Approximately 100 indigenous high school students from 22 different states flocked to New York University this month to take part in a weeklong college fair.
Hosted by College Horizons, a nonprofit organization that prepares Native American students for the rigors of applying to and attending college, the students took part in workshops and lectures—and, of course, experienced the Big Apple.
“I think all but eight flew in to [New York] and about 20 had never been on an airplane before,” said Executive Director Carmen Lopez, a citizen of the Navajo Nation. “And about 75 of them had never been to New York City.”
Lopez said the students range in age from 15 to 17 years old and each student is either American Indian, Alaska Native or Native Hawaiian. This was the first timeCollege Horizonshosted a college fair in New York City.
Universities in attendance included Harvard University, Norte Dame and even representatives of the American Indian Community House of New York City were on hand to answer questions about the city.
In order to be accepted into the College Horizons program, Native American students were asked to provide a myriad of documents.
“[The students] submit an application, a personal essay, a list of activities, teacher recommendation, counselor recommendation, official transcripts,” said Lopez. “They don’t know it at the time of application, but they’re learning what they’re potentially going to do for college [applications].”
The college fair was also an opportunity for the students to learn what to do when faced with issues of racism on their prospective campus.
“If some of our students are going to go to schools, predominately white schools, they need to get ready for what that feels like, especially if they’re coming from a community that’s mostly Native people,” said Lopez. “We want to start to plant a seed for the kids with things that could happen—those [students] that may have a brush with racism and ignorance—so it doesn’t hurt as much when they do experience it.”
Genesis Tuyuc, a Maya Kaqchikel and a student at NYU, volunteered to assist the kids and faculty during the college fair. When the fair concluded, she said the goodbyes were “bittersweet.”
“I am happy to have worked besides such strong-willed people,” she said. “Their influence is immeasurable.”
College Horizons students received test preparation information and experienced an in-depth review of the college application process. (Hillary Abe)
The B.A. in Tribal Governance and Business Management will be offered starting fall quarter
Northwest Indian College’s (NWIC) evolution from the Lummi Indian School of Aquaculture to a college that now offers more diverse educational opportunities mirrors a growing nationwide demand for post-secondary education in tribal communities. Now, as NWIC celebrates 30 years of serving both regional and other tribes, the college continues to evolve and grow to meet new demands in Indian Country.
One of NWIC’s focuses in recent years has been on expanding its reach to more tribal communities and on providing students with the option to obtain culturally relevant four-year degrees without leaving their communities.
This fall quarter, NWIC’s growth will continue – that’s when the college will begin offering a bachelor’s degree at its Tulalip campus location. NWIC was approved to offer the Bachelor of Arts in Tribal Governance and Business Management degree in February by the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities, which oversees regional accreditation for 162 institutions.
“This is another important step in our evolution and growth as a four-year degree granting institution,” NWIC President Justin Guillory said. “All of our new bachelor degrees, like the Tribal Governance and Business Management degree, are intended to meet the needs of tribal communities, and to equip our students with the knowledge and skills needed to become leaders in their communities and obtain family-wage jobs.”
NWIC began offering program classes – both face-to-face and videoconferencing – at the college’s main campus on the Lummi Reservation in spring quarter 2013. Now, NWIC has expanded the degree offering to three of its regional extended campuses: Tulalip, Muckleshoot and Nez Perce.
There is high demand at the three NWIC sites for the Tribal Governance and Business Management degree program, said Bernice Portervint, NWIC’s dean of academics and distance learning.
“Members of the tribes we serve really want to help their communities develop and they really want to be involved with tribal nation building,” Portervint said. “ I really think this is a degree that promotes the skills, values and knowledge they can utilize for the betterment of their communities.”
The new bachelor’s degree was developed in response to a community needs survey that identified it as a degree that would be most beneficial to tribal communities, said NWIC’s Public and Tribal Administration Coordinator Laural Ballew, who co-developed the program and its curriculum with NWIC business instructor Steve Zawoysky.
