Study of Alaska Rural Systemic Reform Final Report

James W. Kushman
Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory
Ray Barnhardt
University of Alaska Fairbanks

with contributions
by other case study authors

This research was supported by funds from the National Institute on Education of At-Risk Students, Office of Educational Research & Improvement, U.S. Department of Education. The opinions and points of view expressed in this report do not necessarily reflect the position of the funder and no official endorsement should be inferred. 

This research involved the work of a learning community of more than 30 university and laboratory researchers and community researchers from seven rural Alaska communities, as listed below-these different voices and perspectives enriched our case studies.

Aniak/Kalskag (Kuspuk School District)
Bruce Miller; Senior Researcher, Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory
Polossa Evans; Teacher Aide/Upriver Secretary, Lower Kalskag
Samantha John; Community Member, Aniak
Stan Lujan; Assistant to the Superintendent, Kuspuk SD
Bertha Passamika; Library Aide, Aniak
Mike Savage; School Board Member, Lower Kalskag

Klawock (Klawock City School District)
Jim Kushman; Senior Researcher, Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory
Donna Jackson; Community Member, Klawock
Ann James; Teacher, Klawock
Rob Steward; School Counselor, Klawock

Koyukuk (Yukon-Koyukuk School District)
Beth Leonard; Senior Researcher, University of Alaska Fairbanks
Tim dine; District Office, Yukon-Koyukuk SD
Sarah Dayton; School Staff/Community Member, Koyukuk
Charles Esmailka, District Office, Yukon-Koyukuk SD
Heidi Imhof; Teacher, Koyukuk

New Stuyahok (Southwest Region School District)
Jerry Lipka; Senior Researcher, University of Alaska Fairbanks
Natalia Bond; Secretary, New Stuyahok
Margie Hastings; Teacher, New Stuyahok
Ron Mebius; Principal, New Stuyahok

Quinhagak (Lower Kuskokwim School District)
Carol Barnhardt; Senior Researcher, University of Alaska Fairbanks
John Mark; Principal, Quinhagak
Susan Murphy; District Office, Lower Kuskokwim SD
Nita Rearden; Language Development Specialist, Bethel
Dora Strunk; Teacher, Quinhagak

Tatitlek (Chugach School District)
Sarah Landis; Senior Researcher, Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory
Joan Shaughnessy, Senior Researcher, Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory
Anna Gregorieff; Community Member, Tatitlek
Dennis Moore; Head Teacher, Tatitlek
Roger Sampson; Superintendent Chugach SD

Tuluksak (Yupiit School District)
Oscar Kawagley; Senior Researcher, University of Alaska Fairbanks
Ray Barnhardt; Senior Researcher, University of Alaska Fairbanks
Freda Alexie; Bilingual Aide, Tuluksak
Sarah Owen; School Secretary, Tuluksak
John Weise; Superintendent Yupiit SD

We would like to thank Robert E. Blum, Program Director for NWREL's School Improvement Program, for his support and help as project director and his relentless pursuit of educational excellence.

Kelly Tonsmiere and Roxy Kohler of the Alaska Staff Development Network provided invaluable assistance in organizing events to bring our community of learners and researchers together to plan and analyze data. Christine Crooks performed a wonderful job of capturing the sights and sounds of several case study communities through the production of several videos.

Sue Mitchell of Inkworks provided the needed editorial assistance as did members of NWREL's School Improvement Program support team, including Meg Waters and Linda Gipe. We thank Denise Crabtree and Sue Mitchell for cover design.

From the National Institute of Education of At-Risk Students, we are grateful to Beth Fine and Karen Suagee for their help, support, and personal interest in this study.

Finally, we are forever grateful to the educators and community members who allowed us access to their communities so that all Alaska educators can better understand how to create educational success for rural Alaska students.

Jim Kushman
Ray Barnhardt
C0-Principal Investigators

Acknowledgements
Contents
Executive Summary
Chapter 1. A Long Journey Begins at Home

A Brief History of Educational Reform in Rural Alaska
Alaska Case Studies
Participatory Research Methods
Alaska Onward to Excellence
Community Voice
Organization of This Report

Chapter 2. Case Study Executive Summaries

Kuinerrarmiut Elitnaurviat: The School of the People of Quinhagak
Closing the Gap: Education and Change in New Stuyahok
A Long Journey: Alaska Onward to Excellence in Yupiit Tuluksak Schools
Community Voice and Educational Change: Aniak and Kalskag Villages
Creating a Strong, Healthy Community: Ella B. Vemetti School, Koyukuk
Making School Work in a Changing World: Tatitlek Community School
It Takes More Than Good Intentions to Build a Partnership: Klawock City Schools

Chapter 3. Cross-Case Findings and Conclusions

Sustaining Reform
Shared Leadership
Building Relationships and Trust
Enacting New Roles
Creating Coherent Reforms
Creating Healthy Communities

Chapter 4. Recommendations
References

Report Released on Alaska Rural Systemic Reform in Education

[Following is the "Executive Summary" of the final report from a three-year study of rural school reform conducted by the NW Regional Educational Lab and UAF, in cooperation with seven rural communities and school districts in Alaska. Copies of the full report may be obtained from the NWREL, or from the Center for Cross-Cultural Studies at UAF.]

This report presents the results of a three-year study of educational reform in rural Alaska communities and schools. The research revolves around seven case studies in villages and school districts spanning western, central, and southeast Alaska. These are primarily subsistence communities serving Eskimo and Indian students. Each community had embarked on a reform process called Alaska Onward to Excellence (AOTE) that strives to create educational partnerships between schools and the communities they serve.

The study examined how educational partnerships are formed and sustained and how they ultimately benefit Alaska Native students. Trying to understand the systemic nature of educational change was a focal point of the study. In rural Alaska, systemic change means fully integrating the indigenous knowledge system and the formal education system. For rural school districts, this means engaging communities deeply in education; fully integrating Native culture, language, and ways of knowing into the curriculum; and meeting Alaska's state-driven academic standards and benchmarks-all at the same time.

Each case study was led by a researcher from the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory or University of Alaska Fairbanks who worked with a small team of school practitioners and community members who participated fully in the research. The case studies tell what happened as rural schools embarked on a change journey through AOTE and other reform activities, paying attention to important educational accomplishments and setbacks, community voice, and the experiences and learning of students. The cases include qualitative and quantitative evidence, although hard data on student performance was limited and often inappropriate to the educational goals pursued by communities.

Through a cross-case analysis, six reform themes and major findings emerged:

• Sustaining reform: It is easy to start new reforms but difficult to keep up the momentum in order to bring about deep changes in teaching and learning. Our case studies show that sustaining serious educational reform over the long run is a difficult but not impossible task in rural Alaska. There were a variety of scenarios, including communities that could not successfully launch an AOTE reform effort, those which had many starts and stops on a long and winding road towards important community goals, and at least one exceptional community (Quinhagak) that has been able to create and sustain a Yup'ik first-language program for more than a decade. The most significant barrier to sustaining reforms is persistent teacher, principal, and superintendent turnover. Turnover derails reform efforts and leads to a cycle of reinventing school every two or three years. A process like AOTE can help alleviate the turnover problem by creating leadership within the community, especially when respected community elders and other leaders are brought into the process. But to seriously sustain reforms, districts and local communities need to develop talent from within so that teachers have strong roots in the communities where they teach.

   

• Shared leadership: Leadership needs to be defined as shared decision making with the community rather than seeking advice from the community. Strong and consistent superintendent leadership was an important factor in moving reforms forward in some of these small communities and districts. However, school leaders must believe and act on the principle of shared decision making in order to engage the community through long term educational changes that benefit students. Shared leadership creates the community ownership that will move educational changes through frequent staff turnover. School leaders must view a process like AOTE as a tool for developing community engagement and leadership rather than a school program that seeks the community's advice.

   

• Building relationships and trust: Personal relationships and trust are at the heart of successful reform, and processes like AOTE are only effective when good relationships exist between school personnel and community members. Strong relationships are based on a mutual caring for children and cross-cultural understanding rather than a specific reform agenda. In small communities, personal relationships are more central than formal decision processes as the way to get things done. A key teacher, principal, leadership team member, parent, or elder who is highly respected in the community can spark the change process. It is these respected people and their relationships with others that help the whole community develop an understanding of and connection to the principles of an external reform model like AOTE. Too much emphasis can be placed on process and procedure from the outside and not enough on building the relationships and trust from the inside. Reformers in rural settings might fare better if they worked to fully understand the local context and build reforms from the inside out rather than relying solely on external reform models.

   

• Enacting new roles: Educators and community members are often stuck in old roles while educational partnerships require new behaviors and ways of thinking. While it is easy to talk about creating partnerships, changing traditional roles is a learning process for both school personnel and parents. The mindset that parent and teacher domains are separate-and should remain so-hampers family involvement efforts. Our case studies reveal that without a compelling goal deeply rooted in community values, like preserving language and cultural knowledge, many parents and community members are content to leave education to the educators. Yet in small rural settings, there are many avenues for parents, elders, and other community members to be involved in school as volunteers, teacher aides, other paid workers, and leadership team members. Rural schools need to create a range of parent involvement strategies appropriate for small communities. Historical divisions between school personnel and Alaska Native parents still need to be overcome. A partnership process like AOTE must strive to rekindle the spirit of a people who feel marginalized by the education system rather than part of it.

