Dunleavy and Education
Dear Editor: Recently Gov. Dunleavy earned the condemnation “anti-education” in Alaska media and indeed in this venue, most recently resulting from the Governor’s veto of Senate Bill 140. The Governor’s veto was founded in his correct and innocent assertion that the bill offered “no new approaches, other than enhanced funding, to increase educational outcomes.”
The anti-education aspersion hardly seems apt, inasmuch as the Governor’s two decades of experience in bush schools as a teacher, principal, and superintendent clearly belies it; one can hardly believe he bided those years for a longed-for chance to obstruct progress in Alaskan educational outcomes.
For the better part of 30 years or longer Alaska has presented between 47th and 49th in the country in student performance, and these scores don’t just arise from rural schools alone. Further complicating this discussion, particularly in our own school district, is that in these three decades, insufficient funding and under-staffing have not always presented, yet student performance have not moved positively in any statistically significant way even in times of plenty. Were the contention that insufficient funding accurate, we’d see a positive association longitudinally between monies expended on students and student achievement. This does not and has not presented, and making this harder to understand is that the metrics used to assess student progress or lack thereof, such as the NAEP, AKSTAR, and WIDA, are designed by educators, that is, students are failing to meet standards set by teachers themselves. How can this have obtained for so long?
There seems to be some reluctance in this state to find that answer. Not long ago the Legislature instituted a High School Qualifying Exam, simply intended to determine if our high school diplomas accurately reflected student knowledge. So few students were able to pass this test, even after extraordinary accommodation was made for them, that the Legislature effectively shot the messenger, ending the test requirement rather than pressing school districts for an explanation as to the widespread student failure of this assessment.
I wasn’t blessed with kids in this life, but that fact doesn’t disqualify me from comments on this topic. I’ve done some substitute teaching, tutoring, and other instruction, and I only rarely found students unwilling to be taught. Perhaps that dynamic has changed since I had my hand in, but I am skeptical of that.
Charles Dean, Sitka
