Project 5.6

 

School/Community Co-Constructed School Reform: Upscaling from Research to Practice

in a Native American Community

 

Roland Tharp, Principal Investigator

Ruth Hilberg, Georgia Epaloose, Marilyn Feathers,

and Carlotta Bird, Principal Researchers

 

This work was supported under the Education Research and Development Program, PR/Award No. R306A60001, the Center for Research on Education, Diversity & Excellence (CREDE), Roland G. Tharp, Director, as administered by the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), National Institute on the Education of At-Risk Students (NIEARS), U.S. Department of Education (USDOE).

 

This project is operated collaboratively by UCSC and the Zuni Public School District (ZPSD); each has its own grant funds and own employees, who work together as a team for educational improvement.

The day-to-day work, the regular, steady accomplishments of the Zuni leadership in their twenty years of working for school improvement, is not the subject of this report, although none of the activities reported here would, or could, have been done without them. We researchers from UCSC are in Zuni only at their invitation. We have no authority over any decision, make no policy, and work entirely to assist the ZPSD leadership to achieve its goals. We do this work because we share those goals -- to make classrooms more effective and comfortable for Zuni students.

The funding for the work comes from the Center for Research on Education, Diversity & Excellence (CREDE), through a grant from the US Department of Education. CREDE has responsibilities for improving education nationally, so they are interested in Zuni as a possible model for other Native American communities who are also trying to make their schools more responsive to Native American children. Through the national network of CREDE researchers, we are sometimes able to provide assistance that is rarely available in any single school district.

The work of the ZPSD project members is reported regularly to the School Board, and through many official and informal channels. This report focuses on the researchers‚ work, because Zuni is rightly concerned to know about the activities of outside agencies in your community. But as an outsider, I want to take this opportunity to testify that the impressive achievements made by the Zuni schools is due to the dedication, professionalism and wisdom of outstanding school leaders, from Board Members to teachers, and especially the three ZPSD principal researchers on this project, Carlotta Bird, Georgia Epaloose and Marilyn Riding In-Feathers.

Roland G. Tharp, Director

CREDE

School/Community Co-Constructed School Reform: Upscaling

From Research to Practice in a Native American Community

The purpose of our CREDE/Zuni collaborative research project is to discover, implement, and document ways of overcoming school resistance to Native American-appropriate education reform. Our program focuses on effective, culturally compatible pedagogy for Zuni youth. A primary intention of the schooling of Native children by the (Euro-American) institutions of North America has been to assimilate youth into the mainstream culture, typically through the eradication of Native cultures. The educational system has been used to systematically deny Native Americans opportunities to practice Native languages, cultures, and religions. Current educational problems and conflicts in Zuni and elsewhere in Native America are conditioned by the historical role schools play, potent today in every aspect of psychological experience and social process (for a full discussion, see Tharp et al., 1999). Colonization's imposed social, political, and economic processes live on in the habits of thought of tribal people who now work as teachers and administrators, and in the apparent acceptance by tribal families of dysfunctional educational conditions as normal.

Although school reform movements in Native communities have many goals in common with other American communities, in Native America schools must integrate these goals within the context of the history, values, goals, and culture of the local tribal community. The struggle of Native Americans to gain control over the education of their children has lasted 500 years, is highly complex, and allows no simple solutions. When local leaders do not consider the issues of educational change from broader sociocultural contexts, including the effects of colonization on the inhibition of self-determination, capacity building, and nationhood, they are reduced to adopting "pre-packaged" reform models. Since the support and technical assistance systems available to most Native American schools and communities are weak or inappropriate to community-based needs, Native schools suffer from the waves of well-intentioned but misguided reform fads which have failed precisely because they are disconnected from the educational needs and realities experienced by Native American children and tribal communities, such as Zuni.

The Zuni Public School District in New Mexico provides an important example because 20 years ago they reformed their schools into their own public school district and have since engaged in a steady campaign to reform school governance, curriculum, pedagogy, and goals to support the Zuni community and Zuni children. At that time, Zuni faced a number of serious problems: drop-out and expulsion rates were alarmingly high; parents felt the educational services provided were inappropriate for Zuni students; there was no parent involvement in the schools; and Zunis were subjected to racism from teachers and school administrators. On July 11, 1980, the Zuni Public School District became the first Native American controlled public school in New Mexico. Native Americans everywhere have followed this strategy with intense interest. Making the Zuni School District boundaries coterminous with those of the reservation insured a school board of Zunis and thus local control. As a public school district, Zuni acquired the financial and professional support from the New Mexico State Department of Education. The formal goal of that district was, and is, to create a more appropriate and effective system of education for all Zuni children (Administrators and Faculty of the Zuni Public School District, 1991).

