA schools are seen as the placement of last resort. Students who are indecisive, have problems at school, and lack direction from home tend to find their way back to the BIA schools knowing that there is always a place for them there. But once there, they are often difficult to accommodate, manage, and instruct -circumstances that combine to weaken the instructional quality of the educational program - regular or special.

I am quick to recognize that this is a socially and culturally controversial matter. Nevertheless, when considered in light of the lifelong needs of the nation’s citizens for social, cultural, and economic success in these complex and technologically oriented times, the matter is clear: mastery with the language of the dominant culture is imperative! So far as developmentally, academically, and socially delayed youngsters is concerned, the situation is compounded proportional to the extent of the delay(s).

While conducting this study, the superintendent of a large reservation school district asked me to analyze the district’s student achievement test results. I analyzed the data by school, for both math and reading, then plotted the composite means on a regression line, a shown in Figure 2. There were seven schools in the system, and as shown in Figure 2, one school (represented by the solid dot) was consistently above the regression line. At all grade levels except the second grade, this particular school was the highest - even the distant highest - performing school. At six of the seven grade levels, the variance of this one school was statistically significant at or above the .01 confidence level.

This finding came as something of a surprise to the superintendent, and we began to explore what there was about that school that could account for this phenomenon. After considerable study, it was concluded that the only variable peculiar to this one school was that, even though it had an Indian principal, and the typical mix of Indian and non-Indian staff (including teachers, aides, lunchroom personnel and so on), all instruction and all adultto-student verbal interactions during the school day were in English. Though one must be careful to not overgeneralize, this example does, in my opinion, serve as a model that BIA schools nationally would do well to follow. I am not advocating that the use of tribal language be banned from the school!

Dr. T.H. Bell, (1988) former Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education, is completely correct when he notes that, "Regardless of students’ cultural and ethnic background, if they are to hope for access to the full range of options available in our society, the language of their education must be English; no other language will suffice." Should a tribe decide that English will be taught as a second language, or that the tribal language will be the language of instruction through grades two or three, it must be understood that such a decision has cultural, social, and economic consequences.

In making this point, I am not making a value judgement; I am not saying that one decision is absolutely and in every instance, better than the other. I am only saying that each decision carries with it its own unique set of consequences, and it is the weight of those consequences on the lives of students that must be considered in the decision making process. I am also quick to point out that there will always be exceptions to what would most probably be the case. When dealing with human behavior, since it can be predicted only in terms of probabilities, one can always find examples to support any point of view. There will be instances where an individual who was taught in the non-dominant language achieved great "success" as measured by anyone’s standards, and instances where one who was taught throughout his/her entire school years in nothing but the dominant language was, by anyone’s standards, a classic "failure." But these are low probability phenomena and should certainly not be the basis for decision making which favors instruction in other than the dominant language.

A problem that is ubiquitous to education is that teachers tend to teach and manage their classrooms intuitively rather than in ways that are rooted in the science and technology of instruction and behavior management (Bloom, 1990; Rinne, 1982). Although there are many dangers associated with this tendency, one which is particularly fretful is that the quality of the instructional program in the classroom is extremely vulnerable to the idiosyncracies of the teacher. In school systems where school policy and instructional supervision are well defined and systematic, teacher and administrator idiosyncracies can be moderated so that the variance between comparable classrooms and schools within the system is reduced. For example, what one would observe in a fifth grade classroom in one school would generally reflect what would be observed in another fifth grade class in the same building, or in a fifth grade class in another building within the same system. Typically, however, in BIA schools, policy is less well defined, and instructional supervision is less uniform. The result of this is that BIA classrooms and schools evidence considerably more variance from what one would likely observe in a typical public school setting; a variance which not infrequently reflects the unchecked characteristics of the teachers and administrators in those schools. Teachers in BIA schools tend to have more latitude "to do their thing" with less direction or moderation from, either building level administrators or from staff of the central (agency) office.

It is my opinion, based on hundreds of hours observing in classrooms and interviewing school personnel, that there is a critical need in BIA schools for systematic, uniform, and periodic performance reviews of teachers and administrators to assure a high quality of instruction throughout the system. I perceive this to be one of the most important needs to be addressed within BIA education, and the literature provides some viable direction in that regard (Caldwell, 1985; Gibble & Lawrence, 1987; Kline, 1987; Showers, Joyce & Bennett, 1987).

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