With superficial ease, Dunleavy declares Mississippi education a success and Alaska a failure
There’s an easy way to get higher fourth-grade scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress standardized test, the one that Gov. Mike Dunleavy is using as a public relations weapon to brand public education in Alaska as a failed system.
The way to get higher scores is to flunk more third-graders, keeping them out of the sample of fourth-graders who take the federal NAEP test every two years. That is happening in in 22 states with higher fourth-grade reading scores than Alaska, including Mississippi.
Another thing you can do to get better NAEP scores quickly is to design state standardized tests so that kids see material on those tests that they are likely to see on the national test. Mississippi did that in 2015. The expectations on its state tests mirror those on the NAEP test.
“There were some things addressed in NAEP’s fourth-grade assessments that we weren’t teaching until the fifth or sixth grade,” Nathan Oakley, Mississippi’s chief academic officer, told the group that oversees the national test in 2018.
Fix that problem and NAEP scores will improve. Teach to the NAEP test and you can increase scores as well. I’m not suggesting here that these are the only factors. The research and reporting is clear that the increased attention young kids get in reading instruction is a big element in progress.
In Alaska, the complaint from school boards and school districts is that with flat funding in the base student allocation, the state has failed across the board to provide what is needed for improvements.
Unlike Dunleavy and Education Commissioner Deena Bishop, I’m no expert on education, but I’d like to see a detailed analysis of Mississippi and Alaska before accepting their version of reality.
In his press conference Friday, at which Dunleavy attacked those who don’t agree with him about education as simply wanting more money, not better results, he mentioned Mississippi 15 times, praising it as a model of educational progress.
In Dunleavy’s telling, Mississippi succeeds, while Alaska fails.
This blanket condemnation is an unwarranted political tactic in which a complex set of circumstances is presented as a simple issue that requires no thought or research. Commissioner Deena Bishop is complicit in this oversimplification.
The Alaska/Mississippi contrast is a favorite in Dunleavyland.
Alaska Airlines pilot Bob Griffin, the Dunleavy ally who was dumped from the state school board last year by the Legislature, wrote on Facebook during Dunleavy’s presentation that Mississippi spends much less and gets much better results from its public schools.
Dunleavy had three slides in which he echoed Griffin’s point of view.
“Mississippi is a shining example of how implementing sound education policy produces better results. Prior to 2013, Mississippi was with Alaska near the bottom of the nation in education outcomes. A decade into implementing education reforms, Mississippi has improved fourth grade reading more than any other state,” Dunleavy’s first slide says.
“Poverty is not an excuse for poor educational outcomes. Mississippi is seeing positive results, despite having one of the highest poverty rates in the nation,” Dunleavy’s second slide says.
And then there was this on his third slide: “Education spending alone isn't the answer. Alaska is at the top of the list for education spending per-student, yet still has among the worst educational outcomes. Mississippi implemented reforms that improved student learning significantly with reckless spending.”
One of the slides Gov. MIke Dunleavy uses to praise the state of education in Mississippi.
The average teacher salary in Mississippi in 2024 was $53,354, lower than in 47 states. The national average was $69,597.
That’s according to an analysis by the National Education Association, the union that represents Alaska teachers. Dunleavy treats unionized teachers as a political enemy.
The average teacher salary in Alaska in 2024 was $76,371, according to NEA, 10th highest in the nation.
There were 598 vacant teaching positions in Alaska on the first day of the 2024-25 school year, the Anchorage Daily News reported, the highest number ever recorded.
Lowering teachers salaries to better track Mississippi would send those vacancy numbers soaring.
Since 2013 the law in Mississippi has been that students in third grade who don’t read well must repeat third grade. This keeps those students out of the NAEP sample the following year and gives them another year to try to get caught up. Education Week says that the state provides coaches to lead intervention programs at low-achieving schools.