   

• Creating coherent reforms: Small rural communities and school districts need help in sorting through many ongoing reforms in order to create a more unified approach to educational and community change. There are many independent reform activities in these communities with few connections. AOTE was a positive force in most communities because it helped set a clear direction and vision for student success and provided opportunities for school personnel and community members to think about and talk about how everyone should work together to educate children in a changing world. AOTE was less successful as a force for substantially changing teaching and learning. Here there was often confusion or lethargy about taking action because there were already so many educational programs in place. How AOTE fit into this picture was unclear to participants. In rural Alaska, there is a boom or bust cycle of programs related to curriculum, instruction, assessment, and technology. Yet some cases showed more unity of purpose and were able to progress towards reform goals, make significant changes in educational practice, and see students improve. These places often exhibited the enabling characteristics described above including stability of school leaders and teachers, shared decision making which empowers communities while expecting improved student results, a climate of trust and caring, and the ability to find the human and material resources to achieve goals like bilingualism. Many elements have to come together for classroom-level changes to occur, not the least of which are creativity, hard work, and time.

   

• Creating healthy communities: Schools in small rural communities cannot achieve their educational goals in isolation from the well-being of the surrounding community. The AOTE visioning process brought out the deeper hopes, dreams, and fears of communities that are trying to preserve their identity and ways of life in a global and technological world. AOTE resulted in districts and communities challenging themselves to simultaneously achieve high cultural standards and high academic standards as a means to improved community health. People also expect the education system to help young people respect their elders, respect themselves, stay sober and drug free, and learn self-discipline. There was a clear sense that education and community health are inextricably linked. Education is viewed as more than achieving specific academic standards and benchmarks. While the desire is there to integrate Native knowledge and Western schooling, educators in rural Alaska do not yet have all the tools and know-how to achieve this end. More resources are needed to create culturally-appropriate teacher resources. Proposed funding cuts to Alaska's rural schools could threaten further progress. Nevertheless, our case studies offer many positive examples of bicultural and bilingual education that can create more holistic and healthy communities in rural Alaska, with the added benefit of improved student achievement.

The following recommendations are offered to educators and policy makers based on the study. While directed to the Alaska audience, these recommendations apply in large part to rural schools and communities anywhere in the country.

1. Stabilize professional staff in rural schools.
2. Provide role models and support for creating a positive self-image to which students can aspire.
3. Parent involvement needs to be treated as a partnership with more shared decision making.
4. Implement teacher orientation, mentoring, and induction programs in rural schools.
5. Eliminate testing requirements that interfere with language immersion programs.
6. Strategic planning needs to extend to the next generation or more (20-plus years) at the state and local levels.
7. Strengthen curriculum support for culturally responsive, place-based approaches that integrate local and global academic and practical learning.
8. Encourage the development of multiple paths for students to meet the state standards.
9. Extend the cultural standards and Native ways of knowing and teaching into teacher preparation programs.
10. Sustainable reform needs to be a bottom up rather than a top down process and has to have a purpose beyond reform for reform's sake.
11. Alaska Onward to Excellence (AOTE) should be put forward as a means (process) rather than an end in itself (program).
12. Form a coalition of organizations to sponsor an annual conference on rural education that keeps reform issues up to date and forward reaching.

These findings and recommendations are discussed more thoroughly in the body of the report.

This report presents a study of educational reform in rural Alaska Native communities. Researchers from the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory and the University of Alaska Fairbanks collaborated on a three-year study of Alaska communities and schools that were involved in varying reform efforts, including Alaska Onward to Excellence (AOTE). This final report presents the major study findings and recommendations. It is intended for educators and policymakers in Alaska and other regions of the country who serve rural, indigenous communities. Accompanying this report are the seven case studies, which provide the qualitative and quantitative database on which conclusions and recommendations are based.

Rural Alaska Native communities face new educational challenges. Monetary support for rural schools is eroding within Alaska while reformers everywhere are calling for higher academic standards. Low test scores, harsh teaching conditions, and poor community health are, unfortunately, what sticks in many people's minds when they think of education in the Alaska bush. Certainly there are educational problems, but the underlying issues are not well understood. We do know that part of the problem is a dissonance between two complex systems for educating Alaska Native students: the indigenous knowledge rooted in Alaska Native culture, language, and traditions and the formal education system designed by others to serve rural Alaska (Barnhardt & Kawagley, 1998; Kawagley & Barnhardt, 1999; Lipka, 1998). Research is needed to help us better understand how to bridge this gap and create a more congruent educational system.

By most indicators, the maturity level of the formal education system in Alaska is at the adolescent stage. The constantly shifting array of legislative and regulatory policies impacting schools make it clear that they are still in an evolving, emergent state that is far from equilibrium. This is especially true in rural Alaska, where the chronic disparities in academic performance, ongoing dissonance between school and community, and yearly turnover of personnel place the educational systems in a constant state of uncertainty and reconstruction. Schools are still struggling to form an identity and role for themselves as they relate to the educational needs of rural communities.

The continuous search for new personnel, each with their own externally derived strategy for educational reform, leaves the educational system vulnerable to a never-ending cycle of buzzword solutions to complex problems. Each is tried for a year or two without any cumulative beneficial effect, only to start the process over again as personnel rotate through the districts, taking the institutional memory with them. Within the last decade alone, rural education in one corner of the state or another has been subjected to variations on mastery learning, Madeline Hunter techniques, outcome-based education, total quality learning, site-based management, strategic planning, and many other imported quick fixes to long-standing endemic problems, right up to the current emphasis on "standards." The short-term lifespan of these well-intentioned but poorly thought through and ill-fated responses to rural school problems has only added more confusion and turmoil to a system that is already teetering on the edge of chaos.

From a systemic school reform perspective, however, there are advantages to working with systems that are operating "at the edge of chaos," in that they are more receptive and susceptible to innovation and change as they seek equilibrium and order in their functioning (Waldrop, 1994). Such is the case for many of the educational systems in rural Alaska, for historical as well as unique contextual reasons, and it is to understanding the dynamics of systemic reform in such a context that the rural Alaska case studies are directed.

By most any standards, nearly all of the 586,000 square miles and 245 communities that make up the state of Alaska would be classified as "rural." Approximately 40% of the 600,000+ people living in Alaska are spread out in 240 small, isolated communities ranging in size from 25 to 5,000, with the remaining 60% concentrated in a handful of "urban" centers. Anchorage, with approximately 50% of the total population, is the only potential metropolitan area in the state. Of the rural communities, over 200 are remote, predominantly Native (Aleut, Eskimo, and Indian)

villages in which 70% of the 90,000 Alaska Natives live. The vast majority of the Native people in rural Alaska continue to rely on subsistence hunting and fishing for a significant portion of their livelihood, coupled with a slowly evolving cash-based economy. Few permanent jobs exist in most communities. The percentage of people living in "poverty" in rural communities in Alaska ranges from 15% to 50%, with the average cash income under $20,000.

From the time of the arrival of the Russian fur traders in the late 1700s up to the influx of miners in the early 1900s, the relationship between most of the Native people of Alaska and education in the form of schooling (which was reserved primarily for the immigrant population at that time) may be characterized as two mutually independent systems with little if any contact, as illustrated by the following diagram:

 Before the epidemics that wiped out over 60% of the Alaska Native population in the early part of the 20th century, most Native people continued to live a traditional self-sufficient lifestyle with only limited contact with fur traders and missionaries (Napoleon, 1991). The oldest of the Native elders of today grew up in that traditional cultural environment, and they still retain the deep knowledge and high language that they acquired during their early childhood years. They are also the first generation to have experienced significant exposure to schooling, many of them having been orphaned as a result of the epidemics. Schooling, however, was strictly a one-way process at that time, mostly in distant boarding schools, with the main purpose being to assimilate Native people into Western society. The missionaries and school teachers were often one and the same. Given the total disregard (and often derogatory attitude) toward the indigenous knowledge and belief systems in the Native communities, the relationship between the two systems was limited to a one-way flow of communication and interaction up through the 1950s, and thus can be characterized as follows:

By the early 1 960s, elementary schools had been established in most Native communities, administered by either the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs or the Alaska State-Operated School System, both centrally administered systems with the primary goal of bringing Alaska Natives into mainstream society. The history of inadequate performance by the two school systems, however, coupled with the ascendant economic and political power of Alaska Natives, led to the dissolution of the centralized systems in the mid-1970s and the establishment of 21 locally controlled regional school districts to take over the responsibility of providing education in rural communities. That placed the rural school systems serving Native communities under local political control for the first time, while concurrently a new system of secondary education was established that students could access in their home community. A class-action lawsuit brought against the State of Alaska on behalf of rural Alaska Native secondary students led to the creation of 126 village high schools to serve those rural communities where before, high school students had to leave home to attend boarding schools.

