Dive Brief:
- A new bill, the Native American Education Opportunity Act, would provide education savings accounts to Native American students who attend Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) schools.
- Funding in the legislation, proposed by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), would allow students to pay for private school tuition, tutors and educational materials.
- The proposal would allow an estimated 90% of BIE funds spent per-student to be allocated to the savings account; the BIE would keep 10% of per-pupil funds.
Dive Insight:
According to the 2014 Native Youth Report released by the White House, Native American education is in a "state of emergency." The report noted more than one in three American Indian and Alaska Native children live in poverty. That hasn't changed much in the years since the report was published, and the Obama administration's Generation Indigenous initiative, which meant to increase opportunities for Native American youth, has seen negligible success. President Barack Obama's latest budget request allocates $1 billion for Native American students.
"Unlike achievement results for every other major ethnic group in the United States," a 2013 report by The Education Trust said, "those for Native students have remained nearly flat in recent years, and the gaps separating these students from their white peers have actually widened." Today 18% of Native fourth-graders tested as proficient or advanced in reading, according to the 2011 National Indian Education Study, the most current data released by the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP). For white fourth-graders, that percentage was 42%.
Many are skeptical of plans to improve Native and indigenous education, and the U.S. Department of the Interior has called for "dramatic reform" for the BIE.