“Our focus on a degree in tribal governance resulted from collaboration with tribal leaders, managers, scholars and students who recognize the importance of preparing the future leaders of tribal communities,” Ballew said.
Ballew, who is Swinomish, said she is excited and honored to be able to offer the Tribal Governance and Business Management baccalaureate degree program at NWIC.
“This signifies a momentous opportunity not only for NWIC, but for all the tribal nations we serve,” Ballew said. “It represents the vision of educational opportunities our elders and tribal leaders have strived to provide for tribal members. Offering this degree is a natural extension of our efforts to promote indigenous self-determination and knowledge through the teaching of tribal sovereignty and leadership, sound decision making and business practices based on cultural values.”
The Tribal Governance and Business Management program will offer students the fundamental knowledge and experience necessary to succeed in the areas of leadership, sovereignty, economic development, entrepreneurship and management, Ballew said.
The degree will include courses in: principles of sovereignty; Native nation building; tribal and public administration; business management; economic development; and leadership.
NWIC was approved as a baccalaureate degree granting institution in 2010 and, in addition to the Tribal Governance and Business Management degree, currently offers a Bachelor of Science in Native Environmental Science and a Bachelor of Arts in Native Studies Leadership. The college is also developing a bachelor’s degree in human services, which is expected to be completed by the 2013-2014 academic year.
Those wondering what public school teachers do all day are going to get an answer.
Tucked deep in Washington’s new two-year budget is money for a study to find out what a “typical work day” looks like for thousands of teachers toiling away in the state’s 295 school districts.
Lawmakers specifically want “an estimate of the percent of a teacher’s typical day that is spent on teaching-related duties and the percentage of the teacher’s day that is spent on duties that are not directly related to teaching.”
Researchers there intend to use much of the next school year to collect details of teachers’ daily lives in small, medium and large schools in all corners of the state.
Using logs, surveys, interviews or other means, they will try to reveal how teachers pass the hours, a subject of much debate in an unending political inquest of public education.
“It’s an old question that no one has ever answered with data,” said Linda Schactler, director of public affairs for the Ellensburg-based university. “We’ve answered it with anecdotes. We think we know but we haven’t actually done the research.”
It’s hard to not sit through a legislative hearing on the quality of Washington schools without a champion of education reform insisting the system is failing students because teachers are not spending enough time teaching.
This is followed by a rebuttal from a teacher-type saying they can’t spend more time teaching because it is tied up on tasks required by the state like compiling reports and conducting tests.
Rep. John McCoy, D-Tulalip, proposed the study by the university because he was tired of listening to the back-and-forth in front of the House Education Committee on which he serves.
While he thinks teachers are weighted down by state-imposed chores, he wanted to find out if it’s actually true.
“I got frustrated at the unfunded mandates,” he said. “During the session there were some folks trying to add requirements to the teacher’s work day. I said they’re full.”
He and two teachers who serve on the House panel — Rep. Monica Stonier, D-Vancouver, and Rep. Steve Berquist, D-Renton, — are going to help design the study.
A full report is due in December. However, lawmakers are likely to give them until the end of the school year in order to track time expended for testing, which happens in the spring.
McCoy hopes the final product will bring clarity to one part of the conversation on education reform. But he isn’t so naïve to believe the results will quell the debate on how teachers spend their time in the classroom.
“You’ll still have the naysayers saying it won’t mean anything,” he said.
And the results may prove McCoy’s thinking wrong about teachers and become fodder for reformers.
“I understand that,” he said. “We have to get the information out there.”
Once lawmakers know much time teachers are teaching, they can tackle the next question of how well they teach.
Former Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels came under fire last week when The Associated Press uncovered a slew of emails relating to the use of Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States in Indiana schools.
In the 2010 emails, Daniels, who is now president of Purdue University, calls the book a “truly execrable, anti-factual piece of disinformation that misstates American history on every page.”
Zinn passed away January 27, 2010, just before the email exchange occurred between Daniels and top state education officials on February 9.
