Teaching American Indian languages in schools is a tool that educators say has been tested as a way of raising the achievement bar.

To that end, the State Board of Education is seeking $275,000 to preserve and revitalize Utah's indigenous languages to help narrow achievement gaps.

Utah's CRT state test results show a 45 percentage point difference between the performance of Navajo and Caucasian students on language arts, 48 percentage points on math and 57 percentage points on science, according to data state associate superintendent Brenda Hales presented to the Education Appropriations Committee Thursday.

The Education Board wants to include San Juan and Uintah School District's Ute Indian population in the proposed program. The Northern Band of Shoshone, Goshute and the Skull Valley tribe would be included in the future, under the proposal, which came out of the governor's fall Native American summit, Hales said.

"Take a look year after year at low test scores and a 50 percent dropout rate, we have a whole generation of students we're going to lose if we don't start making immediate attempts to help them," Hales said.

Following a pilot program in San Juan School District where students were immersed in Navajo Language classes, the gap closed to 15 percentage points in language arts, 23 percentage points in math and 10 percent in science.

Forrest Cuch, director of the Utah Office of Indian Affairs, said culture is also at stake and that Utah's five native nations need to work together with the state and federal governments to preserve them.

"We're losing our languages," Cuch said. "The federal government has come forward and Utah tribes would like the state to come forward."

In addition to the language funding, Sen. Ross Romero, D-Salt Lake, said he's requesting $350,000 to partner with KUED on an educational program highlighting Utah's five nations — Ute, Piute, Shoshone, Goshute and Navajo.

Salt Lake City School District multicultural director Janice Jones Schroeder passionately lobbied this past week for money to fund the language program. Schroeder, an American Indian, said the language of her ancestors has been lost, and with it part of herself.

"The more you deny bills like this you deny us as human beings," Schroeder said. "We're tired of being marginalized ... Our kids are not succeeding nationwide, in Utah and the schools I work for ... because we've been denied those rights ... to be who we are."

Committee Chairman Sen. Howard Stephenson wondered whether language preservation was the way to go, or if $275,000 could be better spent otherwise.

"When it's not spoken in the home ... how do we expect to require those students or encourage those students to keep that language alive?" he said. "Is it a reasonable expectation? Is it going be a useful language, or is it going to be something 100 years from now ... it's still gone?"

Responded Schroeder: "To me, every human being is worth more than $275,000."

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