DiversityInc - July/August 2006

EDUCATION IS A FAMILY AFFAIR
FOR NATIVE AMERICANS
High-school junior
Samantha Fredrick
has wrapped up
another successful school
year, thanks in part to one of
the strongest support groups
imaginable: her family.

Samantha, an honor-roll student at Stockbridge Valley Central School in Munnsville, N.Y., has her eye on several colleges. She is very involved with sports, cheerleading and volunteer work. She has managed to accomplish so much and defy the statistics about young Native Americans

with the help of not only her parents, Charmaine and Terrance, but also strong support from both sets of grandparents.

“In the Native community, a lot of grandparents are involved in all aspects of family life,” says Charmaine, who also has an infant son, Joshua, and a 5-year-old daughter, Liyah. “My mom watch-es the kids while my husband and I are at work [or if we] need to be at meetings or driving Samantha around to events, and this is pretty common for most Native families.”

Samantha is part of the Turtle Clan of the Oneida Nation.

Native Americans traditionally
have taught children through oral
directions, expecting them to
observe until they felt competent
enough to undertake tasks by
themselves. This teach-
ing style, however, does
not fit in well with the
structure of most public-
school systems.

Charmaine worries that No Child Left Behind, with its emphasis on test scores, works contrary to the way many Native American children learn. There are about

1. 4 million Native Americans younger than 18 in the United States, comprising 0.5 percent of all youths, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The National Center for

Education Statistics reports that Native American and Alaska-native students have a dropout rate twice the national average, the highest dropout rate of any ethnic or racial group in the United States. Approximately 7 percent of whites drop out of school or do not finish high school, compared with 30 percent of Native American students, 12 percent of blacks and 24 percent of Latinos.

Of the Native American students who do graduate high school, only 17 percent go on to college, compared with more than 60 percent of all U.S. high-school students, according to the U.S. Department of Education’s Indian Nations at Risk Task Force.

The Fredricks and a growing number of Native American families are placing greater emphasis on education and becoming acquainted with the changes in the public-school system. “Her father and I are not afraid to go in and talk to the teachers [or] her guidance counselors or make a call … She has that pressure on her to know that we are going to ask questions,” says Charmaine.

“I was the first person from my family to graduate college,” says Charmaine. “So now it is automatically assumed by Sam that she is going to go to college … I think that with every generation, we’re stepping it up a little bit and the kids know from early on what is expected.”