These two steps, along with the development of bilingual and bicultural education programs under state and federal funding and the influx of a limited number of Native teachers, opened the doors for the beginning of two-way interaction between the schools and the Native communities they served, as illustrated by the following diagram depicting rural education in the mid-1990s (when the current round of systemic reform initiatives were initiated):

Although the creation of the regional school districts (along with several single-site and borough districts) and the village high schools had provided rural communities with an opportunity to exercise a greater degree of operational control over the educational systems operating in rural Alaska, it did not lead to any appreciable change in what is taught and how it is taught in those systems. The continuing inability of schools to be effectively integrated into the fabric of many rural communities after over 20 years of local control pointed to the critical need for a broad-based systemic approach to addressing educational conditions in rural Alaska.

Despite the structural and political reforms that took place in the 1970s and 1980s, rural schools have continued to produce a dismal performance record by most any measure. Native communities continue to experience significant social, cultural, and educational problems, with most indicators placing communities and schools in rural Alaska at the bottom of the scale nationally. While there has been some limited representation of local cultural elements in the schools (e.g., story-telling, basket-making, sled-building, songs and dances), it has been at a fairly superficial level with only token consideration given to the significance of those elements as integral parts of a larger complex adaptive cultural system that continues to imbue people's lives with purpose and meaning outside the school setting. Though there has been some minimum level of interaction between the two systems, functionally they have remained worlds apart, with the professional staff overwhelmingly non-Native (94% statewide) and with a turnover rate averaging 30 to 40% annually.

These disparities and discontinuities were evident to the Native leadership within a few years of having gained local control of their schools, as indicated by the following observations of Eben Hopson, mayor of the North Slope Borough, which had taken over its school system in the early 1970s:

Today, we have control over our educational system. We must now begin to assess whether or not our school system is truly becoming an Inupiat school system, reflecting Inupiat educational philosophies, or, are we in fact only theoretically exercising "political control" over an educational system that continues to transmit white urban culture? Political control over our schools must include "professional control" as well, if our academic institutions are to become an Inupiat school system able to transmit our Inupiat traditional values and ideals. (1977)

In 1994, the Alaska Natives Commission, a federal/state task force that had been established to conduct a comprehensive review of programs and policies impacting Native people, released a report calling for Alaska Native people to be more directly involved in all matters impacting their lives and communities, including education. The long history of failure of external efforts to manage the lives and needs of Native people made it clear that outside interventions were not the solution to the problems and that Native communities themselves would have to shoulder a major share of the responsibility for carving out a new future. At the same time, existing government policies and programs would need to relinquish control and provide latitude and support for Native people to address the issues in their own way, including the opportunity to learn from their mistakes (Alaska Federation of Natives, 1994).

With these considerations in mind, recent rural education reform initiatives have sought to increase communication and bridge the gap between the formal education systems and the indigenous communities in which they are situated. In so doing, current reform initiatives are seeking to bring the two systems together in a manner that promotes a synergistic relationship. In such a relationship, the two previously separate systems join to form a more comprehensive holistic system that can better serve all students, not just Alaska Natives, while at the same time preserving the essential integrity of each component of the larger overlapping system. The new interconnected, interdependent, integrated system that educational reformers are seeking to achieve today may be depicted as follows:

Manuel Gomez (1977), in his analysis of the notion of systemic change in education, has indicated that "educational reform is essentially a cultural transformation process that requires organizational learning to occur: changing teachers is necessary, but not sufficient. Changing the organizational culture of the school or district is also necessary." This statement applies to both the formal education system and the indigenous knowledge systems in rural Alaska. To achieve the kind of "systemic integration" outlined above, the culture of the education system as reflected in rural schools must undergo radical change to become more accessible to the community, while at the same time the indigenous knowledge systems need to be documented, articulated, and validated in new ways if the local culture is to become a significant part of the school curriculum (Kawagley & Barnhardt, 1999; Lipka, Mohatt, & Ciulistet, 1998). The challenge for reform advocates is to identify the units of change that will produce the most results with the least effort by targeting the elements of the system that can serve as the catalysts around which the emergent order of a new system can coalesce (Peck & Carr, 1997). Once these critical agents of change have been appropriately identified, a "gentle nudge" in the right places can produce powerful changes throughout the system (Jones, 1994).

In response to these challenges, three major systemic reform efforts are currently underway in rural schools throughout Alaska, each with the goal of improving educational performance, but each with strategies that engage the reform process in different ways. The focus of the case studies that follow is on the evolution and impact of the first of the three initiatives to be implemented-Alaska Onward to Excellence (AOTE). The critical catalyst for reform embedded in the AOTE planning process has been engaging the community as a key player in shaping and monitoring the direction of the education system. This is evident from the rationale outlined by Tonsmeire in the original proposal to implement Onward to Excellence in rural Alaska:

In this proposal we will outline a comprehensive, collaborative, integrated effort to use what works to help Alaskan educators assist rural, at risk children and youth in overcoming the barriers to high performance. This effort will focus on strategies to improve student performance in consideration of the context in which at risk children live and from which they come to school. Solutions that work for poor, minority children can and are found not in the school alone, but in the interactions among the school, the child, and the home. Therefore, we know this effort must draw upon, not ignore, the social, cultural, and economic context of home and community. (Tonsmeire, 1991)

From its inception, AOTE has been envisioned as a bottom-up systemic reform process aimed at building community ownership in what occurs in the educational system.

The second major systemic reform initiative to have a significant impact on schooling in rural Alaska - the Alaska Quality Schools Initiative (AQSI)- had its origins as an Alaskanized version of a national school reform effort, driven by the establishment of content standards, coupled with a legislatively mandated accountability system involving qualifying and benchmark exams for students, performance standards for professional staff, and accreditation standards and report cards for schools. The Alaska version of Goals 2000 has also placed an emphasis on parent, family, business and community involvement. Although the AQSI started out through the Alaska Department of Education as a carrot-based reform strategy with voluntary participation, it soon evolved into a stick-based approach as the political winds that were generated under the banner of "accountability" blew across the Alaska educational landscape. Under the new mandates, the diversity of individual, community, and cultural needs in rural Alaska tend to have little room for expression in the push for standardization through "a results-based system of school accountability" (Alaska Department of Education, 1998).

While the Alaska Onward to Excellence strategy has been focused on promoting community participation in defining educational priorities at the local level, and the Alaska Quality Schools Initiative has emphasized mandating standards for accountability from the state and national levels, the third systemic reform initiative - the Alaska Rural Systemic Initiative (AKRSI) - has pursued a strategy of engaging all levels in a coordinated effort aimed at systemic integration between the formal education system and the indigenous knowledge system of the community (Kawagley, 1995). The key catalyst for change around which the ALKRSI educational reform strategy has been constructed has been the "Alaska Standards for Culturally Responsive Schools," developed by Alaska Native educators working in the formal education system coupled with the Native elders as the culture-bearers for the indigenous knowledge system (Assembly of Alaska Native Educators, 1998). From these standards has grown an emphasis on "pedagogy of place," in which traditional ways of knowing and teaching are used to engage students in academic learning by building on the surrounding physical and cultural environment. Included in this process have been initiatives that engage students in learning through Native science camps and fairs, cultural atlases, place name maps, family histories, language immersion programs, subsistence activities, survival training, oral histories, elders-in-residence, etc. In addition, educators at the state and local level have been developing curriculum units, performance standards, and assessment measures that demonstrate the efficacy of integrating local materials and activities in the educational process. The role of the Alaska Rural Systemic Initiative has been to guide these initiatives through an ongoing array of locally generated, self-organizing activities that produce the "organizational learning" needed to move toward a new form of educational system for rural Alaska.

While each of the three systemic reform strategies outlined above has strengths and limitations, together they reflect a powerful array of initiatives that cut across all facets of the educational landscape in rural Alaska, from strategic planning and goalsetting (AOTE), to curriculum development and teaching practices (AKRSI), to establishing standards, assessments and incentives for high performance (AQSI). The case studies that follow, though focused on Alaska Onward to Excellence, will provide insights on the process of systemic reform for rural schools in general. It is incumbent on Alaska educators to look deeply within themselves and the communities they serve to find ways of creating partnerships to help Alaska Native students succeed in two worlds. As one participant in the AOTE process put it as the magnitude of the challenge became evident: "A long journey begins at home."

This research involved case studies of seven rural Alaska communities that have implemented Alaska Onward to Excellence. The case studies center around several broad research questions:

• Can schools and communities successfully work together to achieve common goals for rural Alaska Native students? What are the essential elements of this partnership? What factors promote the partnership and what barriers stand in the way? What sustains the partnership over time? How does a process like AOTE contribute to such partnerships?
• Does a partnership between school and community lead to real benefits for students? Under what conditions do the experiences and learning of students change for the better?
• What lessons can we learn from these case studies to guide future improvement efforts in rural Alaska or other similar communities across the country? What are the larger implications for Alaska Native and Native American education?

The seven communities we studied span western, central, and southeast Alaska and range in size from approximately 125 to 750 residents. While all of these communities participated in the AOTE process, they were quite diverse in demographics, community context, and history of school reform. The case study summaries in this report (and the full case studies) provide a richer description of each community. The seven village or small-town sites are listed below. Figure 1 shows their locations.

