The number that defines Montana education is not its overall graduation rate. It is the gap between White students and Native American students -- a chasm that has hovered between 20 and 26 percentage points for every year on record and shows no sustained sign of closing.

In 2020, the most recent year with full racial data, 88.7% of White students in Montana graduated on time. For Native American students, the figure was 68.3%. That means roughly one in three Native American students did not earn a diploma within four years -- a rate that would trigger alarm in any state, let alone one with a constitutional mandate to serve Indigenous communities.

A gap that refuses to narrow

The White-Native American graduation gap has been remarkably resistant to change. At its widest, in 2016, it reached 25.7 percentage points. At its narrowest, in 2020, it shrank to 20.4 points. That four-year narrowing -- from 25.7 to 20.4 -- was the most promising trend in the data.

Then it reversed.

By 2023, the Native American graduation rate had dropped from its 2021 peak of 69.2% back to 66.1% -- a 3.1 percentage-point decline in just two years. White data is not available after 2020, but the all-students gap with Native American students widened from 16.9 points in 2021 to 19.5 points in 2023, suggesting the structural divide has reasserted itself.

The IEFA paradox

Montana is the only state in the country with a constitutional mandate to teach American Indian culture and history in every classroom. Article X, Section 1(2) of the Montana Constitution established Indian Education For All, and the state allocates roughly $3.5 million annually for IEFA implementation plus an additional $200 per Native American student for gap closure efforts.

Twenty years into this experiment, the graduation gap data suggests the investment has not translated into outcomes. The White-Native American gap in 2020 (20.4 points) was only 2.5 points narrower than in 2011 (22.9 points) -- a pace of closure so slow that it would take another 80 years to reach parity at the same rate.

In 2021, the Yellow Kidney class action lawsuit was filed against the Office of Public Instruction, alleging improper implementation of IEFA. The legal challenge adds a new dimension to a question the data has been asking for years: What would it take to actually close this gap?

Where Native American students stand among subgroups

The Native American graduation rate of 68.3% in 2020 was the second-lowest among all subgroups tracked by OPI, above only English Learners at 65.4%. But among racial groups specifically, Native American students have the lowest rate by a wide margin -- nearly 9 points below the next-lowest group (Black students at 77.1%) and 25 points below Asian students (93.9%).

One bright spot: Native American students showed the second-largest improvement of any subgroup between 2011 and 2020, gaining 6.4 percentage points (from 61.8% to 68.3%). Only English Learners improved faster, at 8.9 points. But this improvement was not enough to meaningfully close the gap, because White students also improved by 3.9 points over the same period.

The dropout dimension

The graduation rate tells only part of the story. OPI press releases show that Montana's American Indian dropout rate spiked to 10.74% in 2022 -- nearly three times the overall state average of 3.99%. That spike came one year before the Native American graduation rate dropped to 66.1%, suggesting acute pandemic-era disruption in tribal communities.

The dropout rate has since fallen to 8.90% in 2023, but it remains more than double the state average of 3.76%.

What the data cannot show

Montana's graduation data is state-level only. The OPI publishes district-level rates through its GEMS Power BI dashboard, but that data is not available in a format that allows systematic analysis. This means the state-level gap masks enormous variation -- between reservation schools and urban schools, between districts with strong IEFA implementation and those where it exists only on paper.

The 20-point gap is an average. In some communities, the gap is almost certainly wider. In others, it may be closing. Without accessible district-level data, it is impossible to identify which interventions are working and which are not.

Montana's graduation gap is constitutional, funded, and measured. Two decades into the IEFA experiment, the distance between White students and Native American students at the diploma ceremony is the same 20-some points it has always been.

Data source

Analysis uses four-year adjusted cohort graduation rate data from the Montana Office of Public Instruction. Full subgroup data covers 2011-2020; Native American and gender data extends through 2023; 2024 has only the all-students rate. Dropout rates from OPI press releases.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.