“Can someone assure me that it is not in use anywhere in Indiana? If it is, how do we get rid of it before more young people are force-fed a totally false version of our history?” asks Daniels in the emails.
What is it that Daniels has against the book? It doesn’t teach what is in grade school textbooks. Zinn concentrates on the genocide perpetrated by Christopher Columbus against Indigenous Peoples, and who presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln really were, among other topics.
Democracy Now! Spoke to Zinn in May 2009 when he was launching A Young People’s History of the United States and had him answer a question he is frequently asked about the book: “Is it right to be so critical of the government’s policies, of the traditional heroes of this country?”
“Should we tell kids that Columbus, whom they have been told was a great hero, that he mutilated Indians and kidnapped them and killed them in pursuit of gold. Should we tell people that Theodore Roosevelt, who is held up as one of our great presidents, was really a war monger who loved military exploits and who congratulated an American general who committed a massacre in the Phillipines,” Zinn responsed. “Should we tell young people that? My answer is, we should be honest with young people, we should not deceive them. We should be honest about the history of our country. We should not only be taking down the traditional heroes like Andrew Jackson and Theodore Roosevelt but we should be giving young people an alternate set of heroes.”
Daniels has defended himself saying he meant for the book to not be taught in K-12 schools, but some are calling his actions censorship and an attack on academic freedom.
Among them are the American Historical Association, which said it “would consider any governor’s action that interfered with an individual teacher’s reading assignments to be inappropriate and a violation of academic freedom.”
In an email response to The Associated Press, Daniels wrote: “We must not falsely teach American history in our schools. We have a law requiring state textbook oversight to guard against frauds like Zinn, and it was encouraging to find that no Hoosier school district had inflicted his book on its students.”
In response to the emails coming to light, more than 60 Purdue faculty members signed an open letter to Daniels who are “troubled by the fact that you continue to express these views today, especially since you are now speaking as the chief representative of Purdue University, with the responsibility to embody the best of academic inquiry and exchange.”
The faculty members go on to explain why Zinn should not be deemed a “fraud” like Daniels called him including having been praised in the past by numerous people including Eric Foner, the Dewitt Clinton Professor of history at Columbia University and a former president of the American Historical Association. Read their full letter here.
“I have long been struck by how many excellent students of history first had their passion for the past sparked by reading Howard Zinn,” Foner said February 22, 2010 in an article from The Nation.
The Board of Trustees at Purdue, the second largest university in Indiana, is standing behind Daniels and called the Associated Press article “misleading.” Others say that board is one Daniels himself appointed when he was governor, and are not surprised.
Kirk Boxleitner Dr. Becky Berg is sworn in as superintendent of the Marysville School District by Marysville School Board President Chris Nation on July 8
Kirk Boxleitner, Marysville Globe
MARYSVILLE — Dr. Becky Berg was sworn in and presided over her first Marysville School Board meeting as superintendent of the school district on Monday, July 8, and as she took the seat of her new role, she was acutely conscious of the legacy that she has to live up to.
“From where the Board and superintendent sit in the Board room, we face a wall with the names of former Board members and superintendents dating back to the early 1960s,” Berg said. “I’ve read those names, and I’m struck by those who have gone before, who have dedicated their lives and careers to public service, and more importantly to the children of the Marysville and Tulalip communities. I am humbled and challenged to take the symbolic baton from those in our past, and to help lead our fine district into the future.”
Although Berg has already interacted with members of those communities on several occasions, including the Marysville School District’s strategic leadership transitioning meeting on June 18, she remains reticent to draw more than general conclusions.
“At this point, I’ve officially been on the job just a few weeks,” Berg said. “In this short amount of time in the position, I would be remiss to make profound judgements about the community that I now call home. I will say, however, that those whom I have met have a deep commitment to children and their futures. They also have a deep local pride and great optimism about the future of Marysville and Tulalip.”
Berg shares that sense of optimism, and echoed Marysville School Board President Chris Nation’s frequent refrain that the community needs to know the district’s success stories.
