Alaska Progress Report

Alaska ranked 39th for high school graduation rate

A new report from America's Promise Alliance titled Building a Grad Nation shows Alaska has a lot of room to improve when it comes to high school graduation and dropout rates. The national high school graduation rate improved from 72.6% in 2002 to 75.5% in 2009. Alaska improved from 65.9% to 72.6%, one of the better improvement rates in that period. However, Alaska's rank overall is still poor:  we ranked 43rd in 2002 and 39th in 2009.

The report has a great discussion of the nuances of collecting and reporting graduation and dropout rates, and makes the point that a state can have a low dropout rate while still having a poor graduation rate.

Alaska gets mixed grades for assets and opportunity

OK, we've never heard of the Corporation for Enterprise Development either, but they've got an "assets and opportunity" scorecard out that grades Alaska in five areas:

• Financial Assets and Income: B
• Business and Jobs: A
• Housing and Homeownership: A
• Health Care: C
• Education: C

Given some of the recent bad news on Alaska's relative educational performance (a legislative research report says our college graduation rates were dead last nationally in all but two years from 1997 through 2009, and high school graduation rates are below the national average) that seems like a generous grade.

Still, our overall ranking is sixth, so that's better than a poke in the eye with an oosik.

Alaska ranks 32nd on child well-being

The Annie E. Casey Foundation's KIDS COUNT Data Book is hot off the wire and Alaska is ranked 32nd overall. As usual, we stake out many extremes in the rankings:

• Low-birthweight babies, 2008. At 6.0 percent Alaska has the lowest rate in the nation, well below the national rate of 8.2 percent.
• Infant mortality, 2007. At 6.5 deaths per 1,000 live births, Alaska is ranked 19th, just under the national average of 6.8.
• Child death rate, 2007. At 31 deaths per 100,000 children ages 1 to14, Alaska ranked 49th, way above the national average of 19.
• Teen death rate, 2007. At 100 deaths per 100,000 teens ages 15 to 19, Alaska ranked 50th, well above the national rate of 62.
• Teen birth rate, 2008. At 47 births per 1,000 females ages 15 to 19, Alaska ranked 34th, significantly above the national rate of 41.
• Percent of teens not in school and not high school graduates, ages 16 to 19. At a rate of 5 percent Alaska ranked 9th, less than the national rate of 6 percent.
• Percent of teens not attending school and not working, ages 16 to 19. At a rate of 12 percent Alaska ranked 45th, well above the national rate of 9 percent.
• Percent of children living in families where no parent has full-time, year-round employment, 2009. Alaska ranked 47th with a rate of 36 percent, above the national rate of 31 percent.
• Percent of children in poverty, 2009. Alaska ranked 5th with a rate of 13 percent, well under the national rate of 20 percent.
• Percent of children in single-parent families, 2009. Alaska ranked 12th with a rate of 30 percent, just under the national rate of 34 percent.

Because of our urban-rural split, many of these indicators are considerably different in Anchorage, Fairbanks and Juneau compared to Barrow and Bethel, for example. Some of the state data are broken out by region within the state.

Alaska ranked 30th on Peace Index

Some think-spa called the Institute for Economics and Peace - ironically based in the former penal colony of Australia - has ranked Alaska 30th among the 50 states on its Peace Index. The index looks at various social and economic variables at the state level. Alaska's rank on some of the individual variables, where higher is better for peace purposes:

• Violent crimes per 100,000 people: 46th
• Availability of small arms: 41st
• Percent of population with high school diploma: 3rd
• High school graduation rate: 40th
• Percent without health insurance: 40th
• Equality of household income distribution: 1st
• Percent in poverty: 2nd
• Percent with home Internet access: 2nd

The report claims the US has become more peaceful since 1995, and that peace is positively correlated with economic opportunity, education and health.

Alaska has 4th highest per-pupil educational expenditures

This just in from KIDS COUNT: Alaska has the fourth highest per-pupil educational expenditures in 2011. The caveat: the numbers are "adjusted for regional cost differences," which in this case means... well, we don't really know what it means. It's figured using the National Center for Education Statistics Geographic Cost of Education Index.

Anyway, Alaska's adjusted per-pupil expenditure in 2011 is $15,424, exceeded only by New Jersey ($15,598), Vermont ($17,050) and Wyoming ($17,114). The national average is $11,223. Utah stakes out the low end, spending a mere $6,525 per pupil, well behind the second lowest spending state, Nevada, at $8,228.

All this begs the question, what do states get for their spending?

