Before the school supply pick-up at the Mustang Conference Center even started, children of all ages and their families were streaming through the door.
Volunteers directed them toward the check-in desk, away from the table of distracting colorful backpacks with stacks of school supplies behind them.
The supplies pick-up was organized and funded by the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes’ Johnson-O’Malley Office. Students signed in, then received a backpack, school supplies for their grade, snacks and a JOM T-shirt.
Most of the stations were staffed by volunteers. Some hustled to replenish backpacks as they quickly disappeared off the table; others highlighted names at check in or handed out shirts.
School supply pick-ups like this are just one of the supplemental education programs that the Johnson-O’Malley fund supports.
Johnson-O'Malley grants come from congressional appropriations. The money is managed and distributed by the Bureau of Indian Education, which is part of the U.S. Department of the Interior.
The money also supports programs providing cultural and language enrichment, academic support and dropout prevention.
Oklahoma Native American students receive more Title VI and Johnson-O’Malley funding than those in any other state. They have also been scoring near the top in reading and math nationally for more than 30 years, according to a study by the University of Oklahoma released this year. The data for the study came from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the Nation’s Report Card.
In 2024, Native American students in Oklahoma were ranked No. 1 in the nation for reading, math and combined achievement among their peers in the 13 other states with sufficient data.
Jackie White, program director of Oklahoma’s American Indian Education Department and president of the National Johnson-O’Malley Association Board, said that could be because of her office’s work.
The Oklahoma State Department of American Indian Education employs aggressive outreach tactics aimed at ensuring eligible students are accounted for so they can receive support.
That outreach manifests in a yearly Zoom meeting for school superintendents to understand how to count their students, school visits and advocacy at the state level to ensure multiracial children are included in Native American student counts.
The opportunities the Johnson-O’Malley fund provides, however, may be threatened by an increase in eligible students and inaction from Congress.
Star Yellowfish, director of Native American student services at Oklahoma City Public Schools, said one of the determining factors for the No. 1 placement in the Nation’s Report Card could be that students are being counted correctly and receiving support because of it.
Nara Nayar, a technical assistant consultant for the American Institutes for Research, said Oklahoma was one of the first states to initiate the collection of tribal affiliation data. That ensures a cleaner analysis of educational results of Native American students.
“Tribal affiliation data collection is huge because it allows disaggregation for the tribes who can then support their students with their own tribal education departments around attendance and tutoring,” Nayar said. “Tribal education agencies do so much in terms of programming and supports, so it's that alignment, and it's that support for quality student identification and reporting kind of at the local level that is gonna make all the difference.”
That localized solution is hard to execute on a national level, however, when so many states lack sufficient data in the first place. The other states with sufficient data Oklahoma was compared to in the University of Oklahoma study were Alaska, Arizona, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
The author of the University of Oklahoma study, Adam Tyner, said the data came from the Nation’s Report Card. The exams are given every other year to a sampling of fourth- and eighth-grade students nationwide and are considered the best tool to compare student achievement across states.
Tyner called it the gold standard in nationally comparable standardized testing.
“There's a lot of states that just don't have enough Native American students in order to create a breakout group for them, and so that's the case for most states in most years,” he said.
The Nation’s Report Card data collection doesn’t operate like a census. States have to meet specific statistical thresholds before the federal government decides to break out different student groups. It also does not disaggregate data when two or more races are listed on a student’s file.
“If you check that ethnicity box, Hispanic or Latino, then regardless of what you check in the race box, you get reported out as Hispanic or Latino in any kind of reporting that usually states and the federal government does and there's no overlap between these categories,” Nayar said.
Nayar works on the Indigenous Student Identification Project. It’s a collaborative effort between the American Institutes for Research and the Indigenous Education State Leaders Network. Their research found 70% of Indigenous students in U.S. public schools are not represented in data reporting or analysis.
“I want to know how our Native students are doing,” Yellowfish said. “I want to know how our Black students are doing. Our communities want to know if there are disparities. Are there differences? Those are really important things when we are determining: How are students learning? What are they learning?”
Data collected from 2021-22 shows that as many as 66,129 students went uncounted in Oklahoma.
Getting the numbers right is difficult. Historically, Native American students have been undercounted for a few reasons. Forced assimilation, boarding schools and displacement still affect the way data is collected.
“My great-grandmother did not put down the blood quantum she truly was because at that time, it was not a good thing to do,” White said.
Her great-great-grandmother came to Oklahoma on the Trail of Tears at 12 years old.
Many people never obtained their citizenship or membership card because people did not see it as important as it is today, White said.
Now, a hurdle that many administrators face is correctly identifying students who are multiracial.
“So many times, our Native students are miscalculated or not counted correctly,” Yellowfish said. “So we have Native students that are Black or, they identify as white. They identify as all kinds of things, but they're still tribal citizens.”
The Johnson-O’Malley funding used a standard student count of 272,102 eligible Native American students from 1995 until 2018.
After the Modernization Act passed in 2018, more students became eligible for the program because the requirements for enrollment changed. The updated count for the 2025-26 school year is 317,102. However, the funding has not increased or been adjusted for inflation despite the number of eligible students increasing.
Last December, the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina was recognized federally after 137 years.
“Right now they're anticipating over 10,000 students that are eligible,” White said. “Let's just say the count goes up 10,000, but the money doesn't come up, too. What happens? Everybody gets cut.”
A catch-22, White said.
“We have to count the students to convince Congress that we need more money and the tribes are there,” she said.
That funding deficit is their biggest obstacle, White said.
“It's a fear among tribes and schools, and it's legit, that if they put in every student that's eligible, the count goes up, but the money is not coming with it,” White said.
During the 2023-24 school year, 128,401 Native American students were served through 401 Title VI programs in Oklahoma totaling $29.6 million.
There were 48 Johnson-O’Malley contracts or grants serving 107,379 students across 21 participating tribes and 27 public schools in Oklahoma in 2024.
According to the Bureau of Indian Education’s yearly budget justifications, Oklahoma’s Johnson-O’Malley funds have gone from $1.2 million in 2019 to $1.1 million in 2024. Following the Modernization Act, the national Johnson-O’Malley fund total rose from $14.9 million to $20 million in 2020. The fund has stayed around the $21 million mark since 2021 despite the BIE estimating as many as 578,070 eligible students in 2023.
The Johnson-O’Malley program operates on a budget of $64 per student, leaving funding gaps where once there were none.
In response to the gaps, the Muscogee Nation allocates extra money to bolster the Johnson O’Malley program. They try to maintain a $75 minimum per student. There are approximately 23,000 eligible students in the Muscogee Nation.
The National Indian Education Association continues to call on tribal leaders, educators and partners to petition for an increase in funding from the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. A hearing would give Johnson-O’Malley participants a chance to show how they are affected by funding gaps.
The 2023 Bureau of Indian Education budget request states that the United States has a trust and treaty responsibility to provide eligible Native American students with a quality education. Maintaining the success of Native American students in Oklahoma might necessitate advocacy at the federal level.
But student success does start locally, White said. She said her office works to facilitate communication between tribal governments, the state, and schools to boost student success and family understanding.
“The key is that it's not you versus me, it's we,” White said. “Those are our kids.”
Oklahoma Watch, at oklahomawatch.org, is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that covers public-policy issues facing the state.
