"When Lenna Little Plume started second grade at Lewis and Clark Elementary in Missoula, Mont., in 2006, statistics suggested that she might have a bleak future.

Montana's American Indian families earn 25 percent less than the average family -- an economic reality that can put Indian children at a disadvantage from their very first day in school. By fourth grade, there was a 70 percent chance that Little Plume would fail proficiency tests in reading. By ninth grade, she would be four times more likely than her white classmates to drop out of school. And even if she stayed in, she might not excel: On average, Indian students in Montana score 30 percent lower in math and reading than their white peers at all grade levels.

As if the road ahead wasn't already rocky enough, Little Plume's family had just moved from the rural Blackfeet Indian Reservation and she felt intimidated by Missoula, the state's second-largest city. At first, she struggled. "I don't know what happened," the T-shirt-clad fifth-grader told me recently over her lunch break. "I kind of felt that people would judge me because I wasn't the same as them."

But Little Plume has excelled, thanks in part to an innovative set of state educational reforms that integrate the perspectives of Montana's Native cultures into everyday lesson plans, from science to English to history. "It's hard to explain," she says. "It just felt good how interested people were and how many questions they had.""

Get the Story:
Gabriel Furshong: Everyone benefits from Indian education (High Country News 6/7)