The National Indian Education Study (NIES) is a two-part study designed to describe the condition of education for 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. This report presents the results for Part II of the study focusing on the educational experiences of fourth- and eighth-grade AI/AN students based on survey data collected as part of the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).
In 2009, about 12,000 AI/AN students at grade 4 and 10,000 students at grade 8 provided information about themselves, their families and communities, and their school experiences, such as how often they went on school-sponsored trips to museums or other places to learn about AI/AN people or how often someone at school helped them with their schoolwork. Teachers provided information about educational practices to promote the academic achievement of AI/AN students, and school administrators reported on the school environment and the interaction between the school and the AI/AN community. Survey results were compared for students attending public schools with low proportions of AI/AN students (less than 25 percent of the student body), public schools with high proportions of AI/AN students (25 percent or more of the student body), and Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) schools.
Results showed that students in schools serving higher proportions of AI/AN students were more likely to be exposed to AI/AN culture in and out of school. Involvement of the AI/AN community in the school was also more common in schools with high proportions of AI/AN students. The majority of AI/AN students had teachers who reported relying on state content standards at least to some extent in planning reading/language arts or mathematics lessons. Students in BIE schools were less likely than those in high or low density public schools to have teachers who relied on district content standards and more likely to have teachers who relied on AI/AN content or cultural standards.
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