5. Since there is no counciling "program," presumably there is no student attitude toward it. Students are regulated and disciplined in the usual ways by the usual authority figures-teacher, principals, dorm aides. Physical punishment is forbidden by regulation, but expulsion from the school, either day or boarding, is a "final alternative."

6. If Mr. Weston, the school head-"Educational programs administrator" is to be believed, there is a file on each student-academic information in the case of day students, academic, behavioral, and social in the case of boarding students-but no useful information is contained therein. With respect to the adequacy of records of any kind, Mr. Weston's standard reply was: "We've never had money for record clerks, so we've never been able to put together that information.” 7. Dormitory program.

(a) During the day, the ratio of instructional aides to students is 1:25; at night, it is 1:50.

(b) Unable to provide a satisfactory answer for this item. Physically, the dominant impression created by the dormitories was one of barren sterility-for example, no chairs in the dorm bedrooms, no books or magazines in evidence anywhere, recreational areas without any recreational facilities, and so forth. There were no study desks or study areas. However, an adequate answer to this item would require that an observer spend at least a week in residence as a participant observer. We were not able to do this.

(c) Instructional aides are all local Indians with at least a high school education. Their training consists of in-service workshops, one per week throughout the year. These workshops apparently consist of discussions among the aides, between the aides and various administrative personnel, and between the aides and various resource persons brought in from time to time, such as a visiting psychologist or psychiatrist, perhaps. A few of the instructional aides attend a Summer workshop of several days duration each year.

The roles of instructional aides are said to be, in apparent order of importance: Supervision, instruction in hygiene, direction of recreation, counciling.

D. Education performance

1. Academic criteria.

(a) Dropout rates:

In his responses to this item, Mr. Weston was at his slippery best. The only concrete figure we were able to obtain was his estimate that "we lose about 10 percent of the northern Cheyenne." This, if correct, is truly remarkable-by comparison, the loss rate in the public school system in Big Horn County, from the first through the 12th grade, both Indian and non-Indian, is 50 percent. Some indirect evidence as to the credibility of Mr. Weston's figures may be obtained from the following data on class size and composition, grades nine through 12, for the past 2 years:

(In 1964, the Indian dropout rate at Wolf Point was reported to be 95 percent.)

The left-hand column contains the figures for this fall, the righthand column the figures for last spring, at the end of the school year. It is evident, and was so reported to us, that there are new students coming in to the school at each level every year. The figures also suggest, to us at least, an attrition rate of a lot more than 10 percent. (b) Achievement tests:

We were able to obtain, from a naive or inadequately briefed underling, one set of achievement test scores the California achievement test records for grades 2-12, administered May 1968. We calculated, from these data, the average total score of the students at each grade level, and determined the percentile rank, for that grade level, of each of the average scores.

Please complete the following questions checking the answer that most represents your evaluation. (Do not sign your name.)

1. How do you teach?

Lecture

Class discussion__.

Comment:

Individually designed programs for each student__.

2. Why do you teach as you mentioned above?

Comment: Best way to help students learn in different areas.

3. In one sentence please indicate what you think students should

learn from their school experiences?

Learn to live with others and cope with outside world.

4. What are the three best things about this school?

Up-to-date teaching materials.

Teachers do own classroom instruction planning.

Good teacher and pupil relationship.

5. What are the three worst things about this school?

Lack of communication between staff and teachers-not in on policy

making or have any voice in school guidance, etc.

Need better facilities for students and teachers.

Pupil behavior in assemblies and in general-not good.

(c) Mr. Weston indicated that there is "some" social promotion. Of the 13 graduating seniors who took the California achievement tests last spring, nine had a total score equivalent to less than the 10 percentile. This would suggest quite a bit more than "some" social promotion.

(d) Once again, records are not the Busby School's strong point. (e) No data available. No English proficiency tests are given! (f) Followup:

1. Information was only available on last spring's graduating class: six went on to college, nine went on to a vocational school (total of 15).

2. No data available.

3. No data available.

4. No data available.

(g) Record adequacy: Again, if Mr. Weston is to be believed, the Busby School must have the world's most inadequate set of records.

2. Psychological/emotional criteria

(a) There is no truant officer, so truancy rates do not exist. With more time, we might have been able to obtain arrest rates, but not through the school. Anyway, Busby is so far out in the boondocks that it is hard to conceive what anyone could do there that would get him or her arrested.

(b) Information about points b.-d. was obtained from the dormitory supervisors, Mr. Sheehan and Mrs. Shurig. Mr. Sheehan has been at Busby for 1 year, Mrs. Shurig for 15 years. They say that there is no drinking "problem"-presumably, as they indicate, because alcohol is too hard to come by in a controlled environment on the reservation. The case is apparently similar with respect to drugs: however, they report epidemics of glue-sniffing from time to time.

(c) They (same informants) state that fighting is not a problem: serious fights are unusual, and attacks with weapons almost unknown. With respect to the suicide problem, Mrs. Shurig states that it is restricted entirely to the girls; she states that in the 15 years she has been at Busby there has never been an attempt at suicide by a male boarding student. She states that there have not been over 25 suicide attempts in the past 15 years among the female boarding students. and that not more than 12 of these were "serious" attempts (the others were merely requests for attention). She further states that the rate of suicide attempts is neither climbing nor declining.

