Survey Overview

Part II of the National Indian Education Study (NIES) presents the results of a national survey conducted in 2005 that examined the educational experiences of American Indian/Alaska Native students in grades 4 and 8, with particular emphasis on the impact and role of native language and culture. Students, their teachers, and principals of the school from which the students were selected participated in the survey. All of the survey questions were multiple choice, but they did include a space at the end for respondents to write in any comments.

Findings are presented in four broad areas: characteristics of the American Indian/Alaska Native students, their schools, their teachers, and their curriculum. The Inside the Survey section of this website provides information about data collection, sample selection, and interpreting results. The Data Table Index provides tables with standard errors that support the findings provided on this site. This site presents only a subset of the survey results. For complete results, download a copy of the full report, National Indian Education Study, Part II: The Educational Experiences of Fourth- and Eighth-Grade American Indian and Alaska Native Students.

American Indian/Alaska Native students represent about 1 percent of the total student population in the United States. In 2005, approximately 14,500 American Indian/Alaska Native students (combined grades 4 and 8 in reading and mathematics) participated in NIES Part I. A smaller sample of students (approximately 5,600) was selected to participate in NIES Part II. Read about the selection of the schools participating in this study. All students were identified as American Indian/Alaska Native in official school records, and the study included students attending public, private, and Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) schools. The teacher sample was made up of the reading and mathematics teachers of the sampled students, while the school principal sample consisted of the administrators at the schools these students attended.

Questionnaires for the Part II survey were developed under the guidance of a Technical Review Panel assembled to advise the NIES. This report describes important aspects of the educational experiences of American Indian/Alaska Native students in grades 4 and 8 such as the characteristics of schools the students attend, the qualifications of teachers, and the curriculum standards, and assessments used by teachers in the schools attended by these students.  Overall results are further divided by high and low density schools. About one-half of the American Indian/Alaska Native students at each grade level attended high density schools. The remaining students were at low density schools.

Although the central focus of the report is American Indian/Alaska Native students, information is also provided about non-American Indian/Alaska Native students, where available, so that the reader can compare the characteristics of American Indian/Alaska Native students with their peers from different backgrounds. The source of the information on non-American Indian/Alaska Native students is the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which included a survey component to collect limited demographic information about all students who participated in 2005. The NAEP survey, however, did not collect information on the role of American Indian/Alaska Native culture or language—topics which are the central focus of NIES.The report also includes comparisons between students attending high and low density schools.

The tests of significance used in the analyses are based on Student's t statistics. Only differences that have been determined to be statistically significant at the .05 level after controlling for multiple comparisons are discussed.