Here’s another great chart showing Alaska as a statistical outlier in K-12 spending, in constant dollars. No other state comes close to Alaska in K-12 spending increases during this period. Even with this spending growth our improvement in reading scores was half as fast as California and Arizona, even though those states saw a constant dollar decline in K-12 spending.
Despite our modest growth in NAEP reading scores, between 2003 and 2015, Alaska was still 50th (dead last) in low-income 4th grade reading; 49th in upper/middle income 4th grade reading; 48th in low-income 8th grade reading and 42nd in upper/middle-income 8th grade reading in 2015.
In 2013 and 2015 the average Alaskan 4th grader scored lower than low-income Hispanic 4th graders in Florida!
Alaska’s K12 education model is seriously broken. Do any elected officials have the political will to fix it–for the kids?