Cortez – The mural outside the Mesa Elementary School entrance shows Native Americans coming face-to-face with Spanish conquistadors and a rifle-toting cowboy.
It is a reminder of this region’s history, of the problems that native people confronted centuries ago. But after years of low test scores among Native American students, the Montezuma-Cortez School District is at another crossroads in its history – forced to confront decades-long problems that educators and families say continue to plague them.
In this southwest Colorado district and in the nearby Ignacio School District – both of which border the only reservations in the state – Native American children this year posted some of the lowest scores on the 2005 Colorado Student Assessment Program, or CSAP, tests, among the 9,000 native students in Colorado.
District officials, educators and parents in the Four Corners region suggest different reasons why the two districts struggle – with arguments generally centered on poverty, culture and language – but they agree that the test results can’t be ignored.
“We accept that we have an ethical responsibility to raise those scores,” said Montezuma- Cortez superintendent Stacy Houser, who started his job this summer in the district where about a quarter of the 3,200 students are Native Americans. “We’ve been trying for years.”
Indeed, Mesa Elementary has been recognized twice for overall improvement in math scores, students have after-school programs, and teachers have committed to visit the homes of every first-grader, but Houser acknowledges there’s more to do.
New data from the Colorado Department of Education released this month showed that only one Native American high school student in Montezuma- Cortez scored “proficient” in math out of 86 children; only one Native American 10th-grader out of 49 could write proficiently; and barely one in 10 Native American fourth-graders read at a proficient level.
In Ignacio, where Native Americans make up about 41 percent of the classes, only three native students out of 49 were proficient or advanced in high school math.
The two districts’ scores are in stark contrast with the scores of Native Americans statewide, which showed that native students often outperformed other minorities in urban and suburban classrooms and achieved higher proficiency levels in reading and in early math and writing.
But achievement gaps between Native American and white students was generally greater in Ignacio and Montezuma-Cortez.
For example, fourth-grade Native Americans in the Montezuma district had math proficiency levels 43 percentage points below white students. Statewide, the gap was 27 percentage points.
And Ignacio’s Native American seventh-graders had writing proficiency levels 54 percentage points below white classmates. Statewide, the gap was 26 percentage points.
Ignacio district officials did not return several calls seeking comment.
The problems in Ignacio and Montezuma-Cortez are systemic in other Indian-country districts nationwide, said David Beaulieu, president of the National Indian Education Association, which is meeting in Denver this week.
“There are significant issues with schools, and they either have to change the child or change the way schools teach that population,” Beaulieu said.
In Ignacio, Southern Ute tribal members became so concerned with their students’ educations that they spurned the district and opened the Southern Ute Academy six years ago.
The 100-student academy, which focuses on educational basics through the sixth grade, also emphasizes Native American culture and language.
Longtime residents in the region said students often are treated as outsiders, face discrimination and have trouble understanding parts of speech, which eventually slows them academically.
So far, Houser, the Montezuma-Cortez superintendent, has gotten Ute Mountain Ute tribal officials involved in school plans this year and also formed a task force with school board members, Native American teachers and parents.
Already, an assembly on the Navajo Trail is in the works, and a Navajo singer visited the school.
“They loved it,” said Sandra Sam, a Mesa teacher aide who brought the singer. “The white kids (did), too.”
Staff writer Robert Sanchez can be reached at 303-820-1282 or rsanchez@denverpost.com.
Computer-assisted reporting editor Jeffrey A. Roberts contributed to this report.
