Native American lawmaker aims to uncover true count of California’s Indigenous students

Assemblymember James Ramos has a persistent memory from his childhood in San Bernardino County. A teacher at his elementary school played a drum song and asked students to stand up if they were Native American and interpret the song for the class.

“That’s not our culture,” Ramos told his teacher. He grew up on the San Manuel Indian Reservation as a member of the Serrano/Cahuilla tribe, which uses gourd rattles, not drums, for music, he said.

“Well, sit down,” he recalled the teacher saying. “You must not be Indian enough.”

Assemblymember James RamosCredit: Facebook / AsmJamesRamos

That experience, Ramos said, is indicative of a wider problem in California schools, where the vast majority of Native American students and their diversity go unrecognized.

Now, the San Bernardino Democrat is championing legislation to change that by requiring the state to collect students’ tribal affiliations as part of its annual enrollment data-gathering effort. 

“I’m doing everything I can to make sure that California Indian people and Native Americans don’t feel invisible in LEAs,” Ramos said, referring to Local Education Agencies, a term that encompasses school districts, charter schools and county offices of education. “We’re hoping that by pushing pieces of legislation, our tribal members will not have to go through that type of experience.”

According to a 2023 report by the American Institutes for Research and the Indigenous Education State Leaders Network, Native American students are undercounted by 70% nationwide.

In California, the report found the undercount is even higher — 89.8% — with 155,855 American Indian and Alaska Native students not counted as such. 

According to the California Department of Education, there were 24,130 American Indian or Alaska Native students enrolled in TK-12 schools in 2025-26, 0.4% of the total student population. Based on the report’s estimates, that number would be closer to 180,000, about 3% of the student population, if all Indigenous students were counted.

Backers of Ramos’ bill, Assembly Bill 1581, say the problem with how California currently counts students is in its rigidity. The state asks schools to report all Hispanic or Latino students, no matter their race, as Hispanic or Latino. Students who identify as more than one race, such as American Indian and white, or American Indian and Black, are counted as “Two or more races.” Only students who identify solely as American Indian or Alaska Native are counted as American Indian or Alaska Native.

AB 1581 would require schools and the state to collect and report the tribal affiliation of every student who identifies as American Indian or Alaska Native, including those who also identify as another race or ethnicity.

When Native American students are undercounted, schools may not receive federal or state funds meant specifically for Indigenous students, such as for Native American language classes and tutoring, or Title VII, to boost Native American students’ academic achievement and make sure their classes are challenging and high quality, Ramos said. 

In addition, an undercount makes it hard to track how schools serve these students. For example, California reports how American Indian and Alaska Native students perform on standardized tests, graduation rates and suspension rates, all of which may be inaccurate if not all students are counted.

Collecting tribal affiliations would also show educators the diversity of Indigenous cultures among their students. California is home to 109 federally recognized tribes, and many more petitioning for recognition. In addition, there are thousands of students in California schools whose families are from Indigenous communities from Mexico and Central America.

“Indigenous students are ‘invisibilized.’ Any major school you go to in Los Angeles Unified, or across L.A. County, if you ask any college counselor if they have American Indian students, almost 100% will say no,” said Marcos Aguilar, project director of the American Indian Resurgence Initiative and co-founder of a Los Angeles charter school that teaches students in Nahuatl and Spanish in addition to English.  

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At Anahuacalmecac International University Preparatory of North America, where Aguilar also serves as executive director, more than 65% of students identify as American Indian, from several different Indigenous peoples: Nahua, Zapotec, Wixarika, Cherokee and Kanaka, among others. 

The bill could also help schools better understand the assets that Indigenous students bring, said Rafael Vasquez, co-author of the book “Culturally Responsive Schooling for Indigenous Mexican Students.”

“I think this would be an opportunity to make less of a deficit perspective of Native American communities, and also Latinx communities, because it would no longer be seen as a monolithic group,” Vasquez said.

Vasquez said having a better understanding of the scope of Indigenous students can help propel schools to provide better translation in Indigenous languages for parents and incorporate Indigenous cultural practices into the curriculum. 

“Data can be powerful in informing policies and practices,” said Vasquez. “Schools may know of Indigenous students, but oftentimes they guide themselves by data.”

For example, he said he worked with Lynwood Unified School District to interview parents from a Zapotec Indigenous community in Oaxaca, and the school district used that data to incorporate Zapotec brass band music into the school with an after-school program and performances at school events. 

“For many of these students, the more they feel attachment or strength to their Indigenous identity, there’s a correlation to academics,” Vasquez said. “This isn’t just a cultural activity but can be a driving force in their academic success.”

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