Alaska
Alaska included among states with highest Alaska Native and Native American absences
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – Alaska Native students are more likely to drop out of school and have the lowest attendance rates above all subgroups, except for homeless students, in Alaska.
That’s according to data compiled by the Associated Press as part of its Missing Kids project, which focuses on students who continue to be chronically absent since the pandemic.
AP Exclusive data on Native American students and absenteeism from across the country shows startling statistics:
- Native absenteeism rates are at least 10 percentage points higher than the local average in half of the states featured, including Alaska.
- In almost every state with data, including Alaska, absenteeism for Native students increased more than it did for students as a whole. In some cases, Native absenteeism worsened even as attendance improved for other students.
- In some states — Alaska, Nebraska and South Dakota — the majority of Native students missed enough school to be considered chronically absent.
- In Alaska attendance rate for Alaska Native students was 84.71% and the dropout rate was 72.49%, according to state numbers compiled from 2022-23.
The only subgroup with a lower attendance and dropout rate were homeless students with an 81.08% attendance rate and a 9.43% dropout rate. English learners also had a higher dropout rate at 6.05%.
In Alaska, the highest attendance rates are led by students who are white, not economically disadvantaged, and those with active duty parents or guardians. The lowest dropout numbers are for the same groups.
Overall the student attendance rate in Alaska is 90.10% with a dropout rate of 3.55%, according to the state.
A request for comment from the Alaska Department of Education was not returned.
AP data shows that many schools with a large number of Native American students are trying to strengthen connections with families who often struggle with higher rates of illness and poverty and repairing distrust dating back to the U.S. government’s campaign to break up Native American and Alaska Native culture, language and identity by forcing children into often abusive boarding schools.
“[History] may cause them to not see the investment in a public school education as a good use of their time,” Dallas Pettigrew, director of Oklahoma University’s Center for Tribal Social Work, and a member of the Cherokee Nation, told the AP.
Oklahoma has proven to be a bright spot going against these trends. AP data shows that out of 34 states with data for the 2022-2023 school year, Oklahoma was the only one where Native students missed school at lower rates than the state average.
So what is Oklahoma doing differently?
That state has 38 federally recognized tribes, many with their own education departments that support and contribute to student’s success.
Part of that is an alternative program called Eagle Academy that helps students who continue to miss class or have low grades by strengthening bonds between the schools and families. Those students are rewarded for attendance with incentives like field trips. When students miss class, a teacher and assistant go to the student’s home to visit the family to figure out what barrier contributed to the absence.
In Oklahoma, an Indian Education Director would do things such as making sure students have school supplies and clothes, and the role would connect students with federal and tribal resources. If a student doesn’t show up to school, the person with the position and a colleague could drive to pick the child up.
Holie Youngbear, the Indian Education Director at the Watonga school system in Oklahoma, says a cycle of skipping school goes back to the abuse generations of Native students endorsed in boarding schools.
“Native students are never going to feel really welcomed unless the non-Native faculty go out of their way to make sure that those Native students feel welcomed,” Pettigrew said.
There are efforts in Alaska to envelope students stronger into their schools.
Indigenous educators from across the state Wednesday submitted the first-ever reading standards for Native languages to the Alaska State Board of Education and Early Development this past October. If signed by Gov. Mike Dunleavy, the standards would allow Alaska Native languages to be part of the state’s reading requirements.
Alaska’s News Source asked the governor’s office if he would implement the standards and if there are any studies or solutions coming from his administration.
“Any new standards would be set by the state board of education. We do not have any new studies on chronic absenteeism, and I am sure you can find a local expert yourself,” a spokesperson wrote in an email.
The draft shows what students in grades K-3 are expected to know at each stage of their educational journey, and were developed by 14 Ahtna, Aleut, Alutiiq, Gwich’in Athabascan, Inupiaq, Tlingit and Yup’ik educators with a goal of elevating Alaska Native languages and culture to inspire students and help them connect to their schools.
The group created the standards at the behest of the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development (DEED), with Sealaska Heritage Institute leading the effort.
“Just a few generations ago, well remembered in our oral history, all of Alaska was Indigenous territory,” the group stated. “Alaska Native languages are the Indigenous languages of this land and have been spoken here for tens of thousands of years.
“Up until 1930, less than 100 years ago, Alaska Native people made up the majority of Alaska’s population, speaking twenty-three different languages despite colonial efforts to eradicate them,” the group wrote. ”Those twenty-three Alaska Native languages are now considered official by the State of Alaska, meaning that they are acceptable to use for government and legal purposes and are taught and used in schools.”
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(Bethel, AK) –Wednesday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a favorable opinion for the State of Alaska in ConocoPhillips Alaska v. Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (AOGCC), agreeing that State laws requiring disclosure of oil well data are not preempted by federal law.
“Alaska relies heavily on our resources and resource development,” said Acting Alaska Attorney General Cori Mills. “We are also stewards of those resources for the citizens of Alaska. Alaska’s law both allows resource development now, and encourages further development and exploration in the future. We’re pleased that the Ninth Circuit recognized that federal law has not overridden Alaska’s balanced approach.”
The Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission regulates oil and gas operations throughout Alaska, including within the National Petroleum Reserve–Alaska (NPR–A). Under Alaska law, companies need permits from the AOGCC to drill and must submit well data. The AOGCC is required to keep well data confidential for 24 months.
ConocoPhillips drilled several wells on lease holdings within the NPR–A and submitted data to the AOGCC. When the 24-month period expired, the AOGCC notified ConocoPhillips of the upcoming well data disclosure. ConocoPhillips sued in federal court to stop the disclosure process claiming that the Naval Petroleum Reserves Production Act, the federal law allowing private exploration in the NPR–A, preempted Alaska’s 24-month disclosure law. The federal district court found Alaska law preempted, and the AOGCC sought appellate review by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
On appeal, the Ninth Circuit agreed with the AOGCC. The federal Production Act does not preempt state law. The Ninth Circuit therefore reversed the district court’s holding to the contrary.