Considerable progress has been made. To date, a pedagogy that is effective for Zuni students has been developed (Dalton & Youpa, 1998; Tharp, Dalton, & Yamauchi, 1994), a district-wide curriculum is being developed and implemented, and a bilingual program (established through Title VII funds) is in its first phase of implementation. During the 1997-98 school year, a Teacher Professional Development Portfolio and Evaluation System was developed which establishes a process for accountability and assistance to teachers in order for schooling to become more effective and appropriate for the Zuni community.

However, progress has not been rapid, nor has it been simple, even with effective, dedicated, local leadership and Native school board control. Since there are more than 500 tribal groups of Native Americans, generalizations from our work should be drawn with caution; however, lessons learned from the chronicle of the Zuni's long educational journey has potential for assisting other reforms, particularly among Native American groups, but also for other at-risk communities.

CREDE’s Collaboration with Zuni Public School District

The First Year of Planning, 1990. Several Native communities, which had the goal of making the education of their children more appropriate and effective, were visited, observed, and leaders were interviewed. Zuni was selected as the site for this project for three reasons: (1) the presence of an excellent group of Zuni leaders in the community and schools who were deeply committed to the goals of the reform and were competent to carry it out; (2) their sophistication in understanding the potential contributions that a national research center could bring to them in terms of technical assistance; and (3) their status as a public school district, a political act of great interest to other Native communities, the consequences of which were not yet fully understood. For all these reasons, Zuni was an ideal choice--both as a probable success, and as a model for documentation.

Hayes Lewis, a Harvard-educated Zuni, was then Superintendent of Schools. In his view, the district had completed a decade of learning how to operate a school district, and was now ready to spend the next decade reforming curricula and pedagogy. He requested that CREDE first concentrate on the Zuni Middle School, and that the focus of our assistance be on appropriate teaching methods (pedagogy development).

The Next Four Years, 1991-1995. During these four years, CREDE concentrated on providing technical assistance in improvement of teaching methods. We gathered extensive faculty, parent, and student attitude statements about teaching through focus groups and questionnaires, and conducted an exhaustive review of the literature on research and development in Native American education.

Thereby we created a simple framework and a professional development program for culturally responsive teaching. Assistance was offered to ZMS teachers, who participated on a volunteer basis, through additional staff resources, and through consultations and coaching by CREDE staff developers.

We also conducted a study and submitted a report to the Zuni Tribal Council on the state of Zuni youth, their aspirations, opportunities, and frustrations, from the youth's own point of view, as compared with community resources.

We published and disseminated information about effective pedagogy, prepared model videotapes, provided training of Zuni trainers, assisted in the writing of Zuni's (successful) application for Title Seven Bilingual Program funds, and successfully reconstituted our working relationships. During this period, two major changes in ZPSD occurred. Mr. Lewis resigned and a new superintendent was employed. Ms. Carlotta Bird assumed the role of ZPSD Curriculum Coordinator; she is now Director of Instruction.

CREDE’s Current Work with Zuni. CREDE is working with the Zuni Public School District in two capacities:

• Technical Assistance. We provide assistance to the Zuni Public School District (ZPSD) to achieve school reform that will make education appropriate and successful for Zuni students, and be responsive to the goals and values of the Zuni community. Our technical assistance includes expertise, training, and resources in (1) the professional development of teachers, (2) teacher portfolios and assessment, and (3) increasing family/community involvement, including parent/teacher focus groups, community surveys, youth surveys, and interviews.

• Documentation. We document the journey of ZPSD toward school reform, for the benefit of other Native American communities with similar goals. CREDE’s institutional responsibilities are to conduct research and educational improvement activities that will be broadly informative. Thus our documentation is designed to make the Zuni experience available not only locally to Zuni, but nationally, to federal, state, tribal, and local practitioners, decision makers, and other researchers.