“In 2016, an amendment introduced a requirement that students with reading deficiencies have individual reading plans outlining goals for growth, the additional instruction and interventions they'll receive, strategies their parents will be encouraged to use, and more,” Education Week reported.
The idea of putting more resources into helping children read early on is a good one. Reading is a vital skill upon which everything else rests. The problem with the Dunleavy years has been a refusal by the governor to provide schools with the money they need to ensure that a focus on reading can be achieved along with everything else.
Five years ago Dunleavy proposed that Alaska law be changed to require that kids in third grade be flunked if they were “severely below grade level” in reading.
That was removed from the final version of the Alaska Reads Act, which requires parental approval to flunk a poor-performing child. It also says the parents have to sign a waiver saying they know the child is falling behind.
Poor readers were supposed to receive “intensive reading intervention services to remedy the student’s specific reading deficiency.” That is happening to some extent, but I don’t think the state has recognized the real cost and challenges involved.
I have asked Bishop for numbers on how many children in third grade were not promoted to fourth grade in 2023-24. And how many parents signed waivers from school districts that said they know their children were not prepared for fourth grade.
These are important statistics that should have been part of the Dunleavy presentation on Mississippi Friday. The exact numbers on what percentage of kids in Mississippi flunk the third grade is hard to find, but it appears to have ranged from about 6.5 percent to 9 percent in recent years.
I don’t believe that mandatory flunking or forcing parents to sign a waiver is the right approach. By that age, many children are aware enough to know that if they flunk they will be labeled as dumb, lazy or worse, not by school officials, but by other kids.
The mandatory flunking of kids in Mississippi and 21 other states is one reason for better NAEP scores. There are conflicting reports on how significant the flunking factor is in the fourth grade numbers.
“Recent studies from Florida and Indiana show academic gains that persist over time, while other research has shown only short-term positive effects that then fade out. Other studies link retention to adverse outcomes outside of academics—students who are held back are more likely to be suspended in later years, for example,” Education Week reported in April 2023.
Education Professor P.L. Thomas of South Carolina wrote last year that third-grade retention is the “fool’s gold of reading reform.”
“My concern has always been that since NAEP is grade-based, grade retention removes the lowest scoring students from the testing pool and then reintroduces them when they are biologically older than their grade peers. Both of those skew test data by distorting the testing pool,” wrote Thomas.
The Legislature needs to hear from Education Commissioner Bishop about how many children in third grade are being held back each year now in Alaska and what that means for the NAEP scores, compared to other states where the law requires flunking.
Bishop should also be called upon to explain the financial commitment made in other states to fund a focus on reading and compare that to what Alaska has done under the Dunleavy administration.
Nationwide, the NAEP scores show a disturbing pattern.
“Scores are increasing for many students who already do well, while struggling students stagnated or fell even further behind their peers. That’s making a trend that began about a decade ago even more pronounced,” the nonproft Chalkbeat news site reported last week.
Another one of the complexities that the education commissioner should be investigating is the structure of the state tests in Mississippi compared to those in Alaska.
“In 2015, Mississippi overhauled its state test, including by aligning it more closely with NAEP,” Chalkbeat reported in July 2023.
“When writing the new assessment, the Mississippi Department of Education looked at NAEP frameworks — the blueprints for the content and design of each assessment — to ensure that the new state assessment mirrored expectations on The Nation’s Report Card,” the news site said, quoting this publication from the board that oversees NAEP.
“Testing experts say that focusing on the content of a particular exam might improve scores because educators teach to that specific test. This is not necessarily bad if the content reflects what students should know,” Chalkbeat said.
“Still, NAEP is supposed to be an external check on state assessments and if the two tests are very similar, it might not serve that purpose as well. ‘To the extent you prioritize NAEP, you risk inflating NAEP scores,’” said Andrew Ho, a testing expert at Harvard.
Dunleavy and Education Commissioner Bishop will have to do much more work to unravel this complicated situation, which means abandoning the superficial assumptions about education in Alaska and Mississippi.
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