• Quinhagak in the Lower Kuskokwim School District, on the Kuskokwim Bay
• New Stuyahok in the Southwest Region School District, northeast of Bristol Bay and Dillingham.
• Tuluksak in the Yupiit School District, northeast of Bethel on the Lower Kuskokwim River
• Aniak and Kalskag (treated as a single case study of neighboring villages) in the Kuspuk School District, northeast of Bethel
• Koyukuk in the Yukon-Koyukuk School District, well west of Fairbanks on the Yukon River
• Tat itlek in the Chugach School District, on Prince William Sound near Valdez
• Klawock, a single-site school district (Klawock City Schools) on Prince of Wales Island, far southeastern Alaska near Ketchikan

Figure 1
Case Study Sites

These communities are small isolated villages or towns reached by small airplane. Their schools, which can serve as few as 20 or as many as 200 students in grades K-12, come under the supervision of separate school districts in a system of Regional Educational Attendance Areas (REAA). Each REAA-some of which are as large as medium-sized states in the "Lower 48"-has the responsibility of educating children in their area. While there are state guidelines, each REAA has its own elected school board and has some latitude in designing a school system that makes sense for its region. Superintendents and school boards set policy and procedures, hire staff, establish budgets, choose curriculum, and make other important decisions that affect schooling in these small communities.

In rural village schools, students are typically educated in one or two prefabricated school buildings (including a high school and a gymnasium) and often in multigrade classrooms. Instruction in the early years may be in a Native language (such as Yup'ik) and most schools today try to incorporate at least some Alaska Native cultural components into the curriculum. While teachers often come from the outside, community members serve as classroom and bilingual aides (Bamhardt, 1994).

Sports such as boys basketball and girls volleyball are an important part of school life, providing students with opportunities to travel to other villages and to large cities like Anchorage. Field trips, career fairs, and state academic decathlons are other ways that educational opportunities are expanded beyond the village. But most communities are subsistence villages, so that education also happens around important activities like hunting and fishing trips, during which time students may leave school for several days or more. Education also happens around important village events like potlatches, which feature traditional Native dance and stories. More and more, elders and other community members can be seen at schools as teachers of language, culture, and values. In short, efforts are being made to meld Western education and traditional village education, but this is often a struggle because of historical misunderstandings and mistrust between different cultures, languages, and ways of educating.

We have tried to capitalize on the diversity of the seven sites through a case study approach. Each case study is an important story in its own right, documenting both the successes and shortcomings of ongoing reform efforts, that has meaning to the people of

this community and other similar communities both inside and outside of Alaska. We also conducted a cross-case analysis to shed light on the deeper issues of systemic change and identify school improvement mechanisms and processes that may generalize beyond individual communities.

Researchers, school personnel, and community members collaborated on this study mirroring the very partnership process we were trying to understand. We used a participatory action research approach that treats school practitioners and community members as co-researchers rather than "subjects" of study (Argyris & Schon, 1991). Too often, research has been conducted on rather than with Alaska Native people, based on external frameworks and paradigms that do not recognize the issues, research questions, and worldviews of those under study. For each community, a senior researcher from the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory or University of Alaska Fairbanks led a small team of three to five school and community researchers who helped plan each case study, formulate guiding questions, collect data, and interpret results. A typical team consisted of a school district practitioner, a village school practitioner, at least one non-school community member, and in some cases a high-school student. The teams included both Alaska Natives and non-Natives who lived in the communities under study. This team composition resulted in a greater awareness of what happens daily in schools and communities, access to others who served as key informants, and a deeper understanding of history, culture, and relationships present in each community

The teams used traditional case study methods, including document analysis, participant and researcher observation, and surveys and interviews. Concept mapping was also used to more fully understand the many simultaneous reforms happening in these communities. We followed a pattern of collecting data via site visits and then meeting in a central Alaska location to share and discuss results. Each senior researcher spent approximately 10 to 12 days on site during three or four separate visits across two school years. Most of the community teams, with guidance from their senior researcher, also collected some data on their own in the form of participant observation, formal

surveys, and interviews. We met in Anchorage six times (12 days) to work in small village teams and as a whole group to discuss and interpret results, design data collection techniques, and plan the next data collection steps. Senior researchers met together an additional four times (8 days) to plan the study and outline and write up findings. In this way, we refined the research questions and data collection as we engaged together in constant-comparative analysis.

While the seven sites were quite diverse in their make-up and histories of school reform, what they shared in common was a district-initiated reform process called Alaska Onward to Excellence. In AOTE, school districts and village schools work closely with community stakeholders (parents, elders, other community members, and students) to establish a mission and student learning outcomes. Working through multi-stakeholder leadership teams, AOTE attempts to develop a school-community partnership and action plans to achieve these outcomes. This educational partnership was a focal point of our case studies.

Through a foundation grant from the Meyer Memorial Trust, the Alaska Staff Development Network and the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory (NWREL) began designing the Alaska Onward to Excellence process in 1991. The vision of AOTE was to bring research-based practices to rural Alaska schools through a process that deeply involved the whole community in a district and school improvement process. AOTE, working simultaneously at the district and community school levels, tries to achieve four reform principles:

• Focus on student learning. AOTE begins with the belief that all students can learn and strives for equity and excellence in student learning. To achieve agreement on what students need to learn, the first step is direction setting, which results in a mission and student learning goals developed with broad input from parents, village elders, students, and school staff. A district mission and goals are developed with village input; village improvement teams then design action steps to achieve at least one district goal.
• Everyone must be committed. Community and schools share leadership for the improvement process through multi-stakeholder district and village leadership teams. The expectation is that parents and other community members are full partners in education and that schools and communities must work together to achieve student success. The district role is to support and monitor school improvement efforts at the community level.
• Everyone will learn together. Improvement equals learning for both adults and students. Before a mission and goals are set and before action plans are made, learning takes place so that decisions are informed by local culture and values as well as research-based practices.
• Learning success will be measured. Learning is supposed to be monitored in goal areas. In most goal areas (such as student fluency in both English and Yup'ik), this requires moving beyond typical standardized test results.

The AOTE process was first implemented in two rural Alaska districts in 1992-95 (Phase 1). Implementation was achieved through a series of on-site workshops led by the two NWREL developers of AOTE (Robert Blum and Thomas Olson) for district and village leadership teams. Additional technical assistance was also provided as needed. In 1995-97 (Phase 2), AOTE was expanded to three new districts with funds from a Goals 2000 Implementation Grant and a grant from the U.S. Department of Education Urban and Rural Reform Initiative. This new phase not only expanded the number of schools, but used a training-of-facilitators approach: each district and village sent small facilitator teams to Anchorage for training by the NWREL developers/trainers. Facilitators, in turn, trained and guided the work of local district and village leadership teams back in their districts and villages. In addition to leadership teams, a district research team was also formed and trained by NWREL to collect data that would help the leadership teams monitor progress towards their improvement goals. Finally, the Phase 3 expansion in 1996-98 followed the same training model as Phase 2, except that cotrainers from the Alaska Regional Assistance Center worked with the NWREL team to provide the facilitator and research team workshops and follow-up technical assistance.

The three phases together resulted in training and implementation of AOTE in 11 districts and 42 community schools.

The seven case study communities (in seven different districts) were strategically selected from all three phases of AOTE. Two Phase 1 sites-New Stuyahok in the Southwest Region School District and Tuluksak in the Yupiit School District-provided a look at sustainability of AOTE-led reforms over time. Three Phase 2 sites-Quinhagak in the Lower Kuskokwim School District, Koyukuk in the Yukon-Koyukuk School District, and Tatitlek in the Chugach School District-provided a look at the early stages of partnership and how action plans were carried out. Finally, two Phase 3 sites- Aniak[Kalskag in the Kuspuk School District and Klawock in the Klawock City School District-were intended to illustrate how school-community partnerships are formed during the start up of AOTE.

While AOTE was a focal point for school reform in all of these communities, it was by no means the only reform. As discussed earlier, there are currently two other major systemic reform efforts in Alaska. Many of the sites were also participating in the Alaska Rural Systemic Initiative, which is attempting to integrate indigenous knowledge and curriculum into the formal educational system. Increasingly, all Alaska districts and schools face new requirements from the state's Alaska Quality Schools Initiative, which stresses high learning standards and a new high-school graduation exit exam. Our goal was not to neatly sort out the impact of AOTE, a nearly impossible task anyway. Rather, we wanted to study and understand how reform happens, how roles and relationships change, how partnerships are sustained over time, and how AOTE adds value to the larger reform process.

In trying to understand reform and AOTEE, our case studies focused on a key variable we called community voice. Community voice captures the essence of what we believe to be the important elements of a productive educational partnership between schools and communities in remote Alaska villages, whether or not they use AOTE. Our definition of community voice included four components:

• shared decision making or the extent to which community members (parents, elders, and others) have greater influence and decision-making power in educational matters
• integration of culture and language or the extent to which Native language, culture, ways of knowing, and a community's sense of place are woven into daily curriculum and instruction
• parent/community involvement in educating children or the extent to which parents, elders, and others have a strong presence and visibility in the school and otherwise participate in their children's education
• partnership activities or positive examples of the school and community working together to share responsibility for student success

What we are really talking about is full community participation and shared accountability. In our definition, educators need to be willing to listen to the voice of the community and share some of the decision-making power. A further validation of the community's voice means that local heritage, language, culture, and Native ways of knowing are legitimate parts of formal education and are viewed as strengths to build a school curriculum on. We would also expect to see parents and elders routinely involved in their children's education if there was a true partnership. Finally, we were searching for positive examples of school-community partnerships that will have a pervasive impact on students and that other communities might replicate. In simpler terms, community voice means connections between schools, families, and communities to promote student success. This concept is at the heart of AOTE and is likewise an element of the Alaska Quality Schools Initiative.

