Volume 35 Number 1
October 1995

American Indian schools are poised on the brink of change in a manner never before envisioned under the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) education system. The Goals 2000: Educate America Act (EAA) of 1994 opened opportunities for real change by proposing a framework for school reform in a manner that targets the greatest of high-risk students-among whom are American Indians. Although Congressional action in 1995 seriously undercut some of EAA initiatives, Goals 2000 remains in effect as part of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), Title I school-wide Consolidated School Reform Plan and as part of the BIA Office of Indian Education Programs (OIEP) activities for the 1995-96 fiscal year.

The EAA established national education goals for elementary and secondary education, and created an environment for states and school districts to design and implement school reform plans, and evaluate standards developed by states. It opened avenues to systemic reform in American schools by reducing historic barriers to educational excellence and applied the best pedagogical research toward school improvement planning. The EAA provided the framework for all federal education programs, especially the reauthorization of ESEA, and emphasized educational outcomes in restructuring school curriculum.

Bureau and grant schools participate in school reform provisions under legislation through a set-aside program which treats the OIEP as a "51st state" in order to ensure full participation in programs, comparable to flow-through funding procedures utilized with other compensatory education programs by the U.S. Department of Education.

For example, one percent of the funds appropriated for state program were allotted for the BIA system. In addition, the Bureau organized a separate school reform panel, similar to those established by states, to develop the plan and devise regulations for OIEP system-wide reform and improvement. Members of the panel included representatives of the major Indian school associations (such as the National Indian School Board Association), three tribal leaders affiliated with Bureau schools, BIA schools, and the OFEP.

  As a part of the seven national educational goals, the EAA required high standards for all students. Among the more controversial parts of the EAA was the provision calling for voluntary national content, performance, and opportunity to learn standards. These standards stated what students in America should learn and be able to do, how it would be determined that students have learned, and what resources and conditions must be in place for students to learn. Revised standards for transportation and residential programs were also required. The OIEP panel has primary responsibility for the development of these standards relevant to Bureau schools.

The Branch of Monitoring and Evaluation (in the OIEP) created a new school improvement process as the second phase in the Bureau's mission for systemic school reform. Combining the new process with the Goals 2000 legislation, OIEP designed a system of site visits to Bureau and grant schools similar to those conducted in the previous five years (U.S. Department of Interior, 1994).

As part of the school support team process, OIEP selected a corps of "distinguished Indian educators," representing a variety of tribal affiliations, and OIEP officials to resource approximately forty-six schools each year, with the original intent to process all Bureau and grant schools in four years. The use of school support teams met the requirements of the monitoring and evaluation function of OIEP and the school support team purpose in the ESEA legislation, "while promoting the ideals of Goals 2000 in a learning support process" (U.S. Department of Interior, 1994, p. 1).

BIA school support teams began their on-site school visits in September, 1994 focusing on their roles as helping resources to assist in school improvement planning. In carrying out their resource roles to the schools, the school support teams utilized the major objectives of the Goals 2000 legislation to cultivate school improvement planning. These were to provide for:

1. Challenging, real-world, integrated curriculum emphasizing school-to-work.
2. Performance-based assessment to document this accelerated learning.
3. Partnerships addressing education, health, and social service needs of students.
4. Increased parental involvement so parents and communities can become true partners in the education process.
5. Total staff retraining and networking.

The Act also suggested five ways for schools to accomplish the objectives:

1. Site-based management and local flexibility.
2. Shared governance and shared responsibility.
3. Better utilization of resources for greatest need, including emphasis on the role of technology.
4. Break the mold innovation with documentation of results.
5. Continuous improvement of one, total program (P. L. 103-227, § 102, 1994, pp. 130-33).

Dr. Linda Martinez of New Mexico, a support team leader, emphasized her team's role in assisting Bureau schools with their on-going, continuous self-evaluation process using the BIA Opportunity to Learn Standards. According to the distinguished educator, "The language of Effective Schools or Opportunity to Learn Standards brings a framework of clarity and understanding to school communities about what specific areas to target for improvement" (Martinez, personal communication, January 5, 1995). The area needing most improvement, she added, was group and process facilitation, including dialogue skills, listening, communication, and conflict mediation. Another support team leader, Tom Allen of South Dakota, indicated "there are a lot of dedicated, hard working and competent people in OIEP schools who have been hampered by bureaucracy and mixed messages from (OIEP) central office but are finally freed to concentrate on improving educational opportunities for Indian children" (Allen, personal communication, January 4, 1995).

