Most older Navajos in San Juan County today never graduated from high school. Most never even started.
But times on the Navajo Indian Reservation are changing. More Native American children are now graduating from high school than are dropping out, and many are going on to get two-year degrees at the Blanding campus of the College of Eastern Utah."The trend toward increasing enrollments is something that began in the 1970s and we're beginning to see some positive results of that today," said Superintendent Hal Jensen of San Juan School District.
"Enrollments have been going up and the children are staying in school longer. Particularly when you compare it to what it was 20 or 30 years ago."
Jensen said the main reason for improved enrollment among Native Americans is that two high schools - Whitehorse and Monument Valley - have been built on the reservations where the Indians live. Parents no longer have to send their children away to boarding school, as was the tradition.
In the old days, parents did not like sending their children away. Nor did children enjoy the cultural conflicts of attending an all-white, all-English-speaking school far from home - something that contributed to a tremendously high dropout rate.
By building schools on the reservations, Jensen said, Indians maintain their cultural identity, while receiving the same educational opportunities they would in schools off the reservation. Three elementary schools and two high schools have been built on the reservations.
This year, 1,626 Native Americans are enrolled in public schools in Utah, a number that has fluctuated by about 50 students throughout the 1980s.
"From 1978 until now, we've spent $24 million building schools and facilities on the reservation," Jensen said. "And as the number of schools increased, the attendance increased."
While the number of Native Americans enrolled in San Juan County schools has remained relatively constant the past six or seven years, the real success story is that fewer students drop out of school. The school district - which educates both Utes and Navajos - has one of the lowest dropout rates anywhere for schools that educate Native Americans.
Graduation rates at Whitehorse and Monument Valley high schools, which are at least 95 percent Navajo, are running at about 80 percent. "We think that is a pretty good rate," Jensen said.
Still, education officials must work against cultural perceptions that school is not important. Because most parents never graduated from high school, they don't see much need for their children to do so either.
San Juan County is in the midst of a federally funded program designed to (1) work with students who are likely to drop out to counsel and tutor them, and (2) find those who dropped out and persuade them to come back, then have education alternatives for them once they do.
"It's hard to say if the preventive part has had an effect," Jensen said, "because it has been in effect only one year. But we are seeing better attendance, better attitude, better-self-esteem among those who could drop out."
The real benefits have been the approximately 80 students who have been encouraged to return to school, either through adult education, a regular education program or an alternative program. "We try to modify the program they are coming back to so the circumstances that forced them out in the first place are changed," Jensen said.
Among those who graduate, at least 30 percent are offered scholarships of one kind or another for higher education. But few actually receive a higher-education diploma or certificate.
"A large number do begin, but there's a much higher dropout rate among those going on to college," Jensen said. "When they have to leave the reservation and their culture, there's a real drop in success."