Assembly candidate Tammie Wilson says no students should be attending Hunter Elementary because of low standardized test scores

Borough Assembly candidate Tammie Wilson claims the standardized test scores at Hunter Elementary School are so low that no students should be going to school there.

"Would you attend a school in which 15.69 were proficient in English, 9.8 percent was proficient in math and 28.26 in science?” Wilson lectured the Fairbanks school board Tuesday.

“I don't think many of you would send your kids there and I don't think we should be sending any kids to there or find out why they're so low."

Wilson did not mention the name of the school. But she was referring to Hunter, which is the only school matching the exact numbers on this page posted by the state.

It is not reasonable or fair to claim to measure the value of public education by relying entirely on standardized tests, which are snapshots in time. These tests are tools that don’t begin to capture the mysteries of how or what children learn.

The tests don’t reveal how children develop the skills to read a room, negotiate, work on a team, empathize with others and accept the discipline to keep trying. The tests don’t show the ways in which leaders emerge and how pitifully narrow horizons can be broadened a bit. And they don’t measure success.

Every student completing high school or college this spring—and every parent—will have their individual assessments of accomplishment and failure that have nothing to do with scores on standardized tests from elementary school.

This is a key lesson about education that Wilson never bothered to learn during her many years in local government, the Legislature and in her current state job as a “parent and family advocate” for the Dunleavy administration. She lost her assembly race last year and is running again for the assembly.

To contrast with the numbers from Hunter, Wilson cited statistics from Anderson-Crawford Elementary School on Eielson Air Force Base as an example of how schools should be operated in Fairbanks.

"But in reverse would you send your child to a school that had 53.59 percent in English, 43.54 in math and 81.36. That's one school in our district,” Wilson said.

She did not name the school, but it is the only one that matches those statistics. If one school can get those numbers, any other school can do the same, she said.

"So it's not that we don't know how to do it. I mean those numbers tell you that. The question: Why aren't we taking the successes in each school, figure out what's really working and bring parents with their children back into the district, instead of just saying we need more and more money,” Wilson said.

"And I'll close with, is it really about money? Because the one school that I told you about that has the 53.59 in English and 81.36 in science is the lowest per student school at $15,686. So does that tell you money doesn't matter? No, you know it's not that easy,” she said about Anderson-Crawford Elementary.

“Do they have the best teachers in the district? Gonna figure they have pretty good ones, but are they the best? I don't know, but you should because that's where your answer is."

"If you want more money, you need more students. If you want more students, you have to fill that void the parents feel that are currently in our existing school system."

There is a void in Wilson’s argument.

It is unfair to compare Hunter, which serves one of the poorer parts of the community, with a school on Eielson, where nearly all the students are from Air Force families.

At Hunter, nearly 70 percent of the students are from low-income families. At Anderson-Crawford, about 29 percent of the students are in that category.

At Hunter, the attendance rate is 86 percent. At Anderson-Crawford, it is 93 percent.

At Hunter, more than 25 percent of the students have a disability of some kind. At Anderson-Crawford, about 13 percent of the students have disabilities.

At Hunter, nearly 60 percent of the students are chronically absent. At Anderson-Crawford, about 24 percent are chronically absent.

At Hunter, 8 percent of the students are from families on active duty in the military. At Anderson-Crawford, 92 percent have family members on active duty.

There are many other factors that make comparisons like Wilson’s ridiculous. Here is a link to the meeting. She started speaking one hour and six minutes into the proceedings.

I have asked the school board members for a response to Wilson’s claims that there is a simple solution they haven’t thought about. I will post them here.

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