A challenge in presenting the results of seven case studies is the sheer volume of descriptive data and how to present it in a readable manner for busy educators and policymakers. The full "thick descriptions" are presented elsewhere in a set of individually bound case studies. Chapter 2 of this report presents case study executive summaries, each written by the senior researcher who directed the study with his or her school/community team. Each summary presents a brief description of the community and research effort, followed by key findings and lessons learned about systemic reform. The third chapter presents our major conclusions around six reform themes. These themes and conclusions resulted from several meetings with senior researchers and teams in which we all stepped back from our own community findings and tried to draw out the larger conclusions and lessons about educational reform in rural Alaska. Finally, Chapter 4 presents our recommendations for educators and policymakers, with a primary focus on the Alaska audience. However, we believe that these recommendations are applicable in other regions of the country serving similar populations.

Case study executive summaries are presented in this chapter, including major findings and lessons learned about systemic change. The sites are presented in geographic order moving from southwestern Alaska, which has the greatest concentration of sites, to the interior and finally southeastern Alaska (see Figure 1 for site location). It is impossible to capture all of the rich detail in these summaries; readers interested in such detail can obtain the full case studies.

Quinhagak, a Yup'ik Eskimo community of 550 people, sits on the southwest coast of Alaska close to where the Kanektok River flows into the Bering Sea. It is a region of Alaska where Yup'ik people have lived for thousands of years, and the name of the village, Quinhagak, is derived from kuingnerraq, which denotes the ever-changing course of the Kanektok as it regularly forms new channels, winding its way through the surrounding tundra. Today, the lifestyle of the people of Quinhagak continues to embody the name of their community-as is evident in the evolving practices that provide evidence of their ability to integrate the traditions and beliefs of their Yup'ik ancestors with the contemporary practices necessary for success in a rapidly changing modern world. Subsistence activities that range from hunting seal and caribou to fishing and gathering wild berries and greens are practiced; the Yup'ik language continues to be used in home, social, political, and educational contexts; a few residents continue to go to the river for their drinking water; and some people use dog sled teams. However, Quinhagak people today can also purchase all varieties of foods from their local store, enroll in college coursework delivered to them through computer and audio/video conferencing, watch television on nine different channels, travel in and out of their remote village on five regularly scheduled daily flights, and nearly all residents can communicate in both Yup'ik and English.

Although this might appear to be a community of contradictions, it is in fact a community where many residents are in the process of finding a satisfying and workable balance between old and new, traditional and contemporary, Western and non-Western ways of knowing and living. It is a community that has continued to place a high value and priority on the Yup'ik language, despite decades of English-only influences. It is a community that is exercising its tribal rights by assuming responsibilities previously delegated to state and federal authorities. It is a community where people have maintained their membership and participation in the Moravian church while continuing to practice and follow many Yup'ik beliefs and traditions. It is a community in which the daily lives of its residents make it evident that they have been successful in finding ways to integrate beliefs and practices that many people believe are incompatible.

Kuinerrarmiut Elitnaurviat is the Yup'ik name of the school in Quinhagak-a name chosen by the community in 1980. Roughly translated, it means "the school of the people of Quinhagak." The name reflects the community's belief in the importance of local ownership and genuine involvement in the schooling process of its own children. In the past few years, Quinhagak people have made a concerted effort to initiate a range of programs in their 140-student, K-12 multigraded school that will provide their children with the tools and resources necessary to meaningfully integrate Yup'ik language, values, and beliefs into school practices and policies. This will provide them with the ability to be successful in meeting Yup'ik "life standards" as well as preparing them to meet the academic standards of the state of Alaska. The focus of the Quinhagak case study is on the efforts to integrate community and school practices and policies, with a description of the role that the Alaska Onward to Excellence (AOTE) process has played in this reform effort.

For nearly 100 years, the modus operandi of federal and state educational systems in Alaska was to ignore the history, culture, and language of Alaska Native people, and it is clear that even today the historical factors that helped to shape the social, political, and educational context of Quinhagak continue to exert a very direct influence. Although there has been a public elementary school in Quinhagak since 1903, many people were not able to complete more than a few years of schooling because of family responsibilities or because there was no local schooling opportunity beyond sixth grade. The first teachers in the Quinhagak School were associated with either the Moravian Church or the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). Like most villages in this region, Quinhagak's school was managed by the BIA until the extensive and far-reaching decentralization, of Alaska's rural schools by the state legislature in 1976. Following the decentralization Quinhagak became formally associated with the Lower Kuskokwim School District (LKSD)- the largest of the 24 newly established rural school districts in the state of Alaska.

Members of the Quinhagak case study team included John Mark, a member of the Quinhagak community and principal of Kuinerrarmiut Elitnaurviat School; Dora Strunk, a member of the Quinhagak community and elementary teacher at Kuinerrarmiut Elitnaurviat School; Nita Rearden, a Yup'ik language coordinator in the Bilingual and Curriculum Department of the Lower Kuskokwim School District; Susan Murphy, Assistant to the Superintendent of the Lower Kuskokwim School District; and myself. I served as a representative of the University of Alaska Fairbanks and had the responsibility of preparing the case study. Our team examined and reviewed community, school, and district materials for the case study gathered during: my three visits to Quinhagak; two visits to Bethel to meet with district personnel; and five whole-team meetings in Anchorage. I also met formally and informally with students, teachers, teachers aides and community members during my Quinhagak visits, observed in all the

classrooms, and attended events that occurred during my visits (e.g., a community-wide graduation ceremony for students in kindergarten, eighth grade and twelfth grade- conducted almost entirely in Yup'ik). Some of the team members communicated regularly via e-mail. Three members were able to participate in state and national conference presentations. All but one of the Alaska Native certified teachers at Kuinerrarmiut Elitnaurviat received their bachelor's degrees from UAF (and I had served as academic advisor for four of these seven teachers). Two of the team members were enrolled in UAF graduate courses during the project.

Connecting school and community is a primary goal of the Alaska Onward to Excellence (AOTE) process, and because of the centrality of this goal, the AOTE process found fertile ground when it was initiated in Quinhagak in 1995. Based on our case study team's initial review and then formal documentation of reform efforts in Quinhagak, it quickly became evident that most of the significant changes in the school in recent years were attempts to recognize and meaningfully integrate what is important and valued in the life of the community with the teaching and learning that occurs in school. The educational goals of the community, as identified by past practices and by the community-constructed AOTE plan and student learning goal (i.e., "students will learn to communicate more effectively in Yup'ik") advocate the use of what children already know, value, and are interested in. This knowledge base should serve as a solid foundation for academic growth and learning in all ten Alaska academic content areas including reading and writing, math, science, world languages, history, geography, government and citizenship, technology, arts, and skills for a healthy life. In Quinhagak the AOTE process reinforced and provided additional support for long-established beliefs and practices about the importance of merging school and community. The statements below provide evidence, documented in the case study, that the school and the community are merging in significant and multiple ways.

When one enters the front door of Kuinerrarmiut Elitnaurviat, the sights and sounds make it immediately evident that this is not a school like one in downtown Anchorage or in rural Arkansas. A large banner high on the wall tells people "Ikayuqluta Elitnaulta" (Let's Learn Together), a bulletin board has materials written in Yup'ik and English, and there are photos of village elders in the hallways. A display of photos of teachers and other staff members in the school lets everyone know that the large majority of people who work in this school, including nearly half of the certified teaching staff, are Yup'ik people from the community. The principal, John Mark, is a lifelong member of the Quinhagak community. The Daily Bulletin, with all school news and information, is posted not only on the school's bulletin board, but also in several community locations because it is faxed daily to the IRA tribal office, the clinic, and the store in an effort to keep community members aware of school events and activities. The school library has large paintings on the walls with scenes of the Quinhagak area, and an "Alaska and Yup'ik Collection" that includes nearly every book that has been published in the Yup'ik language.

Several of the most significant and pervasive responses to the goals of melding school and community priorities, increasing student learning, and communicating more effectively in Yup'ik are evident in the implementation of new or modified Kuinerrarmiut Elitnaurviat curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment, as summarized below:

• Daily interaction in the school is in both Yup'ik and English. The language of instruction in kindergarten through third/fourth grade is Yup'ik, and report cards for students in grades K through 4 are printed in Yup'ik. Students in upper grades receive daily oral and written instruction in Yup'ik from the school's Yup'ik Language Leader.
• The Lower Kuskokwim School District provides summer institutes that support Yup'ik educators in preparing and producing of a wide range of curriculum materials in the Yup'ik language. Many materials are written and illustrated by Yup'ik educators.
• One of the primary considerations in selecting the new comprehensive, balanced reading/literacy program by LKSD in the 1998 school year was the desire to adopt a program and approach that would be appropriate for children who are striving for proficiency in both Yup'ik and English literacy.
• An extensive effort to integrate Yup'ik ways of knowing and Yup'ik belief systems across the K-12 curriculum and throughout the entire district was initiated through the development and use of Yup'ik thematic units that cover the entire academic school year. This curriculum provides students with the opportunity to gain knowledge and skills related to Yup'ik values, beliefs, language, and lifestyles in grades K-12.
• In addition to enrolling in courses that meet all Alaska high-school requirements (e.g., English, math, science, social studies, physical education), high-school students in Quinhagak also participate in courses in computer/journalism, workplace basics, and wood I or II. In addition, each student is required by the local Quinhagak Advisory School Board to enroll in the Yup'ik Life Skills class (Kuingnerarmiut Yugtaat Elitnaurarkait) for two years. This class includes Yup'ik language and culture, Yup'ik orthography, and Yup'ik life skills.

