Every summer since I was in 7th grade, I have gone with my church to the Hualapai Native
American Reservation in Arizona to host summer camps for the local children. While
volunteering as a teacher’s assistant in age groups ranging from four to seventeen, I noticed how
a 9-year-old girl was in the same grade as a 7-year-old girl. Many children were held back in
their school grades or only attended homeschool. I recognized that this educational gap is not a
rare occurrence in their community.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, Native students perform two to
three grade levels below white peers in reading and math and are 237 percent more likely to
drop out of school. This dropout rate is the highest of any ethnic group in the United States.
There are many factors that contribute to this disparity.
These issues arise primarily due to the underfunding of Native American communities. The
median household income for these communities averages around $20,000, while 20 percent of
Native American households make under $5,000 a year. In these extremely impoverished
conditions, quality education — including educational technology, properly funded programs,
and adequate staffing — is insufficient. Hundreds of legal treaties and agreements have
guaranteed education for Native Americans. Due to the government’s neglect towards these past
promises, Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs) have become the most poorly funded
institutions in the country.
Generational trauma is also a widely known factor for the shortages in Native American
teachers. Indian children were forcibly taken by the government and sent to boarding schools
hundreds of miles away from their home. These schools were designed to strip the children of
their culture, heavily abused whenever they would speak their native language. These traumatic
experiences contributed to the lasting distrust of American institutions. With this decrease in
teachers, the quality of the children’s education can only decrease as well.
The major lack of resources highly contributes to this educational gap. Around 60 percent of
Native schools lack the educational technology that children in other communities receive: less
than half of households have stable internet, limiting students to work on their phones or
without any device at all. Many Native communities are located in rural or isolated areas, which
can make broadband infrastructure incredibly difficult to implement. This brings up the
deteriorating physical structure of Indian schools, again as an unfortunate result of
underfunding. School buildings have leaking walls, mold, and even toxic fibers which create a
dangerous environment for children to learn in.
Despite these matters, this is not the end of effort for achieving higher quality education for
Native American children. The National Caucus of Native American State Legislators has
proposed many solutions. A statewide early education and care system before the age of five,
community based learning centers, an adequate distribution of resources — these are just some
of the many ideas to change this harsh reality and to restore education for all Native American
children.
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