Thursday, December 5, 2013
Education Week is running a series of stories, videos, timelines, and commentaries this week called Education in Indian Country. The series highlights the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota and Morongo Indian Reservation in California, as well as the history of Native American education in the United States. The Pine Ridge Reservation, the subject of the video above, is home to nearly 40,000 members of the Oglala Lakota Sioux nation. Pine Ridge's residents are trying to increase outcomes for students to overcome a history of poverty, unemployment, and early mortality. The Morongo Band of Mission Indians in the San Bernardino mountains is trying to turn its casino-generated wealth into a new school to reverse decades of low achievement. Unlike every racial and ethnic category of students in which graduation rates are rising, American Indian graduation rates have dropped since 2008. Read the series here.