Technical Assistance

Teacher professional development in pedagogy. We provide regular consultation and training to the teachers of Zuni Middle School (ZMS) in the uses of the CREDE Standards pedagogy. CREDE’s Standards for Effective Teaching (Tharp, 1997) were established through the research of CREDE and the previous national center in cooperation with ZMS. CREDE’s Standards are: (1) Teacher and Students Producing Together, (2) Language and Literacy Across the Curriculum, (3) Making Meaning — Connecting School to Students’ Lives, (4) Teaching Complex Thinking, and (5) Teaching Through Conversation [can we get a ‘button’ or link here to the standards site?]. Also, our work in Zuni has uncovered two additional standards that are consensual within Native American research-and-development literature: (6) Include Modeling and Demonstration by teacher and students, and (7) Provide Opportunity for Student Choice and Initiative.

Development of teacher professional development portfolios. We provided assistance to the middle school principal in refining her professional development portfolio and evaluation system. The portfolios, along with classroom observations by the principal, served as the basis for year-end teacher evaluation, personnel actions, and planning for future professional development. The Zuni School Board has now mandated that such a system be created and implemented throughout the district. This system is now being made available to other schools through our website. [Can we put a ‘button’ here to the portfolio?]

Increasing family/community involvement. We assisted in developing ways to make community concerns heard by educators through (a) parent-teacher focus groups to discuss teaching-and-learning processes; (b) a three-day summer institute for teachers and parents who worked together on developing instructional units; and (c) a questionnaire to survey the Zuni community about values, beliefs, and practices pertinent to education.

We have worked to create opportunities for "authentic" parent and community involvement at the middle school. Authentic involvement means including community members fully, with equal voice, with teachers and administrators in decision-making regarding curriculum, pedagogy, and administration. Community involvement in education can be the single most critical factor for achieving school reform anywhere, but it is indispensable in Native American communities. Authentic community involvement involves the building of mutual respect, self-respect, mutual influence, and shared goals and visions.

We organized a series of focus groups, over a twelve-month period, consisting of parents and teachers, who were to discuss teaching and learning processes. We experimented both with using classroom videotapes as stimuli for discussion, and with having an open agenda to discuss problems of mutual concern. In these sessions, parents often recognized good teaching methods and remarked on the benefits of teachers working to engage students in meaningful learning activities. While some teachers took parents' suggestions to heart and worked to incorporate them into their classes, many adopted the role of expert-informant to the focus group, displayed little interest in parents as a source of knowledge or ideas, and exhibited no problem-solving orientation or much receptivity. Our experience with these groups illustrates that authentic involvement of parents is a complex process, and not every form of involvement is equally effective.

At the beginning of 1997-98, in a three-day summer institute, we collaborated with the district curriculum developer to bring together 60 participants. About half were parents, and the other were school faculty and staff. During the institute, small groups of teachers and parents worked together to develop instructional units based on Zuni experiences, issues, and the ZPSD Curriculum High Achievement Outcomes. Most units were excellent. Communication was far more open and authentic than in most teacher-parent interactions. Bringing school and community people to work productively together is a highly effective process; but even so, school policy must establish Zuni-relevant instruction as a criterion. The Institute included enactments of all CREDE Standards for Effective Teaching and Learning; thereby presenting participants with a working example of a learning environment based on the CREDE model.

During 1997-98, we developed a Parent/Community questionnaire to survey the Zuni community about values, beliefs, and practices pertinent to education and educational aspirations for Zuni children. Holding focus groups comprised of community members refined questions from the initial survey. Zuni interviewers are administering the survey to a random sample of Zuni residents. The survey began in July 1998 under the joint sponsorship of the ZPSD and Zuni Tribal Council, and is scheduled for completion during fall 1998. When the results are available, we will assist in organizing groups of educators and community members to discuss the educational implications of community beliefs, values, and priorities.

Our community survey will serve the school district and each school by providing vital information that can help in the areas of curriculum development, school/community relations, bilingual education, and teacher professional development. The survey will also contribute valuable information for other community programs. Overall, we expect a positive impact from this survey’s findings. It will be of great value as we continue to assist teachers in the implementation of the ZPSD Curriculum and effective teaching strategies for Zuni youth.

