Culturally Sustaining Policymaking in Indigenous Communities

Discover how top-down, policy-into-practice educational mandates have adversely affected Indigenous communities in the United States’ midwestern core. The author scrutinizes how leaders and intermediaries in Nebraska, involved at various tiers of policy development and reform, conceptualized and implemented school accountability policy in Indian country. In particular, Phillips explores state-directed reform efforts in a school on the Santee Sioux Reservation consistently labeled as failing and persistently experiencing intervention from outsiders presented as experts. The book interrogates who gets to define educational quality, who counts as an expert on improving schools, and what improvement actually looks like. Additionally, the text highlights the way local educators and members of the community employed everyday tactics and incognito acts of improvement to reshape school turnaround efforts. Readers will see what is possible for education policy done with—rather than to—Native communities and schools, with lessons that have relevance beyond the midwestern states.

Book Features:

• Offers an education system reform perspective that has an impact in Indian country.
• Introduces the concept of culturally responsive and sustaining policymaking.
• Explores how policy reform efforts are implemented across tiers of the educational system, from the legislative floor to a local classroom.
• Shows how local actors assert agency to remake policy spaces and improve policy implementation.

Aprille J. Phillips is an associate professor of education at the University of Nebraska at Kearney.

“A clear, accessible, and often personal narrative . . . Culturally Sustaining Policymaking in Indigenous Communities provides the fields of education, anthropology, and Native American/Indigenous Studies with a richly described, thoughtful, and timely account of the innerworkings of education ‘reform,’ laying bare the ways in which state-level safety zones serve to reinscribe systems of oppression, and revealing the policy improvisation and push-back of Indigenous nations, communities, and schools.”
—From the Forewod by Teresa L. McCarty, distinguished professor, University of California, Los Angeles, and coauthor (with K. Tsianina Lomawaima) of "To Remain an Indian" Lessons in Democracy from a Century of Native American Education

“Phillips's account of Nebraska's aim to improve failing public schools—at times reading like an intricate story with complex plots and characters—offers readers a personal and critical look into the ongoing struggle between colonizing state reforms and Dakota survival and resistance. A compelling lesson for non-Native policymakers and educators to understand why Indigenous peoples must be present and heard when the education of their children is at stake.”
—John P. Hopkins, chief diversity officer and director of the Diversity and Equity Center, Saint Martin’s University, and author of Indian Education for All.

Contents

Series Foreword   James A. Banks  ix

Foreword: Toward a Praxis of Indigenous Education Sovereignty Teresa L. McCarty  xiii

Acknowledgments  xix

Introduction  1
Democracy and School Reform  3
Grounding Terminology and Conceptual Framing  4
School Policy Reform in Indian Country  8
Policy Culture and Culturally Sustaining Policymaking  9
Methodology and Positionality  10
Overview of Chapters  12

1.  So What? Lessons Learned and Why They Matter  15
Accountability: What Came Before  18
No Child Left Behind  20
NCLB Limbo  21
The Role of State Departments of Education  25
SDEs, Policy, and Power  27
Spatial Tactics as Resistance  28

2.  Welcome to Flyover Country  29
Accountability and Nebraska’s AQuESTT  30
The Nebraska Way  31
A Nebraska Way of Education Governance  33
The Nation’s Only Unicameral  33
A Bill’s Journey Through the Unicameral  34
A Brief History of Schooling and Governance in Nebraska  35
Policy Landscape and Key Figures  36
The Shifting Roles of NDE  40

3.  A Broader Story Than the Village of Santee  43
Early Interactions with Colonizers  44
A Dakota Education  45
“Big Knives” and the “Physical and Moral Degradation” of Reservation Life  47
School as a Policy Tool  48
Sovereignty, Self-Determination, and Self-Education  50
Agency, Survivance, and Schooling  52
What’s a “Good” Education?  53
Culturally Sustaining and Responsive Pedagogy  54
Culturally Sustaining/Revitalizing Education Policymaking  55

4.  Policy Crafted on the Legislative Floor  57
The Introduction of LB438  58
Public Hearing: A Better Way to “Fix” Schools  59
LB438 and the Second Session of Nebraska’s 103rd Legislature  61
LB438 Becomes Law  69

5.  Nebraska’s AQuESTT: Bolder, Broader, Better  71
The SBOE Hires a New Commissioner of Education  72
From Vision to Plans on Paper  76
Codifying AQuESTT  79
Sketching out AQuESTT’s Implementation  80
Bolder, Broader, Better  81
Inching Closer to Classification/Designation  83
The First AQuESTT Classification and Designation  85
A Retrospective View  88

6.  Run by Outsiders  91
Initial Thoughts About Improvement in Santee  92
A Diagnostic Review  95
State Plan Development  98
Priority Schools: Developing Progress Plans  100
Progress Plan Approval and Initial Implementation  106

7.  Compliance, Kind Of  115
Reporting First-Year Progress  122
Continued Compliance, Kind of . . . and Incognito Improvement Efforts  124
Incognito Improvement Acts Endure  129

8.  Wait, What Just Happened?  133
The “Consultocracy”  134
Sovereignty and Who Gets to Define Educational Quality  136
Everyday Tactics and Incognito Acts of Improvement  138
The Decolonizing Work of Culturally Sustaining Policymaking  139
Conclusion  141

Afterword  143
A Final Trip to Santee  143
The iSanti Ozuyapi at State  143

References  145

Index  161

About the Author  171