“Marysville and Tulalip have so much to be proud of, and are second to none in relation to other communities and school districts,” Berg said. “We do have far to go, however, until we reach our mission of each child, every day, as well as 100 percent graduation, but there is simply no reason we cannot reach our goals. I so look forward to coming together to envision the next few years for our school district.”
Berg repeated the quote attributed to Chief Sitting Bull, “Let us put our heads to together and see what life we will make for our children.”
To that end, Berg explained that she and the Board are committed to listening to the community members, families and employees of the district, to understand its history and complexities, while still managing its day-to-day operations and preparing for the reopening of school in September. In the long term, the district is approaching the end of the Board’s four-year goals, as well as the sunsetting of the current maintenance and operations levy.
“[That levy] is vital funding for school districts such as ours,” Berg said. “We will follow the lead of our Board of Directors, as we discuss initiating the next stage of strategic planning, and consideration of renewal of our maintenance and operations levy, which our community has supported for years.”
On Monday, July 15, Berg began a week-long vacation, but far from relaxing on a beach, she’ll be working in Washington, D.C., with the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, a nonprofit group with 140,000 members worldwide that’s concerned with issues of learning, teaching and leading. Berg currently volunteers as the president of ASCD.
“I find this kind of working vacation so exhilarating, because when we come together from across the globe, to learn from each other and to advance the mission of success for each and every child, there is no stopping us,” Berg said. “An additional bonus from this kind of volunteer work is that I come home with new ideas and solutions that directly benefit the students of Marysville and Tulalip. I am so energized and thrilled to be a part of the Marysville School District. If anyone has ideas, or would like to meet and discuss the future of our students, just give me a call.”
As the student-debt crisis looms, Oregon is considering a solution of its own, a plan called “Pay it Forward, Pay it Back.”
The plan would allow students to attend state schools without taking out any loans or paying anything up front, as long as they agree to pay up to three percent of their future salaries into a fund annually for 24 years.
“We have to get way out of the box if we’re going to get serious about getting young people into college and out of college without burdening them with a lifetime of debt,” Mark Hass, a Democratic state senator from Beaverton, Oregon, told the Wall Street Journal.
Hass championed a bill that creates a study committee charged with created the pilot program, which was passed unanimously in the state’s Senate on July 8 and had already gained House approval.
The legislature will now decide in 2015 whether to implement the pilot program or not.
According to the Journal, the idea came from the Economic Opportunity Institute, a nonpartisan group out of Washington state. Oregon is the first to take action on the idea.
“If it’s done correctly it’s essentially creating a social insurance vehicle for enabling access to higher education,” John Burbank, the institute’s executive director said.
The plan comes at a pivotal time. Public funding for higher education has plunged, tuitions are high, and total student-loan debt in the United States is more than copy trillion. And, on July 1, interest rates on government tuition loans doubled to 6.8 percent because the Senate didn’t block the increase.
Oregon has 10 federally recognized tribes and according to the 2012 Census, an American Indian population of 1.8 percent.
Is your child up to date? Vaccines required for school are available to children at no cost
Source: Snohomish Health District
SNOHOMISH COUNTY, Wash. –– More 5 and 6 year olds in Snohomish County had all the vaccines they needed to enter school last year, according to recent data released by the state Department of Health. For the 2012-2013 school year, 86.3 percent of local kindergarteners were up to date on their shots, better than past years and higher than the state average of 85.6 percent
Vaccines are required for school children because they prevent disease in a community setting. The rate of vaccination has continued to climb since an all-time low in 2008-2009
School districts report vaccination rates to the state. The highest immunization rates for all grades (K-12) in Snohomish County last school year were in Lakewood (94.8%) and Everett (94.7%) school districts.
A small percentage of families seek exemption from the vaccination requirement, an average of 5.3 percent in Snohomish County schools compared to 4.5 percent statewide for children entering kindergarten.
