PIERRE, S.D. (KELO) — Members of the South Dakota Indian Education Council are making three recommendations in the panel’s annual report.
The decisions came during a meeting Wednesday evening. State law requires that the annual report be delivered to the office of the governor and to the Legislature’s State-Tribal Relations Committee .
Statewide assessments year after year have found that American Indian students don’t perform as well academically as students overall.
The council members agreed they want data from the South Dakota Department of Education’s new Science of Reading program that is broken down to reflect Native American students. They further recommended that the department share reports with the council during the five-year duration of the $54 million Science of Reading federal grant.
The council’s second recommendation was that absentee and attendance data continue to be gathered by the state Department of Education. That was also one of the recommendations made in the council’s 2023 report .