The Anchorage Daily News asked candidates for the April 2 election to the Anchorage School Board to answer a series of questions on issues facing those bodies. We’re publishing select responses daily. The answers were fact-checked when facts were cited and edited for spelling, grammar and writing style. To see all the responses, click here. For Assembly candidate surveys, click here.
Q: ASD’s graduation rates are among the lowest in the country. How can the school district take meaningful steps to boost this rate?
SEAT A
Margo Bellamy
Not graduating is a symptom of a bigger issue. I would look at the root causes as to why students are not graduating. For example, are there meaningful connections to caring adults in schools? What does the students’ academic profile looks like? What are the opportunities that students have during the school day to accelerate or remediate? What does the data tell us about the students who are not graduating?
Kai Binkley Sims
We need to provide valuable options for non-college bound students. King Tech is a great resource for our students, and should be supported and expanded to engage students on a path to graduation. We should provide middle school career days to encourage students to consider vocational / job training opportunity career paths when they start high school so we can also provide a more fully engaged student body that can see the benefit of moving forward to graduation and employment opportunities.
SEAT B
Starr Marsett
By working with organizations such as United Way who sponsor programs to help, by having support mechanisms in our school to identify students who are struggling before they reach a point of dropping out.
David Nees
Graduation rates like the United Way sponsored 90% by 2020 are the worst metric to measure student performance. Choosing to focus on this metric is how we got to the abysmal test scores. Reading at grade level is the best metric to evaluate our students. Graduation instead of learning will surely handicap that child during the rest of his/her life. I will always choose literacy over graduation rates.
Ronald Stafford did not respond to the survey.