In 2011 the process for parents or guardians to exempt their child from school or child care immunization requirements was changed. Parents need to see a medical provider to get a signature on the Certificate of Exemption form for their child’s school. More information about the form and the law is available online at www.doh.wa.gov/cfh/Immunize.
Although exemptions are allowed for medical, religious, or personal reasons, the best disease protection is to make sure children have all their recommended immunizations. Children may be sent home from school, preschool, or child care during outbreaks of diseases if they have not been immunized.
Summer is a good time to make sure your children are up to date on required shots. The cost of childhood vaccines is subsidized by federal and state government so that every parent can choose to have their child protected without regard to cost.
Required childhood vaccines are available for the school year 2013-2014.
· Two doses of chickenpox (varicella) vaccine or doctor-verified history of disease is required for age kindergarten through grade 5. Students in grade 6 are required to have one dose of varicella or parental history of disease.
· The whooping cough (pertussis) vaccine, Tdap, is required for students in grades 6-12 who are 11 years and older.
Recommended vaccines also are available.
· Varicella vaccine for children in grades 7-12 who have never had chickenpox.
· Meningococcal vaccine for adolescents age 11-12. A second (booster) dose at age 16-18 if first dose was given at ages 11-15.
· A three-shot series of human papillomavirus (HPV) for both adolescent boys and girls age 11 and older.
· Children 12 months and older should receive hepatitis A vaccine, a two-shot series.
· Flu vaccine for all people age 6 months and older.
Snohomish Health District promotes routine vaccination of children and adults.
Snohomish Health District’s Immunization Clinic will serve you if your family does not have a health care provider. A visit to a Health District clinic includes a check of your child’s record in the Washington Immunization Information System, the state’s immunization registry.
Parents should beat the rush by making appointments now with their child’s health care provider. At the Health District, parents can make an appointment during normal clinic hours at either the Lynnwood or Everett office.
A parent or legal guardian must accompany a child to the clinic, and must bring a complete record of the child’s immunizations. You need to fill out a Snohomish Health District authorization form to have another person bring your child to the clinic. Ask the clinic staff to mail or fax a form to you.
Health District clinics request payment on the day of service in cash, check, debit, or credit card. Medical coupons are accepted, but private insurance is not. The cost can include an office visit fee, plus an administration fee per vaccine. Reduced fees are available by filling out a request based on household size and income.
Teens also occasionally require travel vaccines for out-of-country mission work or community service. The Health District offers those immunizations and health advice for traveling in foreign countries.
Please call if you have questions, concerns or to schedule an appointment: SHD Immunization Clinic 425.339.5220.
Read more about the state’s vaccine requirements for school-age children and child care. Find more information about Washington’s school immunization data.
Established in 1959, the Snohomish Health District works for a safer and healthier community through disease
prevention, health promotion, and protection from environmental threats. Find more information about the Health District at www.snohd.org.
Back-to-school shots hours:
SHD Everett Immunization Clinic, 3020 Rucker Ave, Suite 108, Everett, WA 98201
425.339.5220
By appointment: 8 a.m.-noon and 1-4 p.m. Monday-Wednesday-Friday
Linguist Carmel O’Shannessy, back left, with Gracie White Napaljarri, who is a Warlpiri speaker but children in her extended family speak both Warlpiri and Light Warlpiri. Photo: Noressa White via The New York Times
By NICHOLAS BAKALAR, The New York Times
There are many dying languages in the world. But at least one has recently been born, created by children living in a remote village in northern Australia.
Carmel O’Shannessy, a linguist at the University of Michigan, has been studying the young people’s speech for more than a decade and has concluded that they speak neither a dialect nor the mixture of languages called a creole, but a new language with unique grammatical rules.
The language, called Warlpiri rampaku, or Light Warlpiri, is spoken only by people under 35 in Lajamanu, an isolated village of about 700 people in Australia’s Northern Territory. In all, about 350 people speak the language as their native tongue. Dr. O’Shannessy has published several studies of Light Warlpiri, the most recent in the June issue of Language.
