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An investigative report in New Mexico finds Native students are expelled at a far greater rate than their white counterparts. The report focuses on the public school district on the edge of the Navajo Nation with the highest percentage of Native students in the country. Today on Native America Calling, we’ll hear from Bryant Furlow, a New Mexico In-Depth reporter and member of ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network who pursued the story, as well as Native education experts Dr. Wendy Greyeyes (Diné), assistant professor of Native American Studies at the University of New Mexico, and Regis Pecos (Cochiti Pueblo), co-director of the Leadership Institute at the Santa Fe Indian School and former governor of Cochiti Pueblo.
Break 1 music: Narbona (song) The Delbert Anderson Trio (artist) MANITOU (album)
Break 2 music: Four Two-Step Songs (song) Pyawasits, Silas & Webster (artist) Wild Rice: Songs from The Menominee Nation (album)
If you have information that could help Bryant Furlow’s reporting, reach out via bryant.furlow@gmail.com or Twitter @bryantfurlow.
There is such a disregard for student needs and an overall focus on testing and test scores without including the developmental steps students need to be successful. Also there are zero ELL programs to support our native students. The attitude from the district is that everything falls on the classroom teacher, and as class sizes grow due to teachers fleeing this scenario, class sizes keep getting bigger. We are not growing teachers in our own community, we are recruiting from outside the community creating this cycle of indifference and incompetence.