If Alaska’s education system is intended to prepare children for successful, independent, and productive lives, why do we continue measuring the adequacy of the money going into the system without equally measuring the educational value coming out of it?
Have we forgotten what education is supposed to accomplish?
Despite at least nine major statewide education studies and reform initiatives since 1990, Alaska’s November 2026 Joint Legislative Task Force on Education Funding revisits many of the same longstanding problems and recommendations.
Its recommendations largely repeat earlier proposals, particularly the 2015 funding review, calling for another adequacy study, revised enrollment formulas, increased facilities and energy funding, teacher recruitment, and administrative adjustments.
Despite proposing separate facilities funding, expanded fiscal reporting, and shared maintenance services, the Task Force fails to account for the costs, implementation, or measurable academic results of earlier reforms. After 35 years, Alaska must ask why repeated studies have failed to establish a clear link between education spending and sustained student achievement.
Does our education system exist to educate our children or to sustain the institutions that are supposed to educate them?
Is its purpose to finance school districts, maintain buildings, preserve administrative structures, and employ education professionals? Or is its purpose to prepare children to read, write, calculate, reason independently, understand their constitutional government, develop useful skills, become economically productive, and lead responsible, independent lives?
Alaska Statute 14.03.015 already establishes that education should prepare students to succeed in work and life and contribute meaningfully to society. The available statistics demonstrate substantial shortcomings in academic achievement, but they do not directly measure every statutory objective, including success in employment, independent living, and civic contribution. Therefore, they could not establish that Alaska is fulfilling the broader purpose of education prescribed by AS 14.03.015.
The distinction is therefore not whether schools need adequate resources—they do—but whether the State judges educational success by the resources provided or by the knowledge, abilities, and opportunities students acquire. A properly funded school system that consistently fails to produce acceptable educational outcomes cannot be considered successful merely because it meets its financial and administrative obligations.
This distinction exposes the principal limitation of the Task Force’s approach. Its proposed definition of an adequate education emphasizes qualified teachers, appropriate curricula, safe facilities, student services, and access to educational opportunities. These are necessary conditions, but they are not themselves evidence that students have learned what they need to know. A student can attend a properly funded school, receive instruction from qualified teachers, and graduate without demonstrating proficiency in mathematics, reading, writing, or the practical knowledge necessary for employment and independent living.
The Task Force acknowledges declining student achievement and recommends reading proficiency incentives, but it does not establish a comprehensive system for evaluating the educational results produced by each dollar spent, identifying the causes of persistent underperformance, or reconsidering institutional arrangements that fail to deliver satisfactory outcomes. Its statutory assignment specifically included examining accountability provisions, yet its recommendations leave unresolved how financial accountability will be connected to measurable educational achievement.
My Taking Back Alaska education reform proposals begin with educational results rather than the preservation of existing institutions. The proposed Alaska Education Reform and Local Control Act would replace the present Department of Education and Early Development structure with a smaller funding and compliance institution, substantially reorganize district administration, establish student-directed Education Savings Accounts, strengthen parental and local decision-making, and require transparent reporting of educational expenditures and academic outcomes.
These reforms would also protect essential student services, existing contractual obligations, and legally required educational safeguards during any transition. The purpose is not simply to reduce government spending, but to determine whether alternative educational structures can deliver better academic results, greater family choice, stronger teacher support, and more effective use of public resources. Proposed administrative savings would have to be independently verified, and expanded educational-provider options would require careful constitutional and statutory review.
Alaska’s educational responsibilities must also be evaluated against the state’s future. A successful education system should prepare students to participate in Alaska’s economy, whether through university education, skilled trades, entrepreneurship, resource development, technology, transportation, public service, or the economic and cultural activities of rural and Alaska Native communities.
It should also prepare young people to understand their rights and responsibilities as citizens and to make informed decisions about their government and communities. The Legislature should therefore ask whether educational spending produces graduates with these capabilities, whether those capabilities correspond to Alaska’s economic opportunities, and whether students who do not pursue college leave school prepared for productive employment and independent adulthood. Simply adjusting the cost of operating today’s school system does not answer those questions.
The central issue is not whether the 2026 Task Force has identified legitimate financial problems. It has. Aging buildings, unpredictable funding, transportation costs, specialized student needs, and teacher retention all require serious attention. After more than 30 years of repeated studies, reforms, and disappointing educational outcomes, these concerns must be evaluated as means of achieving measurable educational objectives—not as ends in themselves.
Alaska should require a comprehensive accounting of the past 35 years of education reforms, their implementation costs, their measurable academic results, and the institutional changes that might produce better outcomes. Before committing additional public resources to another study of funding adequacy, the Legislature should examine whether the existing educational structure is itself part of the problem.
Alaska’s public education system exists to educate children—not to perpetuate the institutions responsible for educating them.
Its success should be measured by what students learn, what they can accomplish, how effectively they can participate in society, and whether public expenditures produce demonstrable educational value. Until Alaska makes those outcomes the organizing principle of education policy, another generation of studies may produce more recommendations, more funding adjustments, and more administrative requirements without answering the most important question: Are Alaska’s children actually receiving a better education?
