"I had the pleasure last week of welcoming National Indian Education Association members to Oklahoma City for the association’s 43rd annual conference.

It was great that the conference was in Oklahoma. Our state is an epicenter of Native American culture and tradition.

With 130,000 students, Oklahoma has the largest Native American student population in the nation, and we offer the largest number of Indian education programs.

Oklahoma Native American students have achieved encouraging academic results the past few years. These students have scored above national averages for their peer group on tests such as the ACT, the SAT and in Advanced Placement coursework and examinations. The most recent National Indian Education Study shows that for the 2011 administration of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, Oklahoma’s Native American students in fourth- and eighth-grade scored at or near the top of their peer groups and above the national average for their peer group in reading and math. While score gaps remain, this trend is truly encouraging and shows that many of the strategies utilized to improve performance are successful."

Get the Story:
Janet Barresi: Meeting the needs of Indian educators (The Edmond Sun 10/22)