Faircloth, Susan C., and John W. Tippeconnic III. The Civil Rights Project and The Pennsylvania State University Center for the Study of Leadership in American Indian Education, “The Dropout /Graduation Crisis Among American Indian and Alaska Native Students: Failure to Respond Places the Future of Native Peoples at Risk.” Last modified January 2010. Accessed March 23, 2014. http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED511323.pdf.

Native students have the highest dropout rate in the United States. It is not a new phenomenon, but one that still persists. Although the majority of Native students (about 92%) attend public schools, the rest (about 8%) attend schools operated by the Bureau of Indian Education (BIE). BIE schools have been cited as having facilities in need of improvement. Additionally, native students who attend BIE schools tend to have poorer educational outcomes than those who attend public schools. This article looks at the graduation gap between native students and students of other races. The research topic of this article is the graduation rate crisis among American Indian and Alaska Native students. The research question is: In the 12 U.S. states with the largest native populations included in this study, what are the graduation gaps between native students and non native students.

The data type needed to answer this question is graduation rates of native and non native students in the 12 U.S. states with the largest native populations. These rates are broken down further by race and gender. For each state and category, a graduation gap between native and non native students is calculated. The authors retrieved their data from the National Center for Education Statistics’ (NCES) Common Core of Data (CCD). The figures used were calculated using the Cumulative Promotion Index (CPI). There are multiple techniques for calculating graduation rates, but CPI is favored by many who consider it the most accurate. The authors also looked at what percentage of the population is native in order to show how important this crisis is. The authors calculated graduation gaps between native and non native students in order to look for patterns in the data.

This research was very specific, which allowed it to give readers a detailed account of one phenomenon. At the beginning of the article, the authors discussed the limitation of the study, something I found very useful. Towards the end of the study, the authors discuss why this issue must be addressed, and they back their arguments up with data. Overall, I found this research very thorough and, in addition, useful to anyone who may be in the position to address this issue.