The National Indian Education Study (NIES) utilizes the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and contextual questions to describe the condition of education for fourth- and eighth-grade American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) students in the United States. NIES is conducted under the direction of the National Center for Education Statistics on behalf of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Indian Education.

• an in-depth look at the findings from the student, teacher, and school administrator survey questions that were focused on AI/AN culture and language;
• information about the achievement of AI/AN students at grades 4 and 8 on the NAEP reading and mathematics assessments—for the nation as well as for 15 states with relatively large proportions of AI/AN students;
• an examination of contextual factors that are associated with higher- and lower-performing AI/AN students; and
• an exploration of composite variables (i.e., variables built upon multiple discrete student survey questions) related to AI/AN cultural knowledge, interest in reading about cultures (both their own and others), engagement at school, and perceptions about effort in school.

Results are reported for three mutually exclusive categories of schools as well as for an overall category:

• low density public schools (where less than 25 percent of all the students in the school were AI/AN);
• high density public schools (where 25 percent or more of all the students in the school were AI/AN);
• Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) schools; and
• all AI/AN students (includes all AI/AN students sampled throughout the nation in public, private, BIE, and Department of Defense schools).

The survey results presented in this report are focused primarily on the responses of fourth- and eighth-grade AI/AN students to selected survey questions. Approximately 7,000 fourth-graders and 6,300 eighth-graders participated in the NIES 2019 student survey. Teachers and school administrators also completed surveys.

Average scores in NAEP reading and mathematics for AI/AN fourth- and eighth- graders from earlier NAEP assessments in 2005, 2007, 2009, 2011, and 2015 are compared to their average reading and mathematics scores in 2019.

The NIES survey questions, as well as the report itself, were created in close collaboration with the NIES Technical Review Panel (TRP). The NIES TRP is composed of AI/AN educational stakeholders from across the country.