Dropout rate worries tribe, district

PLUMMER, Idaho – Here’s the primary challenge facing tiny Lakeside High School: For the past decade, fewer than half of its students have graduated.

The rural public school located within the Coeur d’Alene Indian Reservation struggles with what administrators call excessive absenteeism and a lack of parental involvement.

But some tribal members say they don’t trust the schools, in part because older Native Americans experienced discrimination when they were students. And some feel little has changed.

Coeur d’Alene tribal leaders worry that the dropout rate will result in droves of unskilled workers needing jobs.

National graduation rates among Native Americans historically are lower than students in other racial groups. But the situation in the Plummer-Worley School District, where about 60 percent of the students are Indian, has reached a critical point, say community members and educators.

For the Class of 2004, the latest year for which statistics are available, only 39 percent of Lakeside students graduated on schedule. The statewide average of students earning a diploma within four years was 84 percent.

Nationwide, the graduation rate was about 57 percent among students enrolled in schools run by the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs in 2005.

Some years, dropouts at Lakeside exceed the number of graduates. This year, 12 students have dropped out and 17 are expected to graduate in June, in a school of about 136.

School officials, students and tribal members offer different reasons – societal, cultural, educational, economic – for the numbers.

“I wish it were one thing,” said community member Bernie LaSarte. “One thing would be resolvable.”

Principal Jim Phillips said students often come into high school unprepared. They fall behind and fail classes. They struggle to catch up and eventually give up, he said.

Parents often consent to their children’s decision to drop out, Phillips said. He is quick to point out, though, that every student has an individual story.

Among Kara Howard’s friends who have dropped out, some said they needed to work to support a child, while others wanted to skip the “school thing” and start a job early.

“Sometimes you can’t deal with the fact that a kid doesn’t want to learn,” said Howard, a senior who plans to attend the University of Idaho in the fall.

Alex Campbell, a freshman, said that in his class, when teachers call on students to read aloud, some can’t.

“All these years they get passed on, passed on,” Campbell said. When they get to high school – when passing grades matter – they can’t do it, he said.

“If you’re going to be holding kids back, it should be at the younger levels,” when they’re learning the fundamentals, Campbell said.

Superintendent George Olsen acknowledges that students’ reading skills need work. The district plans to spend a $115,000 state grant to hire specialists in reading and math.

“We’ve got a lot of things going on that we think will help kids,” Olsen said.

Lakeside High this year started requiring ninth-graders to take a transition class. Teachers go over study skills, expectations and career options.

Larry Curtis, one of the transition teachers, said the class made him aware of the low reading levels among freshmen. He shared that with fellow teachers so they could tailor their teaching to the students’ needs.

Another new program is “credit retrieval.” In the past, when students failed a class like first-semester English, they would have to wait a full year to retake it. That put them a year behind because they would miss out on second-semester English, as well. Now students can go on to the next class in the series while simultaneously repeating the failed class as an elective.

Next year, Curtis will have one period a day to make calls and meet with parents to deal with any problems that come up with student attendance, motivation and behavior. Teachers previously haven’t had time to seek early intervention, he said.

Members of the community are stepping up to try to address the dropout problems as well.

LaSarte is with a group that formed in late 2004 to mentor and tutor students. She accompanies some parents during visits to the school to facilitate conversations between them and school officials.

“We need to give our students the full opportunity to an education. I think these children deserve it,” said LaSarte, who also oversees the tribe’s program to stop domestic violence.

When students act out in class, don’t do homework or are absent, LaSarte wants teachers to think about where those students are coming from, instead of rushing to discipline them.

Students may have spent all night taking care of siblings while their parents were out, LaSarte said. Some students come from homes with domestic violence and alcoholism.

“He’s there. Give him credit,” she said. LaSarte also took issue with the length of time students were suspended for disciplinary problems. Students who are absent more than the maximum allowed 10 days cannot earn credit for the semester, so the one- to five-day suspensions were significant, she said.

Olsen said the district now more frequently uses an alternative punishment, sending students to a “redirect room” where they are required to write essays about misbehavior and do schoolwork.LaSarte acknowledges the progress but says some problems persist.

Most of the teachers are white, she said. Many don’t live there, so they don’t know about the culture or social situations on the reservation, she said. Besides the difficult home situations, LaSarte said students sometimes attend days-long funerals to pay respects to a relative. Until recently, students were docked for the time they missed.

Comments like that don’t sit well with Curtis, the transition class teacher.

“To say the staff are not invested, that’s flat-out not right,” Curtis said.

Many teachers stay hours after school to help students with homework, he said. The school offers that assistance three times a week.

“They’re not doing that because they’re overpaid. They’re doing it because they’re concerned,” Curtis said.

Chief Allan, chairman of the tribe, said parents need to become more involved in education.

“The tribe and school can only do so much,” Allan said.

Some parents have asked tribal leaders to confront the school about allegations that certain teachers have made discriminatory remarks to students, he said.

“Is there racism in the school? There’s racism everywhere if you look for it,” Allan said. Parents need to teach their kids to use discrimination as a motivator instead of an excuse, he said.

Meanwhile, the tribe is working to bring new industries to the reservation, such as information technology, bioengineering and agribusiness, so that when students get advanced degrees, they have something to return home for.

“Our work force will have to change,” said Quanah Spencer, legislative director of the tribe. “It will have to be more professional; it will have to be more skilled.”

Olsen, the superintendent, is optimistic that the steps the district has taken will help bring down the number of dropouts.

“Look, we’re making progress, slowly,” he said. “Institutional progress is slow.”

For LaSarte, the future of the tribe is at stake. “If they aren’t getting the proper education – I mean, these are the future leaders of our tribe,” she said.

She asked who would lead. “What kind of lives will they have?”