The Lower Kuskokwim School District, recognizing the complexity and challenge of valid assessment in schools that serve children from bilingual backgrounds, has been one of the most aggressive in its efforts to develop and use multiple types of assessments. The district has supported Quinhagak and other sites in their efforts to increase, and integrate within the curriculum, the use of assessments that are authentic and performance-based and that allow for more than one correct response.

As one of the pioneers in the state's effort to implement the Writing Process, the Lower Kuskokwim School District developed a Student Literacy Assessment Portfolio process that is directly related to the state student academic content standards in English and Language Arts. This process also supports the Yup'ik Language Program. All students in Kuinerrarmiut Elitnaurviat have a literacy portfolio, and most student's portfolios include papers and projects in both Yup'ik and English.

There has been a steady increase in the norm-referenced standardized test scores of students in rural Alaska school districts over the past 10 years, including those in LKSD. In the past few years, it has been determined that the CAT5 and Degrees of Reading Power scores of 11th and 12th grade students in LKSD who have attended Yup'ik First Language schools are-on the average-higher than students who did not attend a YFL school.

Extracurricular academic assessment activities that Quinhagak students participate in include school and district-wide speech contests, and students can choose to compete in either Yup'ik or English. A more diverse group of people (including school board members, elders, AOTE team members and parents) is now becoming more directly involved in the assessment process in Quinhagak and some other LKSD sites, to help determine if students are reaching the goals set by the community, the school, the district, and the state.

In addition to changing curriculum, pedagogy and assessment goals and practices, Quinhagak is developing more incentives and opportunities for increased family and community participation in the education of their children.

• Many parents in Quinhagak are now directly involved in their school because they are serving as the school's teachers, aides, cooks, custodians-and principal.
• Several community members serve their school in other positions. Those on the Advisory School Board deal with matters ranging from setting the school calendar to approving changes in the school's bilingual program and AOTE goals, helping establish budget priorities, to annual approval of the school's principal. The AOTE process also requires volunteer involvement of community members on leadership teams, and AOTE provides the opportunity for broader participation through its community-wide meetings and potlucks. Other venues for direct participation include the Village Wellness Committee Team and the Kuinerrarmiut Elitnaurviat Discipline Committee.
• The Kuinerranniut Elitnaurviat Discipline Plan was drafted in 1997 by a discipline committee that included representatives of the community, staff, and school. The proposed plan was reviewed and approved by the Quinhagak Advisory School Board after a review by school staff, parents, and students.
• Some family members participate in less formal ways through volunteer work in their children's classroom or as chaperones on trips. Others contribute through efforts in their own homes (e.g., providing a quiet place for children to study, reading with and to children, reviewing homework assignments with them). In 1997, the school identified 15 initiatives designed to promote increased parent, family and community involvement and participation in the school. There were 119 different volunteers and 1,500 hours of volunteer service in 1997-98.
• School policies related to the use of the school building also support a community and school partnership. The gymnasium often serves as a central gathering place for several different types of community functions (e.g., hosting a community potlatch, holding local and regional basketball events, for proms and other dances, and for celebrating students' graduation).

This section provides observations and summary comments regarding (a) factors that have contributed to the community of Quinhagak making the choices it has for its school; (b) factors that have enabled Kuinerrarmiut Elitnaurviat to implement new and self-determined educational priorities; (c) challenges that people of Quinhagak face in their efforts to narrow the gap between school and community and to increase student academic achievement.

Factors that have contributed to Quinhagak's decision to use Yup 'k as the language of instruction, develop and require a Yup'ik Life Skills curriculum for high-school students, and provide increased opportunities for parents and other community members to participate in teaching and learning activities:

• The people of Quinhagak strongly believe in the importance of their young people learning through and about Yup'ik values and beliefs, as is evident in the mission statement in their AOTE plan. The people of Quinhagak continue to use the Yup'ik language as their primary language for communication.
• The people of Quinhagak have demonstrated an ability to assume leadership positions at a local level. There is strong confirmation of the community's commitment to self governance and an interest and willingness to assume responsibility and control in their village, as evidenced through their new tribal government initiatives as well as in matters directly related to schooling and to education.
• The people of Quinhagak have sufficient numbers of Yup'ik-speaking certified teachers to implement their community-set goals in their school.
• The opportunity to use and integrate their Yup'ik language and culture is supported by their school district. LKSD is the only district in the state that provides its local sites with the option to choose what type of bilingual program it desires for its children. 

Factors that have enabled Kuinerrarmiut Elitnaurviat to implement new, self-determined educational priorities:

• Quinhagak is one of only a few rural communities in the state that has such a high percent of local, college-graduated, certified teachers who speak the language of the community, and a principal who is a member of the community.
• The AOTE process was initiated at a time when the community was receptive and ready for a grassroots effort that allowed for input and participation from a wider range of people than other previous efforts. AOTE in Quinhagak was shaped by a larger and more diverse group of people than some of the previous educational plans, and it was a bottom-up effort, rather than a top-down mandate.
• Kuinerrarmiut Elitnaurviat has been supported in its efforts by the Lower Kuskokwim School District (through bilingual program options, bilingual training for teachers and aides, preparation of Yup'ik materials and Yup'ik-based theme curriculum, summer institutions for Yup'ik curriculum development, hiring processes that give priority to Yup'ik teachers when other qualifications are equal, and strong and consistent career ladder development programs).
• There are a now a number of current statewide systemic reform efforts that complement and support many of Kuinerrarmiut Elitnaurviat's priorities (e.g., the National Science Foundation's Alaska Rural Systemic Initiative, the Annenberg Foundation's Alaska Rural Challenge Grant, and the development of new Alaska Native teacher associations). These initiatives are designed to help integrate Alaska Native ways of knowing and teaching into school systems.

• The need to continue to increase student learning for all K-12 students to meet both Yup'ik standards and the standards of the Alaska Quality Schools Initiative. (Evidence of new efforts in this area include a district policy that requires 180 student-contact days; the continued use and integration of multiple types of assessments, including performance assessments; the recent funding of a federal grant in Quinhagak for after-school and summer academic programs; and journal exchanges between students and parents.)
• The need to find increased means to support the academic and social needs of high-school students, particularly since the passage of legislation requiring a successful score on a statewide test in order to receive a high-school diploma, starting in the year 2002. The need to continue to provide guidance and follow-up services for young adults who choose to leave high school before graduating.
• The immediate and critical need to prepare more Yup'ik-speaking teachers who are qualified and certified so that the current programs can be maintained and can continue to grow. Historical data provides clear and convincing evidence that without career ladder support and a university that is willing to work on a long-term basis with rural and Alaska Native populations to provide relevant, flexible, and field-based teacher preparation programs, the state of Alaska will never come close to having a percent of Alaska Native teachers that is representative of the Alaska Native student enrollment.
• The need to recognize and openly deal with both the benefits and ongoing challenges of living and working in a cross-cultural context. The Quinhagak school is a place that has put into practice what many rural communities have only imagined. Half of the school's teaching staff is Yup'ik, the language of instruction for students for four elementary years is Yup'ik, and the school's environment is one that is truly bilingual, with Yup'ik and English used by the large majority of students and staff. In addition, the school has a relatively stable non-Native staff, with less teacher turnover than in many other sites. The extra energy demanded of teachers, staff, and students who work hard to be knowledgeable about and respectful toward people who are different from themselves must be recognized and supported if we intend to develop school environments where children of all cultural, linguistic, and geographic backgrounds can be successful. 

Although outsiders typically think of and refer to "the school" and "the community" and "the government" as separate entities, in Quinhagak they are in fact all closely intertwined (even though a flow chart might not show them as directly related) because the people who manage and make decisions about and within these units frequently share responsibilities across all of them. With 550 people in 125 households in Quinhagak and nearly 50 adults employed by the school and 140 students enrolled in the school, every family is directly connected to the school and to almost all community associations in some way. Efforts to keep community and school issues separate here are artificial, and the large majority of Quinhagak people who arrive for work at Kuinerrarmiut Elitnaurviat do not have the option to simply pack their thoughts about subsistence, sport fishermen, or the IRA tribal council in a backpack and leave it on their snowmachine as they enter the school each morning.

Any real and sustained efforts at school reform must have a built-in organizational structure that requires the school to be responsible to the community. Based on the Quinhagak experience, we can conclude that despite nearly a century of political, economic, social, and educational efforts to change the language, customs, subsistence patterns, and overall lifestyle of the people of Quinhagak, it is clearly evident that a decision has been made in recent years by the majority of Quinhagak citizens to "stand their ground" as they make a serious effort to put into practice beliefs related to local control that have only been talked about in the past.

