Indian dropout rate studied

By Lance Benzel
The Gazette

Stemming dropout rates for American Indian students in Montana will require prevention beginning early in a student's childhood, among other innovations, state education specialists said during briefings in Billings Tuesday.

Last year, Indian students were more than three times more likely to drop out of school than white students, with an 8.4 percent dropout rate compared to the 2.7 percent rate among whites, according to data gathered by the state Office of Public Instruction.

Dropout rates for Indians peaked in the 10th grade, but were not limited to upper grades. Among junior high students, for example, American Indians constituted 72 percent of the dropouts and were 12 times more likely to drop out than white classmates, the figures show.

It's a problem state officials are working to address - and early intervention is being billed as a critical tool for educators working to reverse the trend.

"Something happened long before ninth grade that sent them on that path," Mandy Smoker Broaddus, an American Indian education specialist with the OPI, told parents at a meeting Tuesday night of the Billings Public Schools Indian Parent Advisory Committee.

"We're looking at programs that begin as early as the fourth grade," she said.

Dropout rates are only one facet of the achievement gap separating American Indians from white students in Montana, the OPI officials said. They met with Indian parents and hosted meetings with school administrators to address some of the factors that influence the disparity.

Studies show that on average, American Indian children begin to fall behind peer groups in Montana between the ages of 22 months and five years, reflecting a lack of emphasis on reading and learning in the household, said Chris Lohse, the OPI director of policy research.

Performance problems are more dramatic on reservations, Lohse said, coinciding with a nationwide trend affecting students from areas that are predominantly poor and rural.

Where middle-class children are prompted to read and develop their vocabularies, Lohse said, kids in poorer areas tend not receive the same level of encouragement, and their development suffers. Peer influences, different expectations and the parents' level of education also affect performance.

"It cuts across all ethic subgroups," Lohse said.

Lohse said the figures describe large-scale patterns and cannot predict individual performance.

"Even if the problem isn't staring you down at home, maybe we need to talk about how to respond as a system," Lohse told parents in the advisory group.

Jack Copps, superintendent of School District 2, said the OPI presenters made a compelling case that schools across the state need to do more to prevent the achievement disparity.

"We need to intervene at earlier ages," he said. "We don't fix the problem at junior high or high school; we need to do it much earlier."