By AlaskaWatchman.com

Despite a revamped approach to teaching reading, the Anchorage School District’s latest reading proficiency report reveals that students in grades K-2 are actually getting worse when it comes to achieving a basic skills.

An October report shows that the percentage of Anchorage students who were at or above the reading benchmark was just 40.78% in the latest Fall 2022 assessment. That’s slightly worse than the 41.86% who reached the benchmark a year ago, and far below the 65% goal the district had set for itself to achieve by the end of this current academic year.

The overall evaluation of the district’s performance when it comes to teaching basic reading is “far below target,” according to the report.

Nearly every category saw a drop in scores from last Fall. This included the “non-economically disadvantaged” category, which fell from 55.59% who were “at or above the benchmark” in 2021 to just 51.25% in 2022.

In terms of school performances, the number of schools that were “on and above target” dropped from 20 to 2 over the course of the last year. Furthermore, the number of schools that were “below target” rose from 38 in 2021 to 58 this year.

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Anchorage schools fail to improve dismal reading skills

Joel Davidson
Joel is Editor-in-Chief of the Alaska Watchman. Joel is an award winning journalist and has been reporting for over 24 years, He is a proud father of 8 children, and lives in Palmer, Alaska.


1 Comment

  • david Boyle says:

    This is not really surprising since the Anchorage School District is spending lots of resources on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (AKA Critical Race Theory) and teaching children about gender identity. Nothing will change until PARENTS get truly active and involve in their kids’ education. I guess “Equity” means dumbing down all the students to below acceptable.