"The purpose of the school support team . . . [was] not to monitor Bureau schools as we did in the past," according to OIEP's coordinator of Goals 2000 programs, Dr. Sandra Fox (personal communication, January 5, 1995). Dr. Fox stressed the shift to school improvement planning, staff development training, and student learning. The school support team process is a revolutionary development in BIA education as it places attention on the improvement of educational opportunities for low achieving students and utilizes research and practice on teaching and learning, including alternative and applied learning. OIEP created an additional resource, the Bureau Effective Schools Team (BEST), to assist schools in their quest for restructuring. BEST is a resource organization (contracted and managed by the National Indian School Board Association) that provides effective schools staff training, mentoring, technical assistance, and funding to Bureau schools that nominated themselves into the project. BEST has an advisory committee of twenty Indian education practitioners who counsel OIEP in areas of systemic school reform.

Congressional action in the summer of 1995 seriously undercut the Goals 2000 school support team initiative. For the 1995-96 fiscal year, the OIEP may employ a reduced Goals 2000 staff development process with a majority of the schools still to be resourced.

Goals 2000 principles remain in effect as part of the ESEA Title I schoolwide Consolidated School Reform Plan (CSRP). All Bureau and grant schools will receive CSRP technical assistance and follow up mentoring for long term systemic change, with objectives including school restructuring based upon adoption of educational standards, staff retraining, program consolidation, parental involvement, integrated curriculum and authentic assessment, school-to-work planning, and increased classroom technology.

Content standards are at the heart of the Goals 2000 initiative. Content standards are aimed at improving the achievement of all students and specify the knowledge and skills essential to a discipline, such as mathematics, that students are expected to learn (Knapp & Turnbull, 1990; U.S. Department of Interior, 1994, p. 2). Each school has the option of adopting either the national or OIEP standards or creating its own.

The U.S. Department of Education (n.d.) described the knowledge and skills components of content standards in the following way:

The knowledge includes the most important and enduring ideas, concepts, issues, dilemmas, and information of the discipline. The skills include the ways of thinking, working, communicating, reasoning, and investigating that characterize that discipline. Taken together, this knowledge and these skills are what distinguish experts, as well as, students who have obtained a high level of proficiency, from novices and others who have not had an opportunity to learn. We must determine what is appropriate for our children (U.S. Department of Education, p. 1).

Performance or assessment standards specify the various levels of achievement students will be expected to demonstrate in the challenging subject matter set out in the content standards.The monitoring and evaluation process was coordinated by the BIA to review various programs, including Chapter 1, Special Education, facilities management, standards compliance, and state or regional accreditation, in addition to the regular program.

Opportunity to Learn Standards are used for assessing the schools' capacity and performance. They include the factors, elements, and conditions of teaching and learning that are necessary for all students to have a fair opportunity to achieve high performance standards.

The EAA requires that the staff of all Bureau-responsible schools be retrained on-site, and as part of a continuous professional development process, and that OIEP and all training resources of the schools be geared to this effort.

The EAA calls for the increased involvement of parents, communities, and tribes regarding the implementation of Goals 2000 in the education process of their children. Partnerships are to be developed and parents are to be involved in higher levels of parental involvement including adult education programs, parenting training, and direct involvement in the instruction of their children.

Schools are encouraged to provide a challenging, integrated curriculum based upon the new national content standards and measured by the new performance (or authentic) assessment standards. The curriculum is to be taught with an emphasis on the real world and in an integrated, interdisciplinary approach (such as the whole language approach). Native language and culture must be critical features of the curriculum.

The EAA calls for partnerships to be developed by schools at all levels of the community to provide integrated and comprehensive services with health and social service agencies to meet the needs of the whole child.

Another requirement of Bureau schools is the development of a plan for the effective use of educational technology to improve instruction, administration and training.

The law views educational research as a priority to determine what is working in the school reform effort. School programs can be closely coordinated with the Office of Educational Research Institute's Indian initiative. Future funding opportunities will be opened for those Bureau schools that link curriculum, instruction and student programs with research-documented concepts.

The Goals 2000 legislation called for Bureau and grant schools to consolidate their federal funding applications into one program rather than separate projects as was done in the past (P. L. 103-382, § 1114, 1994, pp. 20-24). OIEP created one school application form for all separate funding sources.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs initiated their school reform movement in 1988 with the Effective Schools monitoring and evaluation initiative. The second cycle of the movement involves a radical transformation of Bureau and grant schools from practices of business-as-usual to creative learning opportunities for Indian students.

Goals 2000: The Educate America Act demands change, but in a way that frees Indian schools from burdensome, restrictive regulations. It promotes the active use of world class standards and educational research in paving the way for huge leaps in learning.

This federal legislative mandate will redefine the way Bureau and grant schools educate Indian children, in stark contrast to the way it has been done in the past.

Richard St. Germaine (Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwa) is an associate professor in the Department of Foundations of Education at the University of Wisconsin in Eau Claire. He served as a team leader in the monitoring and evaluation of two dozen BIA schools/agencies during 1990-1994. He was a team leader of the phase two support team process, a member of the Bureau Effective School Team commission, and a Goals 2000 education panel member.