While American Indian and Alaska Native students in California have made progress in academics, persistent barriers and challenges still exist for these scholars, a report released Friday by Cal State San Marcos found.
The study, released by the California Indian Culture and Sovereignty Center at CSUSM, found increasing high school graduation rates for American Indian and Alaska Native students — from 70.54% in 2017-18 to 78.76% in 2021- 2022. The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic set other metrics back for the minority group.
“While we celebrate the dramatic decrease in dropout rates from 53.53% to 13.53% over the past five years, we cannot ignore that our AIAN students continue to face significant barriers to academic success,” said Joely Proudfit, director of the CICSC. “The pandemic has particularly impacted our communities, with absenteeism rates more than doubling from 21.3% to 43.6%.”…