Education Week logoCommentary, By Denise Juneau

The Bureau of Indian Education recently wrapped up its tribal consultation process on its latest proposed strategic plan “to guide its work and service delivery to [Native] students, schools, and tribes.” While the BIE creates plan after plan intended to restructure, realign, reform, redesign, revise, and redo their education system, in actuality these plans are rarely carried out. The necessary changes to schooling simply remain words written on paper. Meanwhile, tribes, schools, educators, parents, and students continue to wait for the federal government to meet its legal trust responsibility to provide a quality education to American Indian students.

For over a century, the federal government has proven that attempting to control and oversee a nationwide network of schools leads to an ineffective and disheartening system of education that fails to address the cultural, linguistic, and overall learning needs of American Indian children. If the BIE’s record of failure reflected on any other group of students, there would be a national outcry.

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