US Senators Reintroduce Bipartisan Bill to Build Access to Cultural Educational Opportunities for Native Students

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senators Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND), James Lankford (R-OK), and Steve Daines (R-MT) reintroduced bipartisan legislation to make sure Native American students who are eligible for federal learning resources that can help address their unique academic and cultural needs are not prevented from accessing those critical programs.

Although the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ (BIA) last official count of eligible Native students took place more than two decades ago, the federal government still relies on this severely outdated data to determine federal funding needs and distribution for the Johnson-O’Malley (JOM) program – a federal cultural educational support program that works to boost academic achievement among underserved students in Native populations. By requiring the federal government to accurately count all Native students who could be served under the program, Heitkamp, Lankford, and Daines’ bipartisan Johnson O’Malley Supplemental Indian Education Program Modernization Act would work to change that – helping close significant gaps in access to programs that can help Native students improve academically.

“Native students are among America’s most underserved youth, and for years the federal government has been neglecting its duty to help them access learning opportunities that can help them thrive,” said Heitkamp. “By updating decades old data the federal government uses to determine federal funding for critical cultural and educational support for Native students, Senator Lankford and I are working to prevent Native children from falling through the cracks. We need strong bipartisan solution like this bill to build access to critical learning programs Native students need to succeed, and to build opportunities that make sure no Native child is forgotten.”

During a time when Native students graduate from high school at a rate far lower than any other racial or ethnic demographic in the country, Heitkamp, Lankford and Daines are working to make sure that the cultural programs in public schools that have linked to boosting Native students’ morale, as well as academic performance and attendance, are readily available in classrooms. Despite the stark need for such programs, the last official count in 1995 by BIA, identified 271,884 Native students eligible for such resources. Since that time, the BIA has attempted to officially verify Native students eligible for the program without success, while the National Congress of American Indians has recently indicated a large gap in access to these programs – with a marked increase of more than 500,000 Native young people nationwide in 2010 that could be eligible for JOM cultural resources.

Heitkamp, Lankford, and Daines’ bipartisan bill would call on the U.S. Department of the Interior to update its severely outdated count of Native students in a timely manner by using existing public information from the U.S. Census Bureau and the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) to show underserved students who are potentially eligible under the program. This data is crucial for making sure Native students in public schools can access the cultural and educational investments critical to their success.