“The Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission is pleased with the court’s decision upholding Alaska law,” said AOGCC Commissioner Jessie Chmielowski in a declaration filed in the litigation court. “Alaska’s balanced approach to well data confidentiality leads to increased exploration activity, not less. Alaska law allows for a two-year confidentiality period on exploration well data to leverage a company’s investment in drilling. Thereafter, making the data public has incentivized exploration on the North Slope. Placing well data in the public record allows competing companies to evaluate different exploration concepts or interpretations based on seismic data that, without well data, are just educated guesses.”
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Alaska needs change. That’s why I’m running for governor: to bring new energy and a new generation of leadership to the governor’s office.
For 13 years in a row, more Alaskans have left our great state than have moved here. Prices are rising, schools are closing and Alaskans are getting left behind.
This year, those planning to leave Alaska include Ben and Catherine Walker, both recipients of Alaska’s Teacher of the Year Award. They can’t justify staying in the place they grew up in and love because of our failure to invest in the fundamentals, such as our schools.
The problem is personal. I’m 37. Many of those leaving Alaska are my age — debating whether there’s a future for us here or not. It’s a challenge we must solve.
I love challenges.
Back in 2012, I dropped out of college to challenge an entrenched Republican incumbent legislator who was running unopposed to represent my home region of Southeast Alaska. I launched a scrappy, grassroots campaign and focused on the kitchen table issues that matter to every Alaskan: good schools, getting our fair share of oil revenues, lowering costs, protecting our fisheries. I won — by 32 votes.
When I was sworn in, I was baby-faced and bushy-tailed, just 23 years old. It was the beginning of a decade-long tenure in the Legislature. A lot happened in those 10 years.
Among the most important: We formed the House Bipartisan Coalition in 2016. While I have a “D” next to my name, I believe strongly in working across party lines. That’s what the Bipartisan Coalition was, and is, all about: Democrats, moderate Republicans and independents, all working together to do what’s best for Alaska.
I want to bring that same bipartisan, vigorous problem-solving spirit to the governor’s office, where it has been nonexistent the last eight years.
As governor, I want to work hand in hand with the Legislature to deliver some desperately needed wins for Alaska that will make our lives better and get our state back on track:
• Reinvest in our public schools. Our school districts are in battlefield triage mode, but instead of amputating limbs, our school boards are forced to choose which sports to cut, which electives to discontinue and which neighborhood school to close. Enough already. Get school funding back up to par.
• Forward fund our schools. Our school districts shouldn’t have to guess how much education funding will end up being appropriated in end-of-session legislative haggling.
This circus forces school districts to prospectively fire teachers, then rehire them a month or two later, when they find out the final education funding number. It’s awful for all involved. We should fix it by forward funding.
• Close the Hilcorp corporate income tax loophole. Hilcorp should pay their fair share in taxes just as ConocoPhillips, and nearly every other major corporation in Alaska, already does.
• Lower the cost of energy. Chugach Electric Association, Golden Valley Electric Association, Homer Electric Association and Matanuska Electric Association operate about 1,700 megawatts in power generation capacity. Peak Railbelt winter demand is half that: about 850 megawatts. Guess who pays for the nearly gigawatt in underused and unused power plants? You, on your power bill. The governor should force the co-ops to work together, reduce redundancies and diversify energy sources, including renewables, in order to reduce the sky-high cost of energy for Alaskans.
• Lower the cost of childcare. Alaska has inadvertently created a system of childcare permitting and licensing that effectively amounts to death by a thousand pieces of paperwork. It’s creating scarcity and cost. We need to fix it.
• Lower the cost of housing. Cut red tape to make it easier and cheaper to build more homes of all kinds — from tiny homes and ADUs to manufactured and modular housing, to apartments and condos, to traditional single-family homes. More housing of all kinds, faster.
• Rein in bottom-trawl bycatch. I will nominate Alaskans to the North Pacific Fishery Management Council who will make sure that Alaska and Alaskans — not Seattle and Lower 48 industry interests — foremost benefit from our fisheries.
• Responsibly develop our resources. Support projects that have regional buy-in and support, such as Pikka on the North Slope, which just produced first oil this month, while saying “no” when the risks are too great and those in the region are opposed, as is the case with Pebble.
• Grow our tourism economy. And let’s crack the code on winter tourism while we’re at it. If Iceland can do it, we darn well can, too. Fairbanks is having burgeoning winter tourism success. Let’s follow their great lead.
• Make Alaska an awesome place to live. Let’s build dozens more public-use cabins. Let’s build an alpine hut-to-hut system like they have in New Zealand and the Alps. Let’s build the Alaska Long Trail. Let’s make Anchorage a world-class winter city.
Does this sound like the kind of Alaska you want to live in? Then I have great news: We are the governor campaign for you. And if what you just read gives you indigestion, you’ll be relieved to know you have 17 other options.
I have more great news: I can win.
After beating an entrenched Republican incumbent, I spent a decade representing a swingy district that voted for Donald Trump.
In those 10 years, I recorded some of the highest margins of crossover support from Trump voters of any Democrat in Alaska. I ran 12% ahead of Hillary Clinton in 2016 and 15% ahead of Joe Biden in 2020.
Here’s the simple truth: Whoever becomes our next governor will need to win with the support of significant numbers of independents and moderate Republicans, in addition to Democrats. I’ve done that. And I’ll do it again. Will you join me?
Former state Rep. Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins of Sitka is a candidate for governor of Alaska.
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May 28, 2026
3 min
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