Alaska Education Commissioner Deena Bishop isn’t worried about Alaska homeschoolers’ academic performance, and she doesn’t see any pressing need to pressure them into taking standardized state tests.

In fact, if more homeschoolers opted to take federal academic tests, Alaska’s overall scores would only improve, she said during a recent Zoom meeting.

On Sept. 21, Bishop met with members of the Alaska Black Caucus, a hard-leftist group that peppered her with questions about whether the education department was doing anything to promote DEI hiring, BIPOC history, restorative justice and other affirmative action and race-related priorities.

Bishop’s answers generally pointed to the broader work the state was doing to better serve all students, regardless of race.

At one point, the conversation veered towards the fact that homeschool students in Alaska generally opt out of the end-of-the-year standardized tests.

Bishop said homeschoolers would only raise the overall state scores if they participated in the optional standardized tests.

Alaska’s union-driven educational establishment often complains about the fact that fewer than 20% of homeschool students choose to take optional standardized state tests, compared to roughly 90% of students who attend brick-and-mortar government-run schools.

While any Alaska student can decline to participate in optional state standardized tests, the fact that so few homeschoolers participate has become a bone of contention when it comes to deciding how to fund public education.

Homeschool advocates often opposed dumping more money into Alaska failing brick-and-mortar schools, and argue the best option is to strengthen the state’s correspondence programs.

Leftist groups like the Alaska Black Caucus and the NEA teachers’ union disagree, claiming that traditional public schools need more funding to solve their problems. They also claim homeschoolers should undergo rigorous testing to verify whether they produce better outcomes, as they claim.

Alaska Black Caucus President Celeste Hodge Growden wanted Commissioner Bishop to weigh in on this dispute, asking whether it was fair for homeschoolers to opt out of the standardized tests.

“Is it equitable that homeschool students participate in standardized testing at dramatically lower rates than public school students,” Growden asked. “And what data are we missing?”

Kids who are needing the most support are not the ones in homeschool. – Ed. Commissioner Deena Bishop

Bishop freely admitted that homeschool students exercise their legal right to opt out of state testing at much higher rates, but said Alaska has evidence that if homeschool students took the tests, the state’s overall average scores would actually go up, not down.

She noted that many correspondence schools don’t actually have an easy way to evaluate students, since most of these programs entail remote learning and do not have large school facilities where they can test students.

She then spoke about AK Star testing, which looks at how students perform at their grade level.

“What we did three years ago was integrate it with this other test called Map Growth,” Bishop explained.

Map Growth is a dynamic test, which gives kids progressively harder or easier questions based on how they answer previous questions. Homeschool parents do have their children take these tests, Bishop said, because they want to see how well their students perform.

Based on the Map Growth scores, Bishop said homeschoolers would only raise the overall state test scores if they participated in the optional standardized tests.

“In fact, we have evidence now, that if homeschool students did test, our scores would be higher,” Bishop stated.

She added that forcing homeschoolers to take state tests is not a priority.

“I’m not really worried about it now, because there are bigger fish to fry, believe it or not,” Bishop observed. “Kids who are needing the most support are not the ones in homeschool. They are the ones in our districts, and a lot of our rural districts.”

She then noted that Alaska’s charter schools, which foster strong parent involvement, do better than brick and mortar schools, especially when it comes to educating lower socio-economic kids.

“Having a parent and a kid love a school and want to go there” is key, she said.

She concluded by noting that “too many parents trust public schools,” when they actually need to hold them accountable for academic quality.

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