“Many of the first speakers of this language are still alive,” said Mary Laughren, a research fellow in linguistics at the University of Queensland in Australia, who was not involved in the studies. One reason Dr. O’Shannessy’s research is so significant, she said, “is that she has been able to record and document a ‘new’ language in the very early period of its existence.”
Everyone in Lajamanu also speaks “strong” Warlpiri, an aboriginal language unrelated to English and shared with about 4,000 people in several Australian villages. Many also speak Kriol, an English-based creole developed in the late 19th century and widely spoken in northern Australia among aboriginal people of many different native languages.
Lajamanu parents are happy to have their children learn English for use in the wider world, but eager to preserve Warlpiri as the language of their culture.
Lajamanu’s isolation may have something to do with the creation of a new way of speaking. The village is about 550 miles south of Darwin, and the nearest commercial center is Katherine, about 340 miles north. There are no completely paved roads.
An airplane, one of seven owned by Lajamanu Air, a community-managed airline, lands on the village’s dirt airstrip twice a week carrying mail from Katherine, and once a week a truck brings food and supplies sold in the village’s only store. A diesel generator and a solar energy plant supply electricity.
The village was established by the Australian government in 1948, without the consent of the people who would inhabit it. The native affairs branch of the federal government, concerned about overcrowding and drought in Yuendumu, forcibly removed 550 people from there to what would become Lajamanu. At least twice, the group walked all the way back to Yuendumu, only to be retransported when they arrived.
Contact with English is quite recent. “These people were hunters and gatherers, roaming over a territory,” said Dr. O’Shannessy. “But then along came white people, cattle stations, mines, and so on. People were kind of forced to stop hunting and gathering.”
By the 1970s, villagers had resigned themselves to their new home, and the Lajamanu Council had been set up as a self-governing community authority, the first in the Northern Territory. In the 2006 census, almost half the population was under 20, and the Australian government estimates that by 2026 the number of indigenous people 15 to 64 will increase to 650 from about 440 today.
Dr. O’Shannessy, who started investigating the language in 2002, spends three to eight weeks a year in Lajamanu. She speaks and understands both Warlpiri and Light Warlpiri, but is not fluent.
People in Lajamanu often engage in what linguists call code-switching, mixing languages together or changing from one to another as they speak. And many words in Light Warlpiri are derived from English or Kriol.
But Light Warlpiri is not simply a combination of words from different languages. Peter Bakker, an associate professor of linguistics at Aarhus University in Denmark who has published widely on language development, says Light Warlpiri cannot be a pidgin, because a pidgin has no native speakers. Nor can it be a creole, because a creole is a new language that combines two separate tongues.
“These young people have developed something entirely new,” he said. “Light Warlpiri is clearly a mother tongue.”
Dr. O’Shannessy offers this example, spoken by a 4-year-old: Nganimpa-ng gen wi-m si-m worm mai aus-ria. (We also saw worms at my house.)
It is easy enough to see several nouns derived from English. But the -ria ending on “aus” (house) means “in” or “at,” and it comes from Warlpiri. The -m ending on the verb “si” (see) indicates that the event is either happening now or has already happened, a “present or past but not future” tense that does not exist in English or Warlpiri. This is a way of talking so different from either Walpiri or Kriol that it constitutes a new language.
The development of the language, Dr. O’Shannessy says, was a two-step process. It began with parents using baby talk with their children in a combination of the three languages. But then the children took that language as their native tongue by adding radical innovations to the syntax, especially in the use of verb structures, that are not present in any of the source languages.
Why a new language developed at this time and in this place is not entirely clear. It was not a case of people needing to communicate when they have no common language, a situation that can give rise to pidgin or creole.
Dr. Bakker says that new languages are discovered from time to time, but until now no one has been there at the beginning to see a language develop from children’s speech.
Dr. O’Shannessy suggests that subtle forces may be at work. “I think that identity plays a role,” she said. “After children created the new system, it has since become a marker of their identity as being young Warlpiri from the Lajamanu Community.”
