Bush schools present challenge

Still, his school, in Tuluksak, a village 35 miles from Bethel with 500 people, is considered one of the worst in the state. Only 36 percent of its teens graduate. Only 10 percent of its students are at grade level for reading and writing, and only 6 percent are for math.

Tuluksak is just one of a handful of schools this year that will be getting more attention from the Alaska Department of Education because of its continued poor test scores. Those test scores, released on Friday, showed some schools, mostly in the Bush, continue to fail their students despite five years of the No Child Left Behind law that was meant to radically reform education.

The statewide data, measuring the performance of the 128,000 Alaska kids in public schools, says about 65 percent of teens graduate on time while roughly 75 percent of students in grades 3 through 10 are proficient in their studies. The results show the state's educators still have a way to go to get every kid learning at grade level by 2014, which is what federal law mandates.

"This is not good. This is not something we're happy with and we accept the challenge," said the state's education commissioner, Larry LeDoux, at a press conference Friday in Anchorage. He said the challenges are complex and despite the results there is a lot of good work going on in Alaska schools.

The statewide results showed very similar numbers to the year before. Math scores declined slightly from 70 percent of students proficient in 2007-08, to 67 percent in 2008-09. Writing scores increased from 72 percent of kids passing the test to 76 percent. And reading stayed the same with about 80 percent of kids being proficient.

The results also show a gap in achievement, with scores significantly lower among Alaska Natives. Only 57 percent of Native children are reading at grade level compared with 89 percent of Caucasians. For math, 50 percent of Native kids are at grade level while 78 percent of Caucasian kids are.

The release of the data came two days after Anchorage public schools released their test results. Anchorage scores were all slightly higher than the statewide averages, but still down from last year.

Most of the failing schools, like Tuluksak, are in the Bush, and it is in those schools that the state Department of Education says it will ramp up its efforts.

Federal law requires the state to intervene in failing schools. In the most extreme cases, the state is supposed to shut down schools that continually under-perform. But in most of rural Alaska, closing the only school in the village is not an option.

The education department's deputy commissioner Les Morse said that last year's intervention methods included reviewing school curriculum; training principals in leadership; and making sure students were getting tested regularly to gauge their progress.

This year, beginning next month, those intervention methods are increasing. Recently hired teaching experts in subjects like reading and math will visit struggling schools to watch teachers and help them teach better. The state is also hiring a director of rural education to make sure rural schools take full advantage of state and federal government resources available to them.

Esther Cox, the State Board of Education's chairwoman, said the problem in many rural areas is not just with the schools. She could think of at least one village where parents shirk the responsibility of getting their kids to school and believe it is the job of teachers and administrators to make the children show up.

The state is taking corrective action in five school districts this year because of continued poor results: Northwest Arctic, Lower Yukon, Yukon Koyukuk, Yukon Flats and Yupiit, the district Tuluksak falls in.

Commissioner LeDoux says that unlike the Lower 48 where states can take a heavy-handed approach to punishing failing schools, that can't be done in rural Alaska where the risk of alienating the communities is too high. Intervention is sensitive, he said. The history of formal education in the villages, where Native languages and cultures were sometimes beaten out of children, still lives on in many memories.

The village of Tuluksak, for example, is very traditional, deputy commissioner Morse said. "There's more of a disconnect than a connection to Western culture," he said. "The purpose of education may be viewed differently."

He described the state's dealings with the school as "fragile."

Alexie, who has eight grandchildren in the 200-student school and is a member of the school board, says the state's monthly visits to the school are welcome, and thinks the No Child Left Behind law has brought standards to his village that didn't before have them.

But the bad test scores cannot be fixed overnight, he said. Nor can they be fixed in just a couple of years.

"They are making a difference," he said of the state's interventions. "I was glad when a couple of seniors graduated with diplomas this year."

Asked if testing was a good thing, he said he felt bad for the students before the rigorous standards were in place. "The ones that graduated before don't have a real diploma."

Find Megan Holland online at adn.com/contact/mholland or call 257-4343.