"Closing the Gap: Education and Change in New Stuyahok" speaks directly to the reform efforts underway in Southwest Region Schools (SWRS) and the village of New Stuyahok. Without doubt, SWRS and the New Stuyahok school and community have made gains in improving student achievement, most notably a marked increase in the number of students attending postsecondary schooling and college. However, while major steps have been made in closing the gap between educational possibilities and attainment, a number of persistent and perennial educational problems persist. Among these problems is rapid staff turnover, creating an unstable educational environment (culture of the school) in terms of the relationship between school and community, between teachers and their students, and between teachers and the district's policies. More recently, declines in state revenues have hampered efforts at sustaining educational reform, reflected in an increase in teacher turnover. Therefore, this change process conjures an image of an "S" curve, indicating the cyclical and sometimes uneasy nature of change in this school/community context.

Southwest Region Schools and the New Stuyahok school and community began Alaska Onward to Excellence (AOTE) in 1992. This resulted from funding by the Meyer Memorial Trust that began strategic and long-term planning within the school district. AOTE was established, in part, to close the educational gap between school and community. This gap has been well documented in the literature on education in Alaska, and the following highlights some of the more important gaps between:

• educational attainment and achievement
• scores on standardized tests and national and state averages
• numbers of students starting postsecondary schooling and completion rates
• trust between school and community
• local participation, planning, and decision-making in issues affecting school and community

The present case study, 1997-1999, documents the long-term effects of AOTE, since this study was conducted a number of years after the implementation process.

The data collection methods included observations, participation in the planning, and attending school and community meetings on setting and assessing AOTE-related goals. Also, a wide array of data was collected from the school district: teacher turnover rates, school district surveys, and interviews with teachers and students. Meetings, interviews, and informal discussions with community members also occurred. One major limitation of this study is that the present research does not include observing classrooms in progress, and therefore no correlation can be made between classroom practice and academic excellence nor classroom practice and the implementation of the AOTE New Stuyahok goal of bilingualism.

The New Stuyahok school and community, approximately 55 miles north of Dillingham, is located on the Nushagak River. The village's year-round population is approximately 98% Yup'ik Eskimo. Most of the inhabitants continue to participate in subsistence activities during the winter and commercial fish during the summer. Most of the adults in the community speak Yup'ik as their first language, while almost of all of the school-aged children are English-first speakers. The first school was built in the early 1950s. Many of the community members active in educational matters are graduates of the New Stuyahok school. The K-12 school today has approximately 150 students.

AOTE established district and village leadership teams that began the process of bridging the gap between school and community. These teams met with local community members, teachers, students, elders, and principals. Through this collaborative approach to planning, the New Stuyahok school and community established two major goals: postsecondary success and increased bilingualism. Regular and ongoing meetings were held in New Stuyahok. The leadership of Rod Mebius, former principal, and Margie Hasting, local teacher, are noteworthy, since these two individuals have been with the AOTE process from its inception, including the present study.

bridging the gap between school and community. In addition, long-term service by staff provides stability to the school's culture. Efforts on the part of the SWRS district to involve the New Stuyahok community in setting goals, planning, and evaluating appear to have improved communication and stabilized the school. However, this increase in community expectations of and for improved communication led to renewed doubts when it was perceived that the school was "not listening." Efforts at increasing communication and trust need to continue in order to more fully meet school and community goals. The following sections expand upon these highlights from the case study.

Postsecondary Success

Through the AOTE process, the school district initiated a multipronged approach to improving students' academic and postsecondary success. Among them was the establishment of an itinerant cadre of high-school teachers who taught within their subject matter expertise. They hired a transition counselor to smooth the transition between high school and postsecondary schooling. Also, policy changes were made and implemented at the district and board level that allowed these changes to occur. Superintendent of schools, Don Evans stated, "AOTE gets credit for changing the view of what is the mission of SWRS, expanding it to include college. Because the view changed to include postsecondary success, SWRS allocated resources. We got additional money through grants and were able to pay attention to our kids when they were away at college." The chart below illustrates the point that superintendent Evans made that by changing policy and applying resources to postsecondary success, starting in 1992-93, there was a substantial increase in the percentages of SWRS students attending college. This increase, starting in 1993-94, is more than double the percentage of students attending college in each of the previous five years.

Academic Success

In addition to success in the number of students attending college and other postsecondary institutions, the following were also shown to have markedly improved:

ratio of highest-to-lowest quartile scores on standardized achievement tests, ACT scores on writing assessments, and student achievement. There has been a steady increase in the competency scores for the district between 1993 and 1997. In language arts, for example, there has been a dramatic increase in competency test scores for all grades, culminating in 1997 when the desired expectations were met or surpassed. Similarly, there has been a steady increase in math, with a dip in 1995-96 scores but a substantial increase in competency scores in the 1996-97 school year.

Bilinguali

The goal of bilingualism continues to be supported by the community, and it is one of the two major goals supported by the AOTE process. However, this has been a more difficult goal to achieve. The community and the school need to continue to plan and evaluate their goals, strategies, plans, and implementation processes concerning this goal. Further, this goal needs to be clarified in terms of its desired outcomes, from more Yup'ik speakers to a less ambitious goal as an appreciation of the Yup'ik language and culture.

A Perennial Problem: Rapid Teacher Turnover Rates

The district, fully cognizant of the rapid teacher turnover rate, has established leadership teams and other ways of continuing a dialogue between school and community to stabilize schooling. Teacher turnover continues to mitigate the current plans, including the AOTE process. For example, in New Stuyahok at the end of the 1997 academic year, 33% of the teaching staff turned over. Further, those teachers remaining, particularly from outside of the region (and in most cases outside of Alaska) have only been in New Stuyahok for one or two years. Obviously, this stresses processes like AOTE, since all of these new teachers were neither part of the original AOTE reform efforts nor even part of the present study when it was first initiated. This stresses those members of the school and community who were part of the original process and places the burden directly on them to ensure that the process continues.

Teacher turnover rates at New Stuyahok are commensurate with the rest of the district. The preponderance of teacher turnover takes place during the first three to four years of stay for new teachers in the district. Of these teachers, those from outside the region are more than twice as likely to leave the district after three or four years of teaching than those from within the district. This is particularly troublesome, since it takes approximately two to three years to get to know the school, the curriculum, the students, and the community. At the very time that the initial investment in new teachers has been recouped, 60 to 70% of them will leave the district. Despite these statistics, analysis of the teacher turnover rates also has a silver lining. The number of Alaskan teachers who stay with the district for more than four years is considerably higher than outside teachers. The number of outside teachers who remain in the district for their entire career is approximately 8 to 12% of all outside teachers. Also, the non-certified staff, teacher aides and bilingual staff, have the most years of tenure and represent a stable core in each school. Here is the potential for long-term stability concerning policy changes and efforts at reform.

The question is not if the AOTE has been successful but can it be sustained? To sustain reform in SWRS is going to take additional measures by the central school district administration as well as on the part of the community and long-term teachers. Since the administration has been interested in providing the opportunity and responsibility for on-site management, it is the opinion of this writer that by working with a cadre of career teachers (those who choose to work in the district for their entire careers), a cadre of community members, and long-term staff, stability and reform can occur. By a concerted effort to include these groups in planning, training, and hence preparing them to become local decision makers, the district could more smoothly continue its policies aimed at reform: being responsive to both the culture and language of the local community, and to high academic standards. Despite the considerable success that SWRS has demonstrated in the last few years, most notably in the number of its graduates attending postsecondary schooling, to continue to close the gap between the school and community and between the students' potential and present achievement will require even more creative responses on the part of the district. This may require changes that are bolder and less cosmetic in terms of power relations, by increasing the role of on-site management in curriculum, budget, staffing, and planning. This goal is expressed by the superintendent, but needs to be more firmly implemented to allow for the next round of reform. Otherwise, decreases in state spending on education and increased emphasis on new state standards may well shift school decision making away from local concerns.

Creating sustainable change requires bold and broad steps. The perennial issue of rapid teacher turnover is a direct obstacle to reform efforts underway in many rural Alaskan communities. In general, teacher turnover creates a chaotic culture of schooling where new teachers must adapt and become acquainted with the village, the students, and the curriculum. Simultaneously, the community must re-educate yet another cadre of teachers. This means that many teachers do not become sufficiently familiar with the school and school district's philosophy and curriculum, nor sufficiently acquainted with the community to effectively bridge local knowledge and school knowledge. In addition to working more closely with long-term teachers, teacher aides, and community members, more needs to occur to stabilize the culture of schooling so that academic success is not just a short-term goal but is actualized in the long-term. One way out of this dilemma for rural Alaskan schools is for the state to commit considerably more resources to help communities "grow their own" teachers. From the data collected in this study and from previous experience in rural Alaska, local teachers tend to spend their careers in their home community or other rural communities. Having more local teaches who spend many more years in a district is a direct antidote to the cycle of chaos that has permeated too much of the Alaskan educational scene since its colonial inception. Teachers who are developed from within the community stay longer than those who come from outside. They are already knowledgeable about the children and the community, and they bring these advantages to teaching. Further, investing inservice resources on teachers who will make teaching in rural Alaska their careers raises the possibility of moving from stability to quality. Stability of staff allows for the slow accumulation of wisdom associated with practice, which is foundational to having a quality educational program.