The language is now so well established among young people that there is some question about the survival of strong Warlpiri. “How long the kids will keep multilingualism, I don’t know,” Dr. O’Shannessy said. “The elders would like to preserve Warlpiri, but I’m not sure it will be. Light Warlpiri seems quite robust.”
Mark Mulligan / The Herald Vanessa Miller, 22, questions instructor Jennifer Jennings during her GED class Thursday at Everett Community College.
Erc Stevick, The Herald
EVERETT — It feels like a high-stakes game of Chutes and Ladders for thousands of people trying to improve their lives by earning a GED.
Their academic climb could slide into nothingness at the end of the year.
The five-subject national exam is getting an overhaul Jan. 1.
That gives less than six months for those hoping to pass the old version.
If they don’t pass each and every subject between now and then, they must start from scratch with a new set of exams that are expected to be harder.
There is urgency but not panic these days on the second floor of Everett Community College’s Baker Hall, where two rooms of mainly 20-somethings are trying to make up for lost time and missed opportunity.
One morning last week, EvCC instructor Jennifer Jennings led her students through a multi-step math problem that involved credit cards, percentages and interest rates. For most of the students, math is their biggest obstacle between now and the new year deadline.
Jennings remembers the last time the GED was changed in 2001 and the long lines at the college’s testing center.
“It was crazy,” she said.
The General Education Development certificate was started in 1942 to allow returning World War II GIs to continue their education when they came home. It was designed to show that they had earned basic academic skills many consider the equivalent of a high school diploma. People not in the military were able to start taking the GED in 1947.
Roughly 20 million people have earned GEDs over the years.
With the change in exams approaching, test preparation programs, such as ones at Everett Community College, are bracing for heavy enrollment through the fall.
Lanora Toth, 21, attended five high schools, but didn’t graduate. Life has been a struggle for the young mother who said she once held a cardboard sign at a street corner. It read, “Cold, homeless and hungry.”
Her goal in pursuing her GED is simple: to provide a better home and set an example for her young child.
Classmate Vanessa Miller nodded as Toth spoke.
“I want to give my 1-year-old the life I never had,” she said.
Skyy Sepulveda dropped out of Mountlake Terrace High School in her junior year when she fell hopelessly behind on credits. She took a GED class a year ago and didn’t finish. It stung a bit to see her classmates earn their certificates and that has motivated her this time around.
She said she is studying more than ever.
“It’s really nerve-wracking to get everything done,” she said.
Since 2009, more than 3,900 people have gone through EvCC’s GED programs and taken all or portions of the exam. More than 2,900 have passed.
Over the last four years alone, that leaves 1,016 others who must reach the finish line between now and Jan. 1 or start anew. Nationwide, there are about 1 million people whose scores could expire Jan. 1 under the new testing program.
“We want people to know that these changes are really happening and they are happening soon and to get all their ducks in a row,” said Katie Jensen, EvCC’s dean of basic and developmental education.
College officials are reaching out through fliers, letters, word of mouth and mention on the reader board at the college’s Broadway entrance.
These days, GED testing is done by appointment and Jensen warns that prospective exam takers should not procrastinate getting ready.
“I think our testing times are going to fill up,” she said.
Instead of five sections, the new GED test will be reconfigured into four: reasoning through language arts, mathematical reasoning, science and social studies. The existing stand-alone essay section will be folded into writing assessments within the language arts and social studies sections, It also will all be done on the computer.
Jessica Cleveland, 25, is a mother of three who quit school after the eighth grade. She hopes she never has to see the new GED exams.
“It scares me,” she said. “I want to be done by then.”
Cleveland has worked in coffee stands and at a pizza restaurant, but believes she needs a GED to get a foot in the door for better-paying opportunities.
“I want an education so my kids have a good role model to look up to, so they don’t drop out of high school and can see where I went wrong,” she said.
Devona Fields, 31, is married and has three children.
