COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT

Successful schools are not sustained merely on the dedication and skill of teachers and administrators. Successful schools require the concerted involvement of many other players - parents, community members, government agencies, nonprofit organizations, and businesses. This is especially true of schools serving American Indian and Alaska Native students. How to foster greater community involvement in local schools is an important element of school management and beyond the scope of this report; however, certain key concepts and practices come to mind within the context of American Indian/Alaska Native education.

Parental and Community Involvement

Parent and community involvement cannot effectively take place unless there is a spirit of "mutual accommodation "between the student and his family, and the teachers and school (Reyhner interview, April 24, 2001). Schools do not exist in a vacuum, notes Yazzie (2000). Schools and communities need to come together to design, implement, and support such programs.

Lack of parental involvement in local schools is often explained by stereotypical and unsubstantiated hypotheses, such as claiming that American Indian and Alaska Native parents "don't care about education." In reality, one of the major research findings is that parents "being misinterpreted by mainstream school personnel is the norm " ((Robinson-Zanartu & Majel-Dixon, 1996).

This notion of mutual accommodation extends to curriculum, which also influences community involvement. If American Indian and Alaska Native culture is incorporated in an experiential learning environment where students are active participants, then elders, parents, and other community members will likely be involved in the school as their knowledge and expertise are valued and shared. ²⁰

Finally, the parents ' own childhood school experiences must be taken into account when considering parental involvement and establishing an environment of mutual accommodation. Instances of school administrations deliberately circumventing the involvement of the local American Indian/Alaska Native community in important decision-making sustain a climate of mistrust (Robinson-Zanartu & Majel-Dixon, 1996).

Schools and communities need to be engaged in shared leadership, where the school shares decision-making with the community rather than seeking advice from the community (Kushman et al. , 1999). Shared leadership will help mitigate the effects of frequent staff turnover if the community shares in ownership of educational reform.

Mechanisms to Facilitate Community Involvement

In a three-year study of educational reform, the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory and the University of Alaska Fairbanks examined seven rural Alaska communities engaged in the Alaska Onward to Excellence (AOTE) reform process. ²¹ Among other findings, the study illuminated the challenges and successes of fostering greater community involvement in schools. Researchers found that community members engage more fully if reform is built from the inside out rather than completely from external reform models. Moreover, "many parents and community members are content to leave education to the educators" unless they have "a compelling goal deeply rooted in community values, like preserving language and cultural knowledge" (Kushman et al. , 1999, p. vii). Finally, "schools in small rural communities cannot achieve their educational goals in isolation from the well-being of the surrounding community" ((Kushman et al. , 1999, p. viii).

Tribal Education Departments (TEDs) are another mechanism to engender greater involvement in schools. ²² TEDs administer scholarships, supervise Indian education programs, develop curricula and teacher training programs, provide leadership and advocacy, foster cooperative working relationships among different agencies and organizations, and address core problems in Indian education.

One of the most successful TEDs is that of the Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation in South Dakota, which has a combination of BIA and public schools. An independent evaluation of the program found major improvements in high school attendance and dropout rates (NARF Legal Review, 1999) . The Rosebud Sioux had formal authority over students belonging to the tribe, making it easier to monitor students as they moved between various schools.

The Comprehensive Centers Network (CCN) has 15 centers across the nation, including the Alaska Comprehensive Regional Assistance Center (AKRAC) in Juneau. CCN works with disadvantaged schools to improve educational programs and increase community involvement in local schools. Each center tailors its services to the population it serves. In Making a Difference for Children in Schools, CCN highlights the efforts of the AKRAC, which serves Alaska' s highest-poverty schools, actively promoting local programs and policies that support learning for students most at risk of academic failure. In communities where AKRAC has helped create partnerships among parents, teachers, administrators, elders, and others to take more ownership of their schools, student performance reportedly has improved and greater trust exists between school staff and the community. ²³

The most effective efforts to increase community involvement in public schools begin at the local level. When communities are successful and share their stories, others benefit. Indigenous Community-Based Education (Reyhner, 2000) describes how indigenous peoples from North and South America, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe have worked to take control of their schools, particularly in the development of language immersion programs. Generally considered the most successful, the Maori developed a program that extends from preschool through the university level. Hawaiian language activists, in turn, credit the Maori's efforts with inspiring the structure of a Hawaiian language immersion program. These "grassroots" programs come from local communities where there has been greater parental involvement and trust. The World Indigenous People ' s Conference on Education, held every two to three years, also provides a forum for an exchange of best practices and current research in indigenous education.
(See the Web site: http://www.wipcehawaii.org/papers/index.html).

²⁰ Examples include the incorporation of Yup'ik culture into classroom education, as described by Jerry Lipka and Ester Ilutsik; also the Hawaiian immersion program, where parents must also learn the Hawaiian language and volunteer in school, among others.

²¹ In particular, Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory cited the village of Quinhagak as an exceptional community that had created and sustained a Yup'ik first-language program for over a decade.

²² In a Native American Rights Fund list of TEDs in the United States, only Metlakatla was listed in Alaska. The Metlakatla TED focuses on higher education, unlike most TEDs in the Lower 48 that focus on K-12. The limited territorial jurisdiction of Alaska Native groups would likely affect the structure of TEDs, but would not necessarily preclude them from operating TEDs.

²³ The CC Network was created in 1995 by the U.S. Department of Education to provide comprehensive training and technical assistance to teachers, schools, tribes, community-based organizations, and other recipients of Title XIII ESEA funds. Improving America's Schools Act of 1994 (IASA), authorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which combines the functions of 48 categorical technical assistance efforts into fifteen Comprehensive Regional Assistance Centers. (http://www.akrac.k12.ak.us/)

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