Exploring the American Indian/Alaska Native 8th Grade Patterns in Mathematics Achievement in Arizona and South Dakota

Abstract

School reports mandated by NCLB demonstrated that AI/AN students have the lowest achievement among focal subgroups. What has not yet been investigated are the achievement differences among AI/AN students: public low density school students scored significantly higher than public high density school students who scored significantly higher than BIE school students on the NAEP 8th grade mathematics achievement test in 2009. The NIES data made it possible to reliably estimate and investigate these differences. Nine derived risk factors and seven risk indices were created using both NAEP and NIES student, teacher, and school questionnaire data. Chi-square and OLS regression analyses were performed to better understand the achievement patterns between states and across school density types within states. The final OLS regression models were more similar across states within school density types than across school density types within a state. Four out of the six final models captured the data well with the adjusted R-squared values ranging from 0.31-0.38 (the other two final models had adjusted R-squared values of 0.24 and 0.11). The results of the OLS regression models in five of the six strata showed that the NAEP Social/physical risk index was significantly associated with lower student achievement. The final model for the South Dakota BIE school students included completely different predictors than the final models for the other five strata, possibly related to the extreme poverty on the reservations in South Dakota. There was a discrepancy in most strata between the number of students labeled as being ELL and the number of students who stated they spoke a language other than English at home at least half of the time or more. These and other results suggest that schools should focus on forming stronger connections with the students’ families both because of language barriers and parents’ previous experiences in school.