Native Americans in the School System: Family, Community, and Academic Achievement

Carol Ward examines persistent dropout rates among Native American youth, which remain high despite overall increases in Native adult education attainment in the last twenty years. Focusing on the experiences of the Northern Cheyenne nation, she evaluates historical, ethnographic, and quantitative data to determine the causes of these educational failures, and places this data in an economic, political, and cultural context. She shows that the rate of failure in this community is the result of conflicting approaches to socializing youth, the struggle between 'native capital' and 'human capital' development systems. With high rates of unemployment, poverty, and school dropouts, the Northern Cheyenne reservation provides some important lessons as Native Americans pursue greater educational success. This volume will be of use to policy makers, instructors of comparative education, Native American studies, sociology and anthropology.