Plateau Indian Ways with Words: The Rhetorical Tradition of the Tribes of the Inland Pacific Northwest

7. Reassessing the Achievement Gap

157 Reassessing the Achievement Gap Would it not be good if you wanted to talk with my brother, or if you wanted to talk with our Great Chief? If you knew how to write and wanted to talk you could send it to him on paper and he would know your heart. Would it not be good then to have schools among you?”1 Thus argued General Joel Palmer, superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Oregon Territory, at the Treaty Council at Walla Walla in 1855. General Palmer did not have to convince the Plateau Indians of the virtues of literacy and schooling. Like multilingualism, education had always been much prized in Plateau Indian lifeways, as a means of cultural transmission but also a mechanism for revitalizing change. In the early and mid-1800s, parents often voluntarily sent a child to boarding school back East or to mission schools to learn English and American ways; Lawyer (Nez Perce), Spokan Garry (Spokan), and Chief Moses (Mid-Columbia) are prime examples of this common practice. Literacy in English was not just a tool for assimilating into white society, as General Palmer assumed, but also a tool for conserving Native sovereignty, opening up a pathway for Indian activism later in the nineteenth century. Whether informally transmitted or formally taught in institutions (a Euro-American distinction , not a Native one), education modernized the ethnie, keeping the culture 7 “ 158 • Reassessing the Achievement Gap vibrant for future generations. Their divergent goals for education—assimilation and cultural genocide versus preservation and revitalization—ultimately raised the larger question, Who would control Native education, the federal government or local tribes? Also evident in General Palmer’s remarks is his assumption of EuroAmerican cultural normativity—and, by implication, superiority. Although the Plateau Indians traditionally valued language pluralism, they were about to be subjected to federal English-only policy for the next 170 years. While the Plateau Indians sought to better the lives of the next generation through higher education , their educational opportunities were largely limited to an elementary education , “elementary” in terms of grade level and a curriculum focused on domestic and manual labor training. And although Plateau Indians believed that each child learned at her own pace, taught and tested by life experience, federal and state policies would mandate that all students would be taught so-called objective knowledge and measured by standardized tests, leaving behind children of color and children living in poverty.2 And thus was born the so-called achievement gap, yet another permutation of “the Indian problem.” This chapter examines that gap qualitatively but also critically from the standpoints of discourses of Indian-ness. I then turn to the long-standing conversation among educators about how to address the gap. Most agree that the keys to Native achievement are cultural relevance and a positive Native identity. But I question what is culturally relevant today, for which Native identity, and within what educational context: Native-run schools and colleges, public schools on or near reservations, white-dominant schools, and white-dominant universities. I add my own contribution to this conversation in very practical terms, offering examples of curriculum and approaches that honor the rhetorical sovereignty of Native students at all levels. Constructing the Achievement Gap In general terms “the achievement gap” refers to the disparity in academic achievement between African American, American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/ AN), and Latino/a students and their white and Asian-American peers as well as between students from low-income families and those from middle- and upper-income families.3 The gap is documented by various measures: test scores, high school graduation rates, and college entry and completion rates.4 AI/AN test scores are among the lowest in Washington state, even when scores are disaggregated for race and income. Specifically, on state writing tests from academic years 2007–8 to 2011–12, in all testing grades 4, 7, and 10, low-income AI/AN students Reassessing the Achievement Gap • 159 scored the lowest of all other low-income groups (including white, Asian, Black/ African American, Hispanic/Latino, and Pacific Islanders). In all groups not identified as low income, AI/AN students scored the lowest.5 Furthermore, the scores of AI/AN students not from low-income homes nonetheless • were comparable to the scores of low-income whites and Pacific Islanders in grade 4, from 2009 to 2012 (21); • were only slightly better than the scores of...