American Indian Student Performance Suffers

The National Center for Education Statistics recently released its National Indian Education Study 2011, which tracks trends in American Indian/Alaska Native (AIAN) educational performance.  Schoolchildren in grades 4 and 8 across America take the National Assessment of Educational Progress, and their scores highlight the growing disparity in performance between AIAN and non-AIAN children.  While reading scores from 2005 to 2011 remained largely unchanged (AIAN students still lag behind non-AIAN in reading scores, however), the gap in scores on the mathematics portion of the test continues to widen.  In 2011, 4^th grade AIAN students scored 16 points lower than non-AIAN students, compared to 12 points lower in 2005.  8^th grade AIAN students scored 19 points less than non-AIAN students, a gap that has increased 4 points since 2005.  The study points to several factors that may influence these children’s educational performance.  83% of AIAN 8^th graders have a computer at home, compared to 93% of non-AIAN 8^th grade students, and only 50% of AIAN 8^th graders have over 25 books at home, 13 percentage points lower than the average non-AIAN 8^th grade student.