Alaska is by far the largest state in America. Indeed, as
the old joke goes, "you could cut Alaska in half and make Texas the third
largest state in the union." The highest mountain in North America is in the
state, as are the most lakes and glaciers, and it has more coastline than the
rest of the United States combined. Yet, with all this space (nearly 700,000
square miles), Alaska boasts the smallest population in the nation with just
over half a million people. Almost half of the entire state's population lives
in Anchorage which is connected to only a few smaller towns by three highways.
Most of the rest of the population lives in small, rural villages set along
major rivers or along the coastline. In fact, there are several hundred of
these villages, mostly inhabited by Alaska Native peoples including Eskimo
(Yupik and Inupiaq) and Indians (Athabaskans). Almost a quarter of the populace
is Alaska Native.
The enormous size and isolation of these diverse
communities creates an interesting delimma for the delivery of public
education. There are 53 school districts, each representing a number of
villages in the region. The largest of these, the North Slope School District,
with only 10 schools in it, encompasses a geographic area of 84,983 square
miles (about the size of many smaller states in the nation). The lowest
temperature recorded is around -100 F and the highest temperature, recorded in
Chicken, Alaska in 1932, was a balmy 98 F.
Getting students to school in
such a place is a challenge because of the lack of infrastructure in or to
these village communities (i. e. there exists no subways, railways, highways,
or any other ways for that matter). In many instances, students drive
four-wheelers (four-wheeled motorcycles), snowmobiles, and river boats to
school daily. During a brief cold spell in 1998, schools in Skwentna were
closed because snowmobiles would not start. In certain cases, Native students
actually fly to school in tiny single propeller airplanes at the district's
expense. I recall one high school student from Naknek who told me that she
moved to Dillingham after her plane almost crashed on the way to school. Many
students like her actually relocate to larger villages during the school year
because their families live too far away.
Alaska imports up to 85% of its
school teachers from outside the state. Although about 65% of all schools in
Alaska are rural or village communities in which almost 90% of all Alaska
Natives live, less than five percent of all teachers are of Alaska Native
descent. These outside educators come to Alaska unprepared for the isolation of
rural villages and the harsh environment surrounding them. Most return to the
states after the first year. One of the unspoken reasons motivating these
educators to teach in Alaska is a certain Peace Corps mentality similar to that
regarding Third World countries. In many cases, these teachers come to the
state with a personal mission to "save" what they perceive as impoverished,
uneducated Native Peoples. Guided by such a belief, they sometimes artificially
inflate grades believing that they are doing the Native students a service,
since many of them remain in the villages throughout their life enveloped by
alcoholism, poverty, depression, and suicide ( Alaska Native men between the
ages of 18-25 commit suicide at a rate 10-18 times the USA national average).
The general feeling seems to be that they might as well make the village
students feel good about themselves and instill a sense of educational pride
and accomplishment.
The problem comes when these students decide to go to
college. University of Alaska-Fairbanks education professor Judith Kleinsfeld
first acknowledged this fact in the mid-1980's. Her findings and subsequent
publications regarding the practice was met by wide criticism. But such
criticism does not deny the truth. I first became aware of this in 1992, when I
was the mathematics teacher for a prestigious federally-funded pre-college
program for rural students interested in the health sciences. Although some of
the students self-reported that they had successfully completed prerequisite
math courses through pre-calculus (with a B grade or better), placement
assessments discovered that they had, in fact, mathematical knowledge at the
pre-algebra level, much to the student's chagrin. Apparently, as one especially
infuriated student told me, she had been "patted on the back for a job well
done" all her mathematical-learning life and passed on to higher levels despite
inadequate performance . Obviously, such a mentality did not serve this student
or the many others like her. As mathematics faculty at Alaska Pacific
University, Alaska's only private four-year liberal arts university, I have
encountered this scenario many times since. Generally, rural students are
placed in developmental math courses, even though their transcripts show that
they successfully passed higher level courses in high school. A similar problem
exists, though perhaps to a lesser degree, in language arts education (English)
in rural and village schools. It should be noted that because of complex
reasons, the non-retention rate for Alaska Natives is several times higher than
that for non-Natives. Indeed, fully half of all Native freshmen students drop
out of college and return to their home villages before the end of the first
year.
Despite the enormity and geographic diversity of Alaska, educational
delivery in the state has equally enormous and diverse concerns and issues.
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