As they get older, she hopes to find a job to help with family expenses and figures a GED could be a big help.
Fields has passed two of the five GED exams.
Her husband, Wilson Fields, recently earned his GED and is taking pre-college math to prepare for college courses.
Wilson Fields tries to encourage Devona with each subject she passes.
Devona resists patting herself on the back.
She still must get through the math test, which gives her anxiety.
“I will cheer and celebrate when I have all the scores back,” she said.
Eric Stevick: 425-339-3446; heraldnet.com.
About the GED
To learn more about GED preparation help at Everett Community College, call 425-388-9291 or email www.everettcc.edu/ged.
For opportunities at Edmonds Community College, call 425-670-1593 or email devediv@edcc.edu.
Rob Capriccioso, Indian Country Today Media Network
With the U.S. Congress’ failure to curb vastly increasing student loan rates, Native American college students are on par to become some of the greatest harmed in the nation.
Rates on new federal subsidized student loans doubled from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent July 1 after Republicans blocked legislation that would have maintained lower student loan interest rates. That means it will take much longer for students to pay back loans after graduation, and they will be saddled with debt for much longer.
Carrie Billy, president of the American Indian Higher Education Consortium, says that this situation is especially dangerous for Native American students, since for many taking out federal student loans is unavoidable—especially for those who choose to attend public or private universities or who go on to graduate school after attending tribal colleges or universities, many of which do not offer advanced degrees.
“For these American Indian students—who have some of the lowest family income rates in the country and who will return to their reservation communities to work after graduation—doubling the interest rate on their loans could mean the end of their education,” Billy says. “They simply will not continue. They cannot afford to carry such a heavy financial burden.”
Billy also makes the case that high interest rate loans not only harm students and their families, they also hurt the economic progress of tribal nations and the country as a whole. “[E]very student we lose is one less student contributing to the rebuilding of our tribal economies and contributing to America’s future workforce,” she says.
Quinton Roman Nose, executive director of the Tribal Education Departments National Assembly, predicts that costlier student loans will cause major problems for Indian college students.
“The student loan situation is even more detrimental to Native American students, especially if the student quits school and then defaults,” Roman Nose says. “They are put in a Catch 22 situation where they probably won’t be able to get a job that’s going to give them a chance to earn a living and make their student loan payments.”
On top of this, Roman Nose says that some colleges are not helping Native American students become aware of the long term effects of taking out student loans.
“With the loan interest rates subject to rise for all students, it creates a larger burden for our Native American students,” he warns, saying that financial education is especially important for such students.
Attempts to block the rate increase have currently stalled in the U.S. Senate, with S.1238, the Keep Student Loans Affordable Act of 2013, failing by a procedural vote of 51 to 49 on July 10. The bill needed to get 60 votes to proceed to debate. It would have kept the interest rate on federal subsidized Stafford student loans at 3.4 percent for an additional year.
Democrats have vowed to continue the effort to maintain lower rates. Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) is one who has been working to prevent the increases through reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. “The Higher Education Act, the appropriate vehicle to change the way interest rates are calculated, doesn’t expire until the end of this year,” Heinrich said in a statement. “Passing a year extension gives Congress the time to consider all the proposals in the context of containing college costs, not just loan rates.”
After voting for the failed Keep Student Loans Affordable Act, a bill he cosponsored, Heinrich added, “Earning a college degree shouldn’t be a luxury, but something that every American family can afford… We need to give students a fair shot at succeeding in a tough economy, not saddle them with debt.”
Republicans are currently supporting a proposal that would reset interest rates each year, even as they rise–“a move that could cause student loan rates to more than double over the next 10 years, burdening students and families with more debt,” Heinrich said.
Billy, meanwhile, says that AIHEC and other Native education groups are currently working with national partners, led by the American Council on Education, to urge Congress to take action immediately helping to ensure that all Americans, including American Indians, have access to high-quality and affordable higher education.
“A key tool in making postsecondary education accessible and successful is affordable student loans,” Billy says.
