Native American students have writhed for decades in a bureaucratic school system bogged down by a patchwork of federal agencies responsible for different aspects of their education.

Today, native youth post the worst achievement scores and the lowest graduation rates of any student subgroup. Last school year 67 percent of American Indian students graduated from high school compared the national average of 80 percent. And many of their school facilities have been equally neglected, lacking even basic essentials such as heat and running water.

Last year, after an emotional visit to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in North Dakota, President Barack Obama called his cabinet secretaries to the Roosevelt Room in the West Wing of the White House and tasked them with changing the status quo.

"The stories the young people shared are challenges no child should have to face," said Valerie Jarrett, White House senior adviser who spoke Thursday at the 7th annual White House Tribal Nations Conference. "The president told his team that day … 'We must do better.' And we have been."

The result, among other things, has been a concerted effort by agencies, including the Department of Interior, Department of Education, Department of Justice and Department of Housing and Urban Development, to work holistically and partner to help tribal communities tackle a variety of hardships.

"Our ability to strengthen our government-to-government relationship with Indian nations starts with our ability to have government-to-government relationship within the federal government by holding all the cabinet agencies accountable for being there," said Secretary of Interior Sally Jewell, who spoke alongside other cabinet secretaries Thursday at the tribal nations conference.

She continued: "Our ability to serve you means that we have to work well together and the silos that are very, very clear within the federal government are much more effective if they can be broken down and we can work together."

One of the biggest undertakings has been better coordinating resources and embarking on a wholesale reorganization of the Bureau of Indian Education, which is housed in the Department of the Interior and oversees 183 schools across reservations in 24 states that serve about 48,000 students.

The bureau has been plagued by ineffective leadership, financial mismanagement and lack of expertise among staff in dealing with tribal schools. In the last 36 years, the bureau has had 33 directors. And graduation rates among Native youth who attend schools run by the BIE are even worse, hovering at just 53 percent.

"There is a painful history and a failure on the past of the country to serve Native youth well," said John King, the No. 2 at the Education Department who will soon take over as secretary when Arne Duncan steps down in December.

"We are committed to ensure students succeed not in spite of who they are but because of who they are," King said, speaking to the ongoing effort inside the BIE to hand over control of schools on reservation to the tribes so communities there can better preserve indigenous languages and provide more culturally responsible instruction.

"I've watched this relationship strengthen and grow," said Cecilia Muñoz, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council. "We're trying to work as collaboratively as possible all across the agencies of the government. It's very important that [Jewell] is not alone in this effort."

The question of responsibility is crucial, especially when it comes to educating Native students. To be sure, education is the specialty of the Education Department, but the Department of Interior is ultimately responsible for schools on reservations while the Department of Housing and Urban Development is responsible for building teacher housing in those remote areas.

Rep. John Kline, the Minnesota Republican who chairs the House education committee, held a slate of hearings earlier this year to address the issue.

Kline visited the Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig School in northern Minnesota this spring with Rep. Todd Rokita, R-Ind., to see the condition of some of the tribal schools in his home state.

"Nobody can visit one of these schools and not say, 'We need to fix this,'" Kline said at a hearing after the school visits during which he described seeing falling ceilings, broken water heaters, electrical hazards, rotten floors and rodent-infested classrooms.

"We have a bureaucratic mess," Kline said. "We all owe it to these kids to get past the confusing [bureaucracy] and stop saying it's somebody else's problem. It's time now for it to be all of our responsibility."

Some of the administration's efforts are beginning to have impact.

Lawmakers signed off on a $19.2 million increase in fiscal 2015 for a school replacement and construction project, and also upped funding for tribally controlled schools by more than $14 million.



And on Thursday, the administration announced another $2.5 million in grants that will be awarded to eight different tribes to lay the groundwork for them to assume control of the schools in their communities.

"Through these partnerships, we will be putting tribes in the driver's seat by designing culturally responsive programs to help Native children reach their education potential," said William Mendoza,​​ appointed director of the White House Initiative on American Indian and Alaska Native Education. "These efforts will help reduce the achievement gap and make our Indian students more college and career-ready."

And while graduation rates inched upward the last few years for Native students – up 4.7 percent since 2011 – there is wide recognition the more still needs to be done.

"We have the worst of the worst statistics," said Aaron Payment, chairperson of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians in Michigan, speaking not only about graduation rates, but also rates of suicide, domestic violence and drug use.