Babaamaajimowinan (Telling of news in different places)

Want to Fix U.S. Schools? Look to Native American Communities

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Hidden in a corner of this city, amid a gleaming office park, strip malls, vacant lots, Interstate 40, and perhaps the city’s nicest Starbucks, is a two-story school that holds one of the country’s most promising educational models for Native American students.

The Native American Community Academy sits in New Mexico’s biggest city because that is where its students are. Today, more than 65 percent of Native Americans live in urban areas. In the Albuquerque school district, many are falling through the cracks, as invisible as the reservations that dot New Mexico’s landscape.

Despite their growing numbers, Native American students are often struggling in Albuquerque’s public schools and urban schools across the nation, advocates say. They are 237 percent more likely to drop out and less likely to graduate from high school than white students, typically lagging two to three grades behind in reading and math, according to a report released by the National Caucus of Native American State Legislators.

http://www.equalvoiceforfamilies.org/want-to-fix-u-s-schools-look-to-native-american-communities/

 

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