By Senior Contributor 
By REP. KEVIN MCCABE
The second meeting of Alaska’s Education Funding Task Force has come and gone, and if you blinked, you missed it. Another invitation-only gathering of bureaucrats in Juneau, another chorus of “more money, please,” and not a single minute spent on the only metric that matters. student outcomes.
Alaska spends more than $18,400 per student, among the highest in the nation, yet we rank dead last in 4th-grade reading proficiency. Only 33 percent of our students are proficient in math. Graduation rates hover at 84 percent, and in Anchorage, enrollment has dropped 11.6 percent since 2016. That is not underfunding. That is failure.
But you would never know it by listening to the task force.
Nils Andreassen of the Alaska Municipal League warned that districts must choose between “adding a teacher or plugging a hole in the wall.” Clayton Holland, Kenai Peninsula Borough School District superintendent, cautioned about the “rhetoric” surrounding schools “asking for money again.” And former Commissioner Marshall Lind, who ran the system in the 1970s and 80s, offered the same tired prescription: pay teachers more and bring back the defined-benefit pension.
Think about that. The same group of people who presided over decades of decline now want to resurrect the pension system that collapsed in 2006 and cost taxpayers billions. They want us to believe that Gen X, Millennial, and Gen Z teachers, the very ones we need to recruit, are sitting around dreaming about a pension they will not see for 30 years.
Wrong!
Survey after survey shows that younger educators care far more about job satisfaction, support, and impact than a distant retirement plan. A 2024 EdWeek Research Center poll found that only 19 percent of teachers under 40 listed pensions as a top factor in staying on the job. What did matter? Work-life balance, administrative support, and student behavior. A 2023 RAND study said the same thing: younger teachers want meaningful work, mentorship, and flexible careers, not a retirement plan they may never vest in.
But the task force is not asking those questions. They are not talking to young teachers. They are not talking to parents in Bethel or Ketchikan who cannot afford to fly to Juneau. They are not streaming the meetings with live chat so a rural parent can ask, “Why is my eighth grader reading at a third-grade level?”
Instead, we get political theater. The Alaska Council of School Administrators, the Association of Alaska School Boards, the AML, and NEA-Alaska all show up, all funded by dues and taxpayer dollars, all lobbying for more money, and none willing to discuss accountability.
This is not a task force. It is a protection racket.
The real work, the only work that matters, is improving outcomes. And that will never happen by pouring more cash into the same broken system. It takes competition, choice, and consolidation.
• Consolidate our 54 school districts into 30 by 2027. Hawaii manages one statewide district and spends 20 percent less on overhead.
• Fund the child, not the system. The nationwide move to Universal Education Savings Accounts like Arizona’s allow parents to direct dollars to public, private, charter, or homeschool options. Arizona now has 96,000 students learning in environments that actually work for them.
• Expand charter schools with an independent authorizer. Local districts see them as rivals, not partners. Mat-Su’s top charters graduate 92 to 98 percent of students with leaner budgets.
• Tie funding to results. No more blank checks. Graduation rates, proficiency scores, and parent satisfaction should determine where the money goes.
Governor Dunleavy tried to move us in this direction with HB 57. The Legislature overrode him twice and then added $184 million to the Base Student Allocation with zero meaningful reforms. Now many of the same legislators are holding “task force” meetings to study the very problem they just made worse.
Enough!
Although the task force meets again Nov. 10, neither that date, the location, or the invitees have been shared on the public page of the task force. If Co-Chairs Sen. Löki Tobin and Rep. Rebecca Himschoot are serious about fixing education, they should:
- Open the doors and hold transparent hybrid meetings in Anchorage, Fairbanks, and rural hubs, and help parents travel.
- Invite parents, students, and non-union teachers, not just the usual insiders.
- Publish real data showing per-student spending versus outcomes, district by district.
- Survey young teachers and ask what actually keeps them in the classroom.
Until that happens, this task force is not solving Alaska’s education crisis. It is managing its decline.
Our kids deserve better. Alaskans have paid enough!
Rep. Kevin McCabe, a Republican, serves the people of District 30 in the Alaska Legislature.
Legislature’s Education Task Force meets to continue funding strategies
Suzanne Downing
Good discussion Mr. McCabe. Meanwhile, across the river, another good reason to defund the ASD:
https://mustreadalaska.com/a-subtle-revolution-anchorage-school-district-places-we-do-not-endorse-disclaimer-on-u-s-constitution-and-declaration-of-independence/
Mississippi used to have the lowest reading scores in the nation; now they are in the top ten. About a dozen years ago they threw out their old system of teaching reading and adopted a new system based on concentrating teaching reading in kindergarten thru third grade, teacher education on how to teach reading, linking student promotion to reading scores and parent/community involvement. Stop with the task forces, meetings and expensive studies, send someone competent and with authority to act down to Mississippi, acquire their program, and bring it back and implement it here. I can’t see any “Alaska unique” problems that do not have a Mississippi equivalent, and they have found a working solution. It’s been in place for a dozen years and has the bugs worked out. Of course there may be a better program somewhere out there, but Mississippi’s works and can be implemented immediately beginning with teacher education. Yes, travel cost for sending training groups thru out Alaska to train teachers and community leaders would be an initial expense, but the only thing more expensive than a winning program is a losing program.