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Academic Success

Oct. 2, 2002

INDEPENDENT EVALUATOR FINDS TLINGIT CLASS IS WORKING

An independent evaluator has found Alaska Native children enrolled in a bilingual class sponsored by SHI and the Juneau School District are showing compelling evidence of improved academic achievement.

“Increased gains in student performance were significant,” wrote evaluator Annie Calkins in a recent report on the Tlingit K-2* program at Harborview Elementary School.

The Tlingit K-2 students have “paved the way for further program expansion, based on the academic gains, Tlingit language acquisition, and the cultural pride and self confidence which characterize the class,” the report said.

The program, led by teacher Kitty Eddy and cultural specialist Nancy Douglas, is the first bilingual and bicultural class in the Juneau School District. The class opened in the 2000-2001 school year with funding from a federal grant. The evaluation was required under terms of the grant, and the findings in the report are persuasive.

By the end of the second year of the program, enrolled students took the Test of Oral Language Development (T.O.L.D.)** and far outperformed 92 Alaska Native students who took the test in 1996, thereby “furthering the assertion that environmental influences can indeed deeply affect academic performance,” according to the report.

The report went on to say “… As a group, this class also outperformed Alaska Native students in the District in the percentage of them who met the District’s CORE content standards in reading and writing at all three grade levels.”

In the second year of the program, many enrolled Native students not only matched their Native and non-Native peers in other classes on assessments but often outperformed them, sometimes by wide margins, the report said.

“This is some of the most compelling evidence to date establishing a link between culture and academic achievement,” said SHI President Rosita Worl. “Many Alaska Native students appear to meet or exceed academic standards when they learn in an environment that also teaches Native languages and cultures.”

Worl praised the district for integrating the program into the school system. The program, initially funded in part by a grant from the U.S. Department of Education to SHI, is now funded by the district, which also expanded it to include third grade students. The program is now called Tlingit K-3.*

“This approach to educating Alaska Native students appears to be working,” said Juneau School District Superintendent Gary Bader. “We expanded the program through grade three this year and, with continued success, we plan on expanding the program through grade five.”

Calkins, the evaluator, has more than 20 years experience in education and has tracked the program since its inception. Calkins is a former assistant superintendent for the Juneau School District now working as an education consultant.

* The Harborview program has expanded to grade 4 and the district in 2003 secured federal funding to expand it to grade 5.

**The T.O.L.D. composite score comes from an analysis of performance on six sub-tests – Picture Vocabulary, Relational Vocabulary, Oral Vocabulary, Grammatical Understanding, Sentence Imitation and Grammatical Completion.

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