(d) No meaningful data or observations.

(e) Approximately five students per year are expelled from the boarding school for behavioral reasons.

E. Factors affecting education performance

1. School-community:

(a) As students, none.

(b) Career day once a year. There are no employment centers in the area.

(c) There is a Headstart unit at Busby.

(d) We may know the answer, but we can't understand the question.

(e) None.

2. School-reservation:

(a) Those boarding students who are from other reservations return home once during the school year (Christmas).

(b) Boarding students are sent home during the summer. (c) No regular contact-parents are free to visit any time. 3. Parental involvement: None at all, until very recently. Mr. Weston has created a Northern Cheyenne Advisory Council-tribal members appointed by the tribe to advise and assist him on school matters. Parent-teacher meetings are being encouraged. The truant officer has been dispensed with, with an attempt being made to convince parents that their child's attendance is their responsibility. The school's educational coordinator presumably spends most of his time visiting parents and drumming up support for the school. The school buildings are being made available, for the first time, for community events. 4. Curriculum relevancy: As indicated earlier, totally irrelevant. 5. Books and materials: Staff all say that texts and teaching materials appropriate for their Indian pupils are completely unavailable. 6. The "community," in this case, is the town of Busby, which is entirely northern Cheyenne. One can get no admission from anyone of any discrimination within the school, based either on lightness of skin or on tribal affiliation. This seems most unlikely.

7. Our impression is that the longer the teacher or staff member has been with BIA, the more likely he is to view the Indian students as likeable primitives perpetual children, forever unable to fend for themselves without the protection of the Great White Father's rep

resentative.

8. No reliable data.

9. Except for the students from the Wind River reservation, the students generally have no money for incidentals, or even for clothes. The dormitories impress one as very poor places to study.

F. Physical plant

The size and condition of all the elements of the physical plant are: a) marginal for the size and heterogeneity of the student population; b) unexpectedly adequate for a rural school the size of this one. The facilities seem perfectly consistent with the idea of an educational "holding operation"-adequate to keep the students occupied, not so adequate as to ignite any desire for learning or achievement.

G. Recommendations

See our covering letter.

SUMMARY OF STATEMENT OF MR. E. W. HUBLEY,

SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, HARDIN, MONT.

Hardin, Mont., is the county seat of Big Horn County, in which the entire Crow reservation and part of the northern Cheyenne reservation are contained. Busby is in Big Horn County. Indians in Big Horn County who do not go to the Busby High School go to the Hardin High School. The Hardin High School-Junior High School system serves four elementary schools: the Hardin Elementary School, the Crow Agency School on the Crow reservation, the Ft. Smith School on the Crow reservation, and the Busby Elementary School on the northern Cheyenne reservation. Apparently few northern Cheyenne attend the

35-479-69-pt. 3- 4

Hardin school. They are eligible to attend either the Busby High School or the Rosebud County High School, both of which are closer; Hardin is apparently a much more prejudiced community than any other in the area; and Busby students do not do well in the Hardin school.

Mr. Hubley has lived and taught in Big Horn County for 16 years. He was a teacher and principal in the Crow Agency Elementary School for 12 years, and has been superintendent of schools for Big Horn County for the past 4 years.

Mr. Hubley feels that the Indian students achieve as well as the nonIndian students during the first 3 years of school, and then begin to drop behind. He says this is true provided that those Indian students who begin first grade with a language handicap (i.e., speaking no English or Crow dialect pidgin-English) devote their entire first year to just learning English.

Mr. Hubley says that although the Indian children from the Crow Agency and Ft. Smith schools do not do as well as Hardin children in junior high and high school, they are as well prepared when they leave elementary school. It is, he says, during the seventh and eighth grades that the Indian students find out that they have no future after high school, and therefore quit trying.

Mr. Hubley believes that courses in Indian culture would be very useful-provided that they were required for non-Indians as well as Indians.

Indian students are better than non-Indians at tasks involving vision and visual judgment, manual dexterity, visual memory, and sympathetic awareness of other people's feelings.

Mr. Hubley believes that the overall performance of Indian students will not improve until they see some advantage in getting an education. Mr. Hubley states that there is a widespread attitude on the part of Hardin teachers that the Indian students are not worth bothering with or helping or encouraging—if it were possible to change this attitude, it would help some, in his view.

SUMMARY OF STATEMENT OF MR. E. W. CHRISTENSEN, BIG HORN COUNTY REPRESENTATIVE IN THE STATE LEGISLATURE

Mr. Christensen believes that the problem of Indian education is fundamentally a linguistic one. The inability of the Indians to speak English drives them into shyness and passivity. Mr. Christensen believes that the early grades should segregate whites from Indians and that the Indian classes should have the same student-teacher ratio as do special education classes for the mentally retarded (15-1). Indian classes should also have bi-lingual teacher aides.

The second thing required to solve the Indian education problem is a comprehensive vocational-technical education program. Since the Indian's strong point is manual dexterity, they are all going to be bluecollar workers at best. The schools should have an early preparatory Vocational education program, a solid secondary vocational education curriculum, and then a post-secondary vocational-technical educational opportunity right in the local area (e.g., a Vo-Tech Junior College). In other words, there would be a two-track system from start to finish; Whites could go through the regular academic program and on to the