Documentation

Two documents provide an overview of our activities and accomplishments. The document Report to Zuni provides a narrative account and an outline of accomplishments during the two years of the CREDE funding period, as well as a full bibliography.

Seven More Mountains and a Map: Overcoming Obstacles to Reform in Native American Education (Tharp et al., 1999). This paper reviews the entire history of the Zuni school reform movement, beginning with establishing the public school district. School reform in Native communities is placed in the context of the 500-year history of education as a battleground between European settlers and Native peoples. Seven major obstacles to reform, as they have operated in Zuni, are presented. The obstacles are:

Obstacle 1: Disrespect of Native Americans by the school.

Obstacle 2: Student resistance -- withdrawal and reduced achievement.

Obstacle 3: Lack of self-confidence in Native American leaders.

Obstacle 4: Passivity of Native communities in the face of school authority.

Obstacle 5: Teacher imperviousness to external influence.

Obstacle 6: Bureaucratic, legal, and policy constraints.

Obstacle 7: Vision conflicts between Native communities and the education power structure.

The paper then discusses the "map," a guide to successful school reform already established by reformers in other Native communities, and suggests eight guidelines for successful school reform. We are encouraged to see that each of these eight factors has been created in Zuni by the reform leadership. The first guideline has been present in Zuni for decades. CREDE has provided assistance in all the others.

1. A stable core of committed personnel, either teachers, administrators, or concerned community members.

2. An adequate and stable source of funding.

3. Long-term or ongoing support or collaboration from outsiders such as university researchers.

4. The language and culture of the community incorporated into all aspects of schooling, including the curriculum and the pedagogy.

5. Reformed curriculum and classroom organization for Native American children that are compatible with the knowledge, beliefs, and ways of local communities.

6. Instruction that encourages student dialogue in collaborative activities, and which is student-centered, student-directed, and cognitively challenging.

7. Support for teachers in a manner consistent with that provided for students.

8. Community and family involvement, with teachers and policy makers, in decision-making regarding curriculum, pedagogy, and administration.

Because these eight conditions are present in Zuni, we are optimistic that reform will continue to develop, and ultimately succeed.

Watahomigie (1995) recommends that schools ask parents what they want for their children. We agree, and are at the present time preparing a community-wide survey on that subject. The Zuni School Board, the Tribal Council, the district leadership, and we ourselves anxiously await the results. Lewis insightfully notes that

When we accept the American common tradition as the model of education for our people, and settle for gaining our little piece of Indian control over that model, we severely limit ourselves. We ourselves must design education for our children, from the center up, from where we come as Indian people. We must build on the whole young person -- physical, psychological, social, educational, cultural-spiritual, and familial -- and create on the basis of all of the strengths. I think of a seven directional model, where we will look to the strengths of the six directions that we have as Indian people, but also look to the seventh, which is ourselves. We must create our own. That’s risky. It means real change. And it can save our children.

References

Administrators and Faculty of the Zuni Public School District. (1991). The Zuni Public School District. Zuni History: Victories in the 1990s, Part 2, pp. 14-15.

Dalton, S. S., & Youpa, D. G. (1998). Standards-based teaching reform in Zuni Pueblo Middle and High Schools. Equity and Excellence in Education, 31(1), 55-68.

Tharp, R. G. (1997). From at-risk to excellence: Research, theory, and principles for practice (Research Report No. 1). Santa Cruz: Center for Research on Education, Diversity, and Excellence.

Tharp, R. G., Dalton, S., & Yamauchi, L. A. (1994). Principles for culturally compatible Native American education. Journal of Navajo Education, 11(3), 21-27.

Tharp, R. G., Lewis, H., Hilberg, R., Bird, C., Epaloose, G., Dalton, S. S., Youpa, D. G., Rivera, H., Riding In-Feathers, M., & Eriacho, W. (1999). Seven more mountains and a map: Overcoming obstacles to reform in Native American schools. Journal of Education for Students Placed At Risk, 4(1), 5-25.

Tharp, R. G., Feathers, M., Bird, C., Epaloose, G., Hilberg, R. (1998). A report to Zuni. Center for Research on Education, Diversity and Excellence, University of California, Santa Cruz.

Watahomigie, L. J. (1995). The power of American Indian parents and communities. Bilingual Research Journal, 19(1), 189-194.