Long-term change requires a number of major shifts in state policy. First, the University of Alaska needs to become much proactive in its educational outreach programs to recruit, train, and graduate local teachers. In fact, the opposite has been happening during this past decade. Second, at the level of the state legislature more money needs to be put into teacher education and a re-thinking of the so-called standards movement that now includes a post-baccalaureate degree to become a teacher and the testing of teachers on a paper and pencil test before licensure is granted. These structural changes will further slow the pace for recruiting, preparing, and graduating local teachers. Despite the standard movement's ideal of having higher academic standards, there is already evidence in Alaska and elsewhere that this will result in teacher shortages. This means that some rural districts will be forced to hire more teachers to teach out of their area of expertise, that some positions will go unfilled, and that teachers leaving rural areas may actually accelerate. If this is true, then the standards movement will contribute inadvertently to fueling the dynamics that lead to a culture of school chaos over stability. Third, preparing and developing local teachers and supporting them through their careers is another way to both stabilize the culture of schooling while bolstering the academic climate. This creates possibilities for academic excellence in the long-term.

The Yupiit case study documents the Alaska Onward to Excellence school improvement process as it has evolved in the Yupiit School District (YSD) and the village of Tuluksak since it was initiated in 1992, including the impact it has had on the educational experiences of students.

The Yupiit School District consists of three Yupiaq villages (Akiachak, Akiak and Tuluksak) on the lower Kuskokwim river of southwest Alaska. Before 1976, the elementary schools in the three communities were administered by the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Alaska State Operated School System. With the establishment of regional school districts and the creation of village high schools in the late 1970's, the villages joined together to form the Yupiit Nation and began to explore ways to run their own schools. In 1985, the three villages withdrew their schools from the regional district in which they had been placed by the state and petitioned to form the Yupiit School District, through which they hoped "to ensure the endurance and growth of the Yupiit culture and societies for both present and future generations." The YSD School Board was determined to build an educational program that would take into account Yupiit interests, while at the same time preparing students to succeed in the world beyond the Yupiit Nation.

Following is a summary profile of each of the three Yupiit schools at the time of the initiation of the AOTE process:

In October 1992, notices began to appear in the communities of Akiachak, Akiak, and Tuluksak announcing "The First Onward to Excellence Meeting" to be held in each of the local schools, hosted by the Yupiit School District AOTE leadership team. The announcement in Tuluksak indicated that "it is important that Elders and community members come and help plan for the future of their children." These meetings were the first of what became a series of well-attended community gatherings over the next several years, focusing on involving elders, parents, students and teachers in the remaking of the YSD educational programs through what was characterized as "not just another project, but a long journey."

The initial community meetings focused peoples attention on identifying and articulating the particular values and beliefs that they wished to pass on to the next generation, out of which a mission statement for the school district and a set of student goals were formulated. The following mission and student goals were adopted by the YSD Board in May, 1993:

The mission of the Yupiit School District and community is to ensure that all students master the basic skills, develop self-confidence, become self-reliant, possess knowledge of traditional Yup'ik ways, become fluent in Yup'ik and English languages, establish healthy life styles, become lifelong learners, and succeed in any environment.

Goal A: Know the way of life and history of Yup'ik families and what is important to know from the outside world as a result of living and functioning in both cultures. Students shall become the best educated Yup'ik hunters, fishers, and gatherers in the world.

Goal B: Be prepared for further education and work.

Goal C: Have respect and a positive attitude toward life and learning, school, self and a harmonious community.

Goal D: Be a law abiding citizens regardless of where one lives.

Goal E: Be able to read, write and speak both the Yup'ik and English languages.

Once the AOTE process had helped the Yupiit School District establish a direction for itself, the next step was to implement the goals that would achieve the mission adopted by the board. Following a series of meetings, each village selected one of the goals on which to focus its school improvement efforts. At the same time, they articulated several areas of concern that would need to be addressed to achieve the YSD mission:

• Given high staff turnover, we need a plan and direction (mission and goals) to have some stability over time. But there is some staff resistance to full community partnership. There are some principals and teachers who don't want the community setting the direction.
• The decline in student performance at elementary and high school levels is a concern as well as the peer pressure to not succeed (doing well in school is not "cool").
• High expectations and accountability. Teachers need to set high expectations and standards and people need to be accountable for results (e.g., all kindergarten students will perform up to grade level). But accountability does not mean people losing their jobs. It means people taking responsibility for the failure to meet a high standard and making adjustments next year.
• Importance of parent/home support for student success in postsecondary school. We need to define in specific terms the kind of support from families that will help young people succeed in college. We need to move beyond talking only generally about parent support and define and communicate what that means.
• There is a tension between the Western model of education and the Native priority on language and culture. This becomes a problem with high staff turnover (many teachers discover they can't handle village life) and there is a need to continually educate new teachers. This means that time must be found for staff development.

Since Native language and culture are fast disappearing, how to approach bilingual education is a controversial issue. Can we reach agreement on what it takes to achieve fluency in both English and Yup'ik? People do not yet agree on the best way to do this.

A major issue is how to integrate AOTE with ongoing district activities. If AOTE is to succeed as a long-term improvement process, it must become part of the way districts and schools do business, rather than an add-on project.

By the third year of the project there was enough momentum built up in each village that the changes that were being implemented in the schools were becoming noticeable. Student attendance began to show improvement, parent and Elder participation was on the rise, technology was being integrated into the schools in new ways, training in new curricular areas was being provided, and in general the school and community were showing signs of working more closely together. A committee began to compile all the information that had been accumulated on various aspects of the Yup'ik culture and organize it into a coherent cultural heritage curriculum. As a theme for the work they had undertaken, they adopted the statement, "let us put our minds together and see what life we can make for our children," and with the support of the Elders, community members and the teaching staff, they produced a seasonally-organized "Circle of Life" bilingual and cultural heritage curriculum outline.

The formulation of the curriculum embodied in the YSD Bilingual and Cultural Heritage Program clearly captured the mission and goals adopted by the district and communities. It also obviously required a closer working relationship between the schools and community, with the expertise required to implement the curriculum shared by members of the community as well as the teaching staff. While everyone recognized that it would take considerable additional work to effectively integrate the Yup'ik components into the curriculum, the district now had some concrete areas on which to focus its effort.

While AOTE has not been the only factor impacting education in the Yupiit School District since 1992, it has been a consistent presence and has provided a unifying theme (mission) and direction (goals) for the schools. However, there has been considerable ambivalence regarding the purpose of education as reflected in the curriculum offerings and teaching practices in the schools. While everyone agrees on the need for the school to prepare the students for life in both the local and global context, there has been little consistency in how this is addressed on a day-to-day basis. There are bits and pieces of each, but no cumulative, integrated approach that helps students (or teachers and parents) sort through the confusion and ambiguities involved.

By 1996, the Yupiit School District board was concerned that many aspects of the district mission and goals that had been established through the AOTE process were not evident in the schools. Teachers were continuing to teach the way they were taught, and the problem extended to the whole school, not just to the Yup'ik cultural program. The district sponsored several additional meetings with school staff and community members as well as with invited experts in the educational field, in which they reaffirmed the critical importance of making changes for the betterment and empowerment of the Yupiat people. This gave an increased degree of community voice to the people, and a renewed commitment was made under the banner of "Kitugzyaraq-the way to restore, to reform."

As a result, the Yupiit School District obtained federal funding to initiate a curriculum development process that would: "combine traditional Yup'ik customs and practices and modern communications technology to develop an educational curriculum that will prepare Yup'ik students for the 21st century. Student performance is expected to improve because their educational curriculum will be designed to have strong roots in Yup'ik culture and the local environment." Included in this curriculum effort is the incorporation of methods and approaches that reflect "Native ways of knowing," including the following suggested teaching strategies:

1. Use of local experts, elders, and parents
   • Consider taking small groups of students to the elders
   • Be aware that elders have a different timetable
2. Use of local values
3. Use of observation of the environment
4. Use of hands-on experience, which includes observing, practicing, applying, and demonstration
5. Use of sharing knowledge and teamwork
6. Sensitivity and use of seasonal activities and cycles
7. Use of Yup'ik language
8. Use of indigenous technologies and knowledge

There is an obvious thread of continuity as the AOTE process has evolved into "Yup'ik Education for the 21st Century." The new curriculum efforts are a direct reflection of the mission and goals of the Yupiit School District and are intended to address some of the frustrations and ambivalence associated with the earlier AOTE efforts. Each step on this "long journey" increases the confidence of the communities and district that their goals are achievable and the future of the children in their care is bright, as citizens of the Yupiit Nation and as citizens of the world.

In general, the people of the Yupiit NationlYupiit School District have viewed AOTE as being responsible for creating a high level of interest in the infusion of Yup'ik culture into the YSD curriculum, particularly on the part of community members. While there continue to be some significant differences of opinion regarding how to proceed in integrating the Yup'ik culture with