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Forum at Clinton Center Focused on American Indian, Alaska Native Young Children
AUG. 2,
2005 | Experts representing 17 American Indian tribes met July
28-29 in the second Rural Early Childhood Forum, reviewing
progress toward goals for American Indian and Alaska Native
early learning in light of new findings that rural Native
children are significantly behind most rural and non-rural
ethnic and income groups in key early literacy skills. Rural Early Childhood, a research program of Mississippi State University, convened the Rural Early Childhood Forum on American Indian and Alaska Native Early Learning in cooperation with researchers at Pennsylvania State University. The forum took place at the William J. Clinton Presidential Center in Little Rock. Commissioned authors delivered papers on key issues in the American Indian and Alaska Native Education Research Agenda (U.S. Department of Education, 2001) that was developed through a nationwide consensus process in response to White House Executive Order 13096 of 1998. The authors addressed access to early intervention, early care and education, and health care for young children on and off tribal reservations. The American Indian Leadership Program and the Center on Rural Education and Communities at Pennsylvania State commissioned some papers while Rural Early Childhood commissioned others. Also during the forum, Rural Early Childhood released its newest findings from an analysis of two large nationally representative samples that revealed wide gaps for rural American Indian and Alaska Native (AI-AN) young children in early literacy skills and social skills and in exposure to second-hand smoke and other risk factors. Analysis of baseline data in the federal Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS), which includes two nationally representative samples of young children, was one recommendation in the 2001 agenda. “The fundamental mission of Rural Early Childhood is to prove what rural parents and teachers across America already know—that rural young children have significantly less opportunity to get ready for kindergarten,” Cathy Grace, Ed.D., director of Rural Early Childhood and a professor at Mississippi State, said. “The evidence is no longer merely anecdotal. The gaps are real, they are wide, and we must bridge them.” While rural AI-AN parents in the ECLS samples were significantly more likely to indicate or exhibit positive parenting skills, rural life was related to significant risk factors for school success for AI-AN young children. At kindergarten entry, rural AI-AN children were significantly less likely than rural white or black children to be proficient at letter recognition and less than one-fourth as likely as rural white children to be proficient at beginning sound recognition. The analysis of the ECLS datasets showed that rural Native children were more likely than non-rural Native children to have difficulty with social competence and self-control and to have emotional problems. The Rural Early Childhood analysis also found numerous other disparities for rural young children. The other members of the Forum’s Program Committee were Susan C. Faircloth, Ph.D. (Coharie), of Pennsylvania State University, and Kai A. Schafft, Ph.D., co-director of the Center on Rural Education and Communities at Penn State. William Boyd, Ph.D., Batschelet Chair of Educational Administration at Penn State and co-director with Dr. Schafft of the Center on Rural Education and Communities, participated in the Forum. John Tippeconnic, Ph.D. (Comanche), professor and director of the American Indian Leadership Program at Penn State, co-chaired the Forum during the planning phase although he was unable to attend. The forum in Little Rock was the second convened by Rural Early Childhood, which Mississippi State established last year with funding from the U.S. Department of Education. At the first Rural Early Childhood Forum, in Washington, D.C., in September 2004, experts in early childhood policy reviewed the issues of quality, accessibility, and affordability of early care and education for rural children, recommending priorities for the new research center. The center subsequently commissioned the Urban Institute to analyze key national surveys and other public data sources and reported in December that most of those sources yield little information about rural young children and their families, typically because of the challenges in collecting samples large enough from remote and far-flung communities. Elizabeth F. Shores, senior research associate for Rural Early Childhood, is coordinator of the center’s Datasets Initiative. Rural
Early Childhood next commissioned the research organization
Child Trends to examine the nationally representative rural
subsets in the ECLS baseline data. Martha Zaslow, Ph.D., Brett
Brown, Ph.D., and Dena Aufseeser of Child Trends performed the
analyses of the ECLS datasets, comparing findings for rural and
non-rural children and for different ethnic groups, income
brackets, and geographic regions. The baseline data was
collected in 1998 for the ECLS Kindergarten Cohort and 2001 for
the ECLS Birth Cohort. The reported findings by Rural Early
Childhood and Child Trends are all statistically significant.
46 Blackjack Road / P.O. Box 6013 / Mississippi State, MS /
39762 Updated
12/01/2006
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