For the second year in a row, Alaska students are showing notable gains in reading proficiency, according to new data released by the Department of Education and Early Development. The upward trend is being credited to the Alaska Reads Act, a 2022 education reform initiative signed into law by Gov. Mike Dunleavy.
Preliminary data from the 2024–2025 school year shows a jump from 44% of students reading at grade level at the beginning of the year to 60% by the end.
That marks a six-point improvement over the previous year’s gains, when students increased from 41% to 57%. According to the department, the year-over-year growth is outpacing national averages.
“This is promising evidence for our Alaskan students and their teachers as all the hard work and focus they have put in is coming to fruition,” said Education Commissioner Deena Bishop. “This achievement shows that the Alaska Reads Act was the right policy direction for our state, and more importantly, for our youngest learners. Congratulations!”
The Alaska Reads Act focuses on early literacy by requiring evidence-based instruction, teacher training, and targeted interventions for struggling readers. Its goal is to ensure that all students are reading at grade level by the end of third grade, considered a key predictor of long-term academic success.
“These results show why it’s critical to tie clear goals and strong commitments to education policy,” said Gov. Dunleavy. “The Alaska Reads Act proves that coupling funding with real reform works. We made the right decision, and students across Alaska are seeing the benefits.”
While the current data is preliminary, education officials say the consistent year-over-year growth is a strong indicator that the state’s investment in foundational reading skills is paying off. Final results are expected to be released later this year.
It’s a shame the legislature wrangled over enacting this legislation for as long as they did. I believe the initial effort started a decade ago. Nice to see something positive in education in AK.
Manley–The Alaska Reads Act was first introduced by Senator Tom Begich (D–Anchorage) and Governor Dunleavy in 2020. It was a bipartisan effort, and was easily passed in May 2022. There is no evidence that I could find that the legislature “wrangled” over this bill. The only challenge that I recall is that the governor vetoed funding for the first year, so it was difficult for schools to implement the act.
Let’s keep making changes and make Alaska grade again!
We all know what happened.
The bar was lowered.
Look into it.
Is this based upon the system that changed the structure for scoring?
Of same system from way back when. You know…… back when they taught history in schools.
Great news. Pass a law, throw obscene amounts of money at the problem, that’s all it took for children to read?
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News might be even greater if it didn’t come from education-industry officials reporting on themselves
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Are these not the very same education-industry officials whose hard work made Alaska “education” the failure it is today?
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Think they’ll risk their careers by saying something bad about themselves or their colleagues when they “report” to the legislator as required by the Alaska Reads Act?
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If we’re outpacing national averages, it might be fun to find out what they read at a certain grade in a top-performing school elsewhere in the country, see if a cross-section of Alaskan children in the same grade can read the same thing, or comprehend it.
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The Alaska Reads Act seems like a great idea. Problem is it allows the education industry to report on itself with no independent audit to verify what officials say.
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Amend the Act, insert language requiring in-person, independent audits of reading performance and consequences for failing to meet certain milesones, we’ll have a winner.
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Might take a bunch of laws, but how about doing the same for writing, mathematics, history, literature, getting perverts off the staff, porno out of the libraries, illegal aliens out of the system, could we be on to something?