Thomas B. Fordham Institute - Advancing Educational Excellence

The Fordham Report 2006: How Well Are States Educating Our Neediest Children?

November 1, 2006

The Fordham Report 2006: How Well Are States Educating Our Neediest Children? appraises each state according to thirty indicators across three major categories: student achievement for low-income, African-American, and Hispanic students; achievement trends for these same groups over the last 10-15 years; and the state's track record in implementing bold education reforms. It finds that just eight states can claim even moderate success over the past 15 years at boosting the percentage of their poor or minority students who are at or above proficient in reading, math or science. In addition, most states making significant achievement gains--including California, Delaware, Florida, New York, Massachusetts, and Texas--are national leaders in education reform, indicating that solid standards, tough accountability, and greater school choice can yield better classroom results.

View the press release for this report

Contents

Alaska

 



 

Frozen in Time

Alaska's education challenges are as daunting as its long, dark winters. The state's K-12 system must work as well in a tiny, isolated Inuit fishing village as it does in a fast-growing urban center.

The extremes are hard to fathom unless you've spent time there. That's what then-Secretary of Education Rod Paige learned while visiting the Lewis Angapak Memorial School on St. Lawrence Island, which sits in middle of the Bering Sea. Upon arrival (by plane-there's no other way from the mainland), he commented, "When you said 'rural' to me several days ago, it meant one thing." Now, he continued, it has a whole "different" meaning. Alaska has some 220 isolated communities that struggle perennially to keep good teachers in town for more than a year.

Yet challenges are also great in Anchorage, home to about half the state's population. Of its K-12 students, 43 percent are minorities who collectively speak more than 90 languages. Simply finding and funding enough translators is a major logistical undertaking and expense.

Such problems require bold answers. But rather than being aggressive and addressing these very real challenges with good policymaking, state leaders prefer to stand aside and allow locals to find their own way. "I don't see a whole lot of education policy making going on [on the state level] except to keep up with federal requirements," says Jeff Friedman, chairman of the Anchorage School Board.

State education department leaders, on the other hand, believe they've given locals the tools they need to tap into innovative solutions for their education needs. They point to the state's "embrace" of charter schools about five years ago, which they claim demonstrates how the political climate permits local experimentation to unfold with relative ease. This "relative ease" has hardly resulted in a charter school boom, however. The state now counts 22 charters; just five are in the metropolitan Anchorage area.

The state's laissez-faire approach certainly comes through in its academic standards. They are rated among the worst in the nation. While states such as Massachusetts and California have come to view standards as a practical tool for helping teachers find their way, Alaska sees them as one more bad big government idea. And that, they claim, won't fly. "This is very much a local control state," says Mary Francis of the Alaska Association of School Administrators. "You can't just impose from above, as NCLB [No Child Left Behind] did, and expect people to say, ‘Great. We just love big government. We'll go right along with you.' That isn't the way it works up here."

Yet these libertarian attitudes don't extend to the state's teacher certification requirements. Though teacher shortages are rampant and talent from other professions and the military is plentiful, Alaska has done little to embrace alternate routes into the classroom. While alternative certification is available, candidates must still meet heavy education course requirements and spend considerable time in in-service programs. But the state's habit of erecting barriers to those who would like to teach but don't have education school degrees will most likely have to change soon-and quickly. More than 200 of its 495 schools failed to make Adequate Yearly Progress under NCLB in 2004, and again in 2005. The question is whether or not anyone at the state level has the vision to step forward and take the lead.

Given the state's vast number of isolated communities, Alaska's embracing "cyber-schools" bodes well for the state's students. Currently, 7 percent of Alaska's 133,000 students take part in these schools, which are administered on the district level. Each student receives between $2,000 and $4,000 for equipment and has remote access to a certified teacher. The schools have existed for about eight years. Legislator Fred Dyson, a Republican who chairs the Senate Committee on Health, Education, and Social Services, believes they show a lot of potential, especially in rural areas. Some 68 percent of Alaskans, he notes, are online, and 99 percent of those can get high-speed access for a monthly fee.

Other solutions for educating the state's far-flung students include boarding schools. This is Republican Senator Gary Wilken's idea.

Many Alaska Natives, however, are wary of boarding schools. Memry Dahl, who has analyzed education indicators for a 2004 study from the Alaska Native Policy Center, a research arm of First Alaskans Institute, notes that in the 1970s, rural residents had no choice but to enter boarding schools-local schools didn't exist for them. Now that they've had a taste of having their own high schools, it'll be hard to go back. "Communities have felt a sense of pride in having their own high school," she says. "I think people still want to work with what we have." 

With all its problems, why is the state so slow to embrace reform? Certainly, the feeling that locals want to retain control of their schools is part of the answer. But so, too, is the fact that the legislature is unwilling to spend dollars on reform ideas. It's not that money is in short supply. This year, the state, which has no income tax, has a significant budget surplus thanks to oil and natural gas resources. And while state spending on K-12 education has climbed by 33 percent over the past three years, including a $144 million boost this year, that's just keeping up with costs, Friedman says. The state isn't providing "juice for any great reform visions."

Yet great reform visions are exactly what are needed. Even in towns at the end of the earth, tomorrow's Alaskans are going to have to compete in a global economy. Which means that today's students need a much stronger education than they've received to date. There are few better causes on which Alaska's pioneer spirit could be put to work.

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