Daily Sitka Sentinel

Official Recalls 1956 Declaration on Education

By KLAS STOLPE
Sentinel Staff Writer
    We, the People of Alaska ...
    That’s how the state constitution starts and that is what was referenced by Dr. Michael Johnson, commissioner of the Alaska Board of Education and Early Development (DEED), as he described the Alaska Education Challenge (AEC) to state board members last week.
    The state board was in Sitka for its September meeting, held in the Mt. Edgecumbe High School library.
    Johnson spoke about the February 1956 constitutional convention in Fairbanks, where delegates from around Alaska met to write a constitution they hoped would be approved and added to the union.
    That historic meeting was about to adjourn when delegate Rolland Armstrong, of Juneau, rose to make a motion, stating “from the very beginning of this convention it had been my hope that there might be from this convention a statement or pledge to Alaska’s students.”
    “I think that’s wonderful,” Johnson said. “They are dreaming of a state, they’re writing a constitution, and at the end, when they have the last period on there, they are thinking about kids. They’re thinking about the future of the state and they’re thinking about kids.”

Dr. Michael Johnson, commissioner of the Alaska Board of Education and Early Development, speaks to board members last week at their September meeting in the library of Mt. Edgecumbe High School. (Sentinel Photo by Klas Stolpe)

    Johnson then quoted Armstrong, who in accordance with the rules of procedure, addressed his remarks to the presiding officer, Convention president Bill Egan.
    “I believe that it is time at the close of this convention to say to the children of Alaska, in light of this completed constitution that we do solemnly make a promise to them and with them in our future state. And so, sir, I would move that a committee be appointed to draw up a resolution that be known as a pledge to Alaska’s children. This pledge to be signed by you, sir, as the president of the convention. A pledge that would be able to be placed in every school room. A pledge that would say to them, that we call upon them for their cooperation as we move towards statehood because they will be in our future citizens. I would hope that this would say that we are providing for them a place where they may practice the faith of their choice and opportunity for education to meet today’s problems. A country filled with trees and streams bounded by adequate laws to help them in the future and the possibility of a future state that can be theirs where they can operate as the citizens of tomorrow…”
    Johnson noted a committee was formed to draw up that pledge and a promise to Alaska’s children, the constitution was adopted and the convention ended.
    “And that is exactly where the state board of education started the Alaska Education Challenge,” he said. “They didn’t start with a consultant from outside to come in and tell us what we should do. They didn’t start with we are going to give every school in the state five things that we want you to do. You didn’t start with buying big fancy curriculum, you started by saying if we are going to have a great education system in this state it is going to start exactly where it started at the beginning of our state and that is with the people of the state of Alaska.”
     The Alaska Board of Education is one of only two state boards that can make regulations and policies; the other is the Board of Fish. 
    Johnson said the Alaska Education Challenge began in September of 2016 when the DEED established five strategic priorities aimed at improving public education for all students in Alaska. The five were to amplify student learning, inspire community ownership of educational excellence, modernize the education system, ensure excellent educators, and promote safety and well-being.
    In support, Gov. Bill Walker delivered his State of the State Address in January of 2017, noting the need to improve public education in Alaska. He coined the phrase “Alaska Education Challenge” and launched the effort to craft changes in the education system and address student achievement gaps, and increase graduation rates by giving every student across the state equitable opportunity to learn and succeed.
    In February of 2017 the DEED sent out a public survey to over 109 communities that resulted in roughly 18,000 comments from Alaskans. Johnson then oversaw the selection of 100 Alaska stakeholders, from diverse backgrounds, interests, and experiences to convene in committees and develop the comments into recommendations to be placed in the five categories. The committees included students, parents, teachers, school district administrators, business leaders, Alaska Native leaders, school board members, legislators, state agency commissioners, and State Board of Education members.
    The State Board accepted all 13 recommendations, or strategies, and in January 2018 Gov. Walker, Lt. Gov. Mallott, Commissioner Johnson, the State Board, commissioners, legislators, and representatives from the five committees and partner organizations provided an overview of the work completed to date and shared next steps.
    “Alaska’s Education Challenge really represents the notion that we will never have a great education system unless we start exactly where we started our great state, and that’s the people of the state,” Johnson said.
    He said the 54 school districts are all different but are part of one state, with a vision to educate all students.
    “You as a board are responsible for a public system of education,” he said. “While we value and treasure the diversity of our districts, we need to equally value and treasure that we are a state with a vision and a commitment to publicly educate all students in the state.”
    Johnson said explaining the AEC is done via a question that the board poses to every Alaskan: “How will we meet the educational challenges in Alaska?”
    To answer that question the challenge has three components: public commitments, inviting all Alaskans to be a part of it; positive trajectories, the measurable goals that show the AEC is meeting those challenges; and prioritized strategies, a district’s document that lists what they’re doing to keep commitments.
    “The state board of education will never come to a point where it says ‘OK, we have a list of all the strategies that we will ever need to meet the challenges we face in public education,’” he said. “It includes what the state board will do in partnership with districts and other associations in the future to meet the challenges as they come. It will be a growing menu of opportunities for districts that we can support districts with, that we can require of districts, and that we can offer to districts in terms of meeting the challenges.”
    Johnson said board members must be leaders and as such they should say they want an excellent education for every single child. Ensuring nobody is left out, no matter where they are from, what economic strata, what ethnicity, the board wants an excellent education for every kid every day.
    “There is no reason we can’t have that,” he said.
    The board’s vision statement is adopted out of state statute AS14.03.015.
    It reads: “It is the policy of this state that the purpose of education is to help ensure that all students will succeed in their education and work, seek worthwhile and satisfying lives for themselves, exemplify the best values of society and be effective in improving the character and quality of the world about them.”
    Johnson said no one could argue that the world needs a little more character right now.
    “This is our lot,” he said.
    Johnson said a goal is for all students to read at grade level by the end of third grade. This goal starts pre-elementary, before kids get to school.
    Foundations for Excellence in Education says more than 80 percent of students who fail to earn a high school diploma were struggling readers in third grade, 85 percent of teenagers in the juvenile justice system are functionally illiterate, seven out of 10 people in prison can’t read past the fourth grade level, and dropouts make up 90 percent of Americans on welfare and 75 percent of food stamp recipients.
    Johnson said the thing he loved about the goal was that it was an opportunity to connect with indigenous cultures in the state.
    “It doesn’t say all students read English the end of third grade,” he said. “It just says they read proficiently.”
    Johnson wants the board to inspire and support tribes and school districts that want schools to allow students to read in their indigenous languages.
    He also seeks to increase career, technical, and culturally relevant education to meet student and workforce needs; close the achievement gap by ensuring equitable education rigor and resources; prepare, attract and retain effective education professionals; and improve the safety and well being of students through school partnerships with families, communities and tribes.
    During their meeting the state board heard from the Sitka School Board on its adaptation of the AEC, toured the Mt. Edgecumbe campus, and talked with the students and staff who were carrying on the Alaska mission of education that Armstrong championed 62 years earlier. It was reminiscent of the last day of the 1956 constitutional convention.
    The delegates who were present on that day included Sitka’s William Knight and B.D. Stewart; Klawock’s Frank Peratrovich; Ketchikan’s W.O. Smith; Petersburg’s Eldor Lee; Haines’ Leonard H. King and Burke Riley; Wrangell’s James Nolan; and Juneau’s Hugh Douglas Gray, Mildred R. Hermann, Katherine Nordale, R.E. