From Deseret News archives:
Navajos turn sights on schools
Navajo Nation steps forward and creates its own department of education
The Navajo Nation has taken a step towards putting education into its own hands by creating a department of education.
Leland Leonard, Navajo tribal education director, said there hasn't been much improvement for Navajo youths since No Child Left Behind became law in 2001. In 2004, the State Office of Education reported that just under 71 percent of American Indian youths in Utah graduated from high school.
"The states and the (Bureau of Indian Affairs) are not doing it," Leonard said. "This is an initiative of exercising our sovereignty, our inherited right to reform the educational system on the Navajo Nation."
Leonard said in July the Navajo Nation amended its Title 10 education code to create its own department of education and is also establishing a school board. The department will look at the "unique language and culture and incorporating those into the curriculum" over the next decade at about 180 schools in the Four Corners region.
"The Navajo language and character development, those are all essential tools our kids need to learn," he said.
"There would be a greater direction for cooperation as well as collaboration," she said. "A lot of this is based on sovereignty rights of tribes. It puts our American Indians in a unique status that will allow tribes to establish themselves as state departments of education."
Many tribes, she said, conduct their own research and analysis of data so they can better assist students and parents.
"The Navajo Nation is probably one of the largest tribes across the nation and is in the forefront as far as developing and establishing themselves as a tribal education department," she said.
Silversmith said every Utah tribe has an education director, and she believes that eventually, the others may move in the same direction as the Navajos. She pointed to a charter high school on the Uintah-Ouray Indian Reservation in eastern Utah as another empowering move.
Toni Turk, federal programs administrator for San Juan School District in southeastern Utah, said his district's graduation rate is about 95 percent. Last year, his district reported five dropouts three were American Indian, two were white.
Recent comments
The Navajo Nation creating their own department of education is a...
Walk in beauty | June 28, 2009 at 2:14 p.m.
It is with great pleasure that I read about the Native American...
Marion Newman Nichols, M.ED | June 28, 2009 at 11:55 a.m.
- Thing looking up for Utah small biz 11:53 a.m.
- 4 Jazz players make All-Star ballot 11:51 a.m.
- BYU football: Veteran Wyoming... 11:50 a.m.
- No bail for accused cop shooter 11:43 a.m.
- Post office to be named for Rex Lee 11:41 a.m.
- Halle Berry to receive Lansing award 11:32 a.m.
- Travoltas have 'own way' of coping 11:31 a.m.
- Rock Hall events salute Janis Joplin 11:30 a.m.
- Arrest warrant dropped for Quaids 11:28 a.m.
- Perry: Band not breaking up 11:27 a.m.
- Utah group finds homes for orphans
- Soccer MVPs know how to win
- Senators want food tax restored
- Jazz blow big lead, hang on
- Matheson gets no thanks from GOP
- Alta's Ohai is Ms. Soccer 2009
- Mitchell seeks to block witnesses
- Price injured; Miles has cast removed
- Y. tight ends talented tandem
- Utes get extra motivation
- House passes health care bill
239 - TCU showdown has big implications
184 - Lobo suspended
182 - Cougars crush hapless Cowboys
155 - Utah Jazz fall apart against Kings
131 - Senators want food tax restored
128 - Thousands protest health bill
119 - TCU 4th in AP poll; U. 16th, Y. 22nd
119 - RSL rallies to advance
103 - No 'backlash' for pioneers, gays analogy
102
Yawn. Another secular progressive politically-correct speaker for the U of U...
"A man is not a financial plan." As a higher education administrator, I see...
just hopin for two wins on saturday, tcu and rsl.
I guess she is only "good enough" to be the tournament MVP on the state...
So the BYU player deliberitly threw her elbow out, and the player that took...
To the skeptic, what a selfish person you are. What if the roles were...
I've dogged Jorgensen all season because he has underperformed so poorly--...
...Really? Not guilty? Doubt it. I'll be shocked if her testimony was fake.
From the Utah Taxpayers Association from 2008: Utah’s total tax and...
Say hello to unfair taxation. Taxes levied for a product you do not have or...


