Interior announces Bureau of Indian Education graduation rate rose to 79% in 2025

The Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) is a bureau within the U.S. Department of the Interior under the Assistant Secretary–Indian Affairs that is responsible specifically for federally funded Native education. It operates or funds 183 elementary/secondary schools and 2 postsecondary institutions, and its mission is to provide quality education from early childhood through life in line with each tribe’s cultural and economic needs.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), by contrast, has a much broader role: it manages federal trust responsibilities and programs for American Indians and Alaska Natives, including land and natural resources, law enforcement, social services, and overall tribal support. Education functions that were once in BIA have been structurally separated into BIE, and BIE now acts in many ways like a state education agency for BIE-funded schools while BIA focuses on trust and other non‑education services.

BIE uses the standard 4‑year Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate (ACGR) methodology required by the U.S. Department of Education, similar to states:

• A cohort is formed from all students entering 9th grade for the first time in a given school year at a BIE‑funded high school.
• That cohort is “adjusted” over four years by adding students who transfer in and subtracting those who officially transfer out, emigrate, or die.
• The 4‑year graduation rate is the number of students in this adjusted cohort who earn a regular high school diploma within four years (including the summer after year 4), divided by the size of the adjusted cohort.

BIE builds and validates these cohorts using the Native American Student Information System (NASIS) and publishes technical guidance and cohort validation reports to support data accuracy.

Public documentation shows that BIE’s core data modernization rests on a centralized student information and assessment ecosystem, but specific dashboard/pacing‑guide vendors beyond this are not named:

• Native American Student Information System (NASIS): BIE’s centralized student information system, operated in partnership with Infinite Campus as a SaaS platform, is used for student records, scheduling, assessment data, and reporting across all BIE‑funded schools.
• NASIS is the primary tracking and reporting system for students and staff, and it feeds the performance, reporting, and accountability functions described in the press release (including school report cards and graduation reports).
• BIE’s unified assessment system uses external vendors (Pearson for ELA/math, Cognia and MSAA for science and alternate assessments, WIDA for English language proficiency), whose platforms supply scores and reporting data that can be integrated into NASIS and BIE dashboards.

The press release references “pacing guides, instructional resources, real‑time dashboards, and reporting tools,” but no additional specific dashboard or analytics vendors are identified in publicly available BIE or DOI documentation.

According to BIE and Indian Affairs, the elementary and secondary system comprises 183 Bureau‑funded schools, with roughly one‑third directly operated by the federal government and about two‑thirds tribally run:

• BIE’s Tribally Controlled Schools overview states there are 183 Bureau‑funded elementary and secondary schools serving about 46,000 students, “of these, 53 are BIE‑operated and 130 are tribally operated under BIE contracts or grants.”
• A parallel Indian Affairs summary lists the same total—183 schools—with 55 operated by BIE and 128 tribally operated, and GAO similarly describes “about two‑thirds” of the 183 schools as tribally operated.

Despite minor differences in exact counts between documents (reflecting timing or classification differences), all agree that most BIE‑funded schools are tribally controlled, with a smaller share directly operated by BIE.

Multiple layers of oversight and external reporting apply to BIE graduation and proficiency data, but there is no public evidence of a routine, independent statistical audit of every reported figure:

• Data system and privacy controls: The Native American Student Information System (NASIS) is BIE’s central student data system and is subject to federal privacy and information‑security requirements, including audit logs, annual privacy impact assessments, and security assessments; it is explicitly used to produce school report cards and to send attendance and graduation data to state education departments and the U.S. Department of Education.
• Federal reporting and review: BIE, treated as a “state” for ESSA and IDEA, must submit performance data (including graduation rates and assessment results) through ED Facts and IDEA reporting to the U.S. Department of Education and the Office of Special Education Programs, which in turn issues annual determinations on BIE’s compliance and performance.
• External evaluations: The Government Accountability Office has repeatedly audited BIE’s management and oversight of schools, including use and quality of data, and keeps BIE on its High‑Risk List, pressuring the agency to maintain action plans and monitoring processes for data accuracy and accountability.

These mechanisms provide procedural and episodic external scrutiny, but the specific 79% graduation rate and proficiency percentages cited in the press release are primarily based on BIE’s own NASIS‑derived calculations and validations, as opposed to being recalculated by a standing independent verifier.

Graduation

• BIE reports its four‑year adjusted cohort graduation rate rose from about 51% (2015) to 79% for the 2025 graduating class.
• The most recent national data (school year 2021‑22) show a U.S. average ACGR of 87% for all public high school students and 74% for American Indian/Alaska Native students; BIE’s ACGR that year was 75%.
• A 2025 Interior testimony states that by 2024 BIE’s ACGR (75%) was “meeting or exceeding the graduation rates for American Indian and Alaska Native students in nearly every state where BIE schools operate,” indicating BIE students are now doing at least as well as their Native peers in those states, though still below the overall national average for all students.

Proficiency

• The 2026 press release cites system‑wide gains—a 9‑percentage‑point increase in math proficiency and 10‑point increase in English language arts (ELA) since 2016—but does not publish the underlying baseline or current percentages.
• A 2025 Interior statement provides more detail: in 2023 BIE math proficiency was 18% and ELA proficiency 25%, and BIE reports that these rates exceeded outcomes for Native students in key states such as New Mexico and Arizona while national proficiency declined.
• Because states and BIE use different assessments and cut scores, there is no single, directly comparable national “percent proficient” statistic; available evidence shows BIE’s proficiency levels remain well below typical all‑student state averages, but have improved enough to surpass or match Native‑student proficiency in many of the states where BIE schools are located.

Publicly documented commitments to sustaining BIE’s reforms and progress include:

• Dedicated and increased funding: The FY 2025 Interior budget request for BIE is about $1.5 billion (an increase over 2024), with targeted funding to improve Native student academic outcomes, address school maintenance needs, support early childhood and Native language programs, provide pay parity for tribal teachers, and fully fund projected Tribal Grant Support Costs. BIE’s FY 2026 budget justification continues these priorities.
• Structural and regulatory changes: Indian Affairs formally separated the BIE and BIA budgets starting in FY 2020 to increase transparency and allow BIE to directly manage school operations and facilities; in 2020 Interior issued the Standards, Assessments, and Accountability System (SAAS) rule under ESSA, creating a single, uniform accountability system for all BIE schools, which locks key assessment and reporting practices into regulation.
• Data and accountability infrastructure: BIE continues to invest in the Native American Student Information System (NASIS) and a unified assessment system (Pearson, Cognia/MSAA, WIDA) to support ongoing data‑driven decision‑making, school report cards, and graduation reporting. GAO’s designation of BIE’s school management as “high‑risk” has led BIE to adopt and maintain formal action plans and monitoring processes, creating continuing pressure to sustain and document improvements.

These funding increases, regulatory frameworks, and data/oversight systems form the main federal mechanisms committed to maintaining BIE’s reform trajectory beyond the period highlighted in the press release.