What Schools Can Learn From Chief Leschi’s Graduation Gains

The clearest school-level lesson inside this week’s reporting on rising Bureau of Indian Education graduation rates is not a slogan about “innovation.” It is a scheduling and design choice at Chief Leschi Schools in Washington: make career pathways part of the school day, tie them to real roles students can hold now, and let that work count toward graduation. An Associated Press report published by PBS News on July 12 used Chief Leschi’s student teaching-assistant roles to show how that can look in practice, while also noting an equally important caveat: part of the BIE’s headline-grabbing rise reflects better data systems, not just stronger school practice. BIE says its overall four-year graduation rate reached a record 79% in 2025, and 21 BIE-funded high schools hit 90% or higher.

That combination matters for educators reading the numbers closely. The Bureau oversees 183 primary and secondary schools serving roughly 40,000 students, and the July 12 AP story added something systemwide press releases usually do not: a concrete example of what one school actually built. But it also warned against a too-clean causal story. BIE officials told AP that the agency began standardizing graduation-rate reporting in 2018 after schools had often counted transfer students as dropouts, which had depressed prior results. In other words, this is both an engagement story and a measurement story.

A pathway that counts for something now

Chief Leschi’s official materials show why the example is useful beyond one campus. The school’s career and technical education program is explicitly organized around local pathways, including education careers, natural resources, health sciences, culinary arts, and audio/visual technology, and says those pathways are designed to connect students to jobs in tribal enterprises and the surrounding community. Its education careers pathway is not framed as a vague interest area; it points students toward teaching, child development, administration, paraeducator certification, apprenticeships, and jobs at Chief Leschi Schools, the Puyallup Tribal Health Authority, youth centers, and family services. (leschischools.org)

That matters because, in Washington, CTE sequences can satisfy graduation-pathway requirements when they align with a student’s High School and Beyond Plan. State guidance and Chief Leschi’s own graduation page make clear that a CTE pathway is not merely an elective add-on. It can be part of the route to a diploma. That is one reason the AP example of senior Gerald Dillon working as a teaching assistant lands so clearly: the job-like role was integrated into school, not bolted on after hours. (local10.com)

For school leaders, the transferable idea is less “start a teaching pathway” than “build work that feels adult, visible, and useful.” Chief Leschi’s CTE program was relaunched in its current form in fall 2020, according to reporting from the Puyallup Tribe, and later added internships so students could move from exploration into hands-on placements. The school says its pathways are aligned to actual tribal employers, which reduces one of the biggest weaknesses in many college-and-career programs: students can sense when the promised future is abstract. Chief Leschi appears to have narrowed that gap. (puyalluptribe-nsn.gov)

That design may be especially relevant for schools that cannot easily place large numbers of students with outside employers. An on-campus role such as tutoring younger students, assisting in early-childhood classrooms, supporting media production, or working on environmental projects can still function as meaningful work-based learning if it carries real responsibility and connects to a documented pathway. Chief Leschi’s materials suggest that is exactly the point of its approach. (resources.finalsite.net)

Engagement is only half the story

Still, educators should resist reading the BIE graduation jump as proof that one program solved everything. The AP reporting was unusually direct on this point: BIE officials said the agency’s post-2018 reporting changes corrected years of flawed tracking, including cases in which transfer students were recorded as dropouts. That lines up with the federal definition of the adjusted cohort graduation rate, which depends on schools accurately adding and removing students as they transfer in and out. If transfer tracking gets cleaner, graduation rates can rise even when instruction and supports are unchanged. (pbs.org)

Chief Leschi’s own publicly posted BIE report cards suggest a more textured story than a single before-and-after number. The public cards currently online show the school at 63.6% in 2019-20, then 91% in 2021-22, 95% in 2022-23, and 87.2% in 2023-24. At the same time, the latest available BIE report card for Chief Leschi shows only 31% of students on track for attendance in 2023-24, meaning most were chronically absent by the bureau’s definition. That is a reminder that graduation gains can coexist with deep day-to-day attendance challenges.

That tension is important for transferability. A strong pathway may help older students see a reason to stay enrolled long enough to finish. It does not automatically solve the earlier attendance, mobility, credit accumulation, and student-tracking problems that shape whether they arrive at senior year on pace in the first place. For readers looking for a silver bullet, Chief Leschi is probably the wrong lesson. For readers looking for a workable piece of a broader retention strategy, it may be the right one. (bie.edu)

There is also broader evidence that concentrated CTE participation can support completion, which makes Chief Leschi’s approach more than a one-off anecdote. A Regional Educational Laboratory study for Nebraska and South Dakota found that students who completed a CTE sequence were 7 percentage points more likely to graduate on time, and an Institute of Education Sciences summary of a larger research synthesis said secondary CTE has statistically significant positive effects on high school completion and college readiness. Those findings do not prove that any one pathway caused Chief Leschi’s gains, but they do suggest the school is working in a direction the broader evidence base supports. (ies.ed.gov)

What schools can actually borrow

The most transferable parts of Chief Leschi’s example are practical. First, the pathways are attached to recognizable local work, not generic career awareness. Second, they are structured so students can use them toward graduation, not just enrichment. Third, the education pathway gives students a role that is relational and immediate: younger children know whether a high school aide showed up, helped, and belonged in the room. That kind of visibility can be more motivating than a distant promise about employability. (leschischools.org)

The other lesson is less glamorous but just as transferable: data systems are part of improvement work. BIE’s report-card system exists so schools, families, and tribal communities can see graduation, attendance, and other indicators in one place. The AP story showed why that matters. If schools do not know with confidence who transferred, who disappeared, who is off track for credits, or who is chronically absent, they are not doing instructional improvement on solid ground. They are guessing.

That is why the real test of this week’s BIE graduation story is not whether readers come away impressed by a record number. It is whether more schools copy the harder part of the work: building pathways that feel real to students and tracking those students well enough to know who still needs help. The next school-level BIE report cards will matter at least as much as the headlines, especially if they show whether gains can hold once the reporting system has stabilized and attendance pressures remain high. (bie.edu)