Some charter schools aim to save kids. Some aim to save cultures – and the kids along with it.

A new report from Harvard education researchers highlights three charter schools that offer cultural immersion for Native American students, including a K-8 charter on a Seminole Indian reservation in Glades County, Fla. The school’s name, Pamayetv Emahakv, means “our way,” which sums up the school’s goal: Preparing more than 200 students for the higher education they’ll need to succeed anywhere in the 21st century while at the same time holding on to Seminole culture and values.

“We turned our back on our way to go and learn the other way,” Michele Thomas, a school administrator and parent, told the researchers when they visited earlier this year. “So, now with this school we have to look back this way now. We have the education down, we have lots of college education in this community, but our language has suffered, our young people are not fluent speakers.”

Some education researchers think the approach of the Seminole charter and the two others in the report could help Native American students elsewhere who are not faring well in traditional public schools. According to the report, which was prepared for the National Indian Education Association, American Indian students have the highest absentee rate among minority students and the second-highest suspension and dropout rates.

“These three schools … all share a broader vision of transformative community change,” wrote the Harvard researchers, Eve L. Ewing and Meaghan E. Ferrick. “The establishment of a school serves as a means for mobilizing and empowering the local communities to assess their own needs and determine their own solutions. By doing so, community members not only improve educational outcomes for their children – they are also making a profound expression of self-determination and tribal sovereignty.”

The motto of the Seminole school boldly echoes that: “Successful learners today, unconquered leaders tomorrow.”  (The Seminoles call themselves “the unconquered” because even after three wars with the federal government, over half a century, they never surrendered.)

The charters in the Harvard report are part of a national movement by Indian and other native communities to use charter schools to help resurrect and maintain their indigenous cultures. (more…)