Alaska early reading indicators

The Annie E. Casey Foundation KIDS COUNT program released a new report, Early Warning! Why Reading by the End of Third Grade Matters. Short version: it matters a lot, because of a critical transition from learning to read in the third grade to reading to learn in fourth grade. The report has detailed data on states including Alaska, and their general database contains tons of Alaska data related to the topic.

Looking at fourth grade reading achievement levels in Alaska, as measured by scores on the NAEP reading test, 2009 numbers haven't changed much from 2003: in 2009 41% of fourth graders scored below basic level (versus 33% nationally), 59% at or above basic, 73% below proficient (67% nationally) and 27% at or above proficient. All of these 2009 scores were within a single percentage point of 2003 scores.

That would explain Alaska's rank of 42nd - yes, the bottom fifth - in fourth graders who scored below proficient reading level. This is perhaps not surprising, given Alaska is ranked 35th in the KIDS COUNT key indicators overall rankings.

The number of schools in rural Alaska declining

The New York Times reports on the decline in the number of schools in rural Alaska: "As Alaska celebrates its 50th anniversary of statehood amid new political prominence and urban aspirations, it is confronting a legacy of loss in rural communities that are unlike any others in the United States.

"Some of these communities, like Nikolski, are linked to the earliest human settlements in North America, yet are now buckling beneath the accumulated conflict of old versus new. Alaska Natives are increasingly leaving villages for cities. Young women, in particular, have departed, and birth rates, once disproportionately higher in villages, have dropped. Jobs for the young people who remain are declining. Village elders have fewer peers who share their dialects. Heating fuel, gasoline and groceries can be expensive and medical services minimal.

"The annual statewide student counting period, completed last month, is a census of the exodus. After several decades of growth, the overall rural population has declined about 4 percent since 2000 and much more in many regions. In the Aleutians, the population is down 19 percent, to about 4,500. About 20 percent of Alaska’s 680,000 people live in rural areas."

Alaska leaves pre-kindergarten wilderness

A blurb from Reuters on Alaska joining the modern world of pre-kindergarten: "Although Alaska faced a budget gap of more than 30 percent, the legislature became one of two states to approve new pre-kindergarten programs this year, according to a state-by-state analysis released today by Pre-K Now, a campaign of the Pew Center on the States.  The new pilot removes Alaska from the "pre-k wilderness" where only ten states remain without publicly-funded pre-k."

The Pew report for 2010 notes that pre-k programs have a documented cost-benefit ratio of about seven to one; for every dollar we invest in pre-k we'll get seven back. That makes sense in the learning pipeline, where early intervention can prevent a host of problems down the road. With education correlated so strongly with so many other desirable qualities, for example income, it just makes sense.

Alaska state spending versus the nation

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has an interesting and brief overview of where state spending goes: "...the specific mix of spending varies from state to state, depending on such factors as how the state and its localities share funding responsibilities for public services and how much state policymakers choose to invest in health care, education, and other programs.

"In some cases, this variation is significant. For example, Alaska and West Virginia each spend 11 percent of their budgets on K-12 education, while Michigan, at the other end of the spectrum, spends 31 percent. Similarly, Medicaid makes up 10 percent or less of state budgets in Alabama, Hawaii, and Wyoming but more than 30 percent of the budgets in Maine, Missouri, and Pennsylvania.

According to the National Association of State Budget Officers the average state spends 21.2% of its budget on K-12 education (Alaska 11.2%), the largest single area, followed by 21.2% on Medicaid (Alaska 9.2%), 10.5% on higher education (Alaska 7.3%), 8.4% on transportation (Alaska 19.2%), 3.4% on corrections (Alaska 2.4%), 1.7% on public assistance (Alaska 0.9%) and 33.6% on other (Alaska 49.8%).

Rural population declining, impacts schools

One of the ironies of modernization is that predominantly Alaska Native rural communities have responded to the cash economy by losing population to urban areas where the jobs are. This trend receives its first serious study in Alaska’s Rural Population and School Population Trends from the Division of Community and Regional Affairs.

“Alaska’s rural population is declining. While the decline is broad-based, some areas are still experiencing population growth mostly due to natural increase. Overall, rural Alaska has been experiencing lower birth rates than in past decades. Out-migration from rural Alaska has accelerated and natural increase in many areas has not offset the population losses. Moreover, changes in demographics point at the aging of rural residents.

“School population in rural Alaska has declined, much stronger than overall population. Since 2000, hub schools have lost the most students but rural school student counts have also fallen. This suggests that the overall population decline in rural Alaska will continue.”