As reported in an Education Week blog by Evie Blad, representatives from the White House Initiative on American Indian and Alaska Native Education and the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights have announced a “listening tour” to seven states as part of their efforts to improve schools’ ability to address the needs of Native American students. The closest stop for us is Seattle.

A federally appointed American Indian Education Study Group presented their findings and recommendations for reform this summer.  On the report’s first page, it states, “Although federal assimilation policy ended several decades ago, [Bureau of Indian Education] BIE schools – still funded and many still operated by the U.S. Government – have produced generations of American Indians who are poorly educated and unable to compete for jobs, and who have been separated for years from their tribal communities. All of this has contributed to the extreme poverty on many reservations throughout the country.”