An offensive narrative has been circulating that Alaska Native children are to blame for our state’s low reading test scores. That narrative is not only extremely divisive and offensive – it is untrue.
Across the spectrum, Alaskan students under-perform their peers in the vast majority of both 4th and 8th grade reading scores on the U.S. Department of Education’s National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).
The Alaska Policy Forum has been tracking the performance of our schools for a decade. We have been a voice drawing attention to the untenable lack of reading proficiency of our students, and presenting solutions to this problem.
The series of charts included in our paper that follows reveal some very interesting, and perhaps surprising, information with results broken down across the entire economic and ethnic spectrum of Alaskan children.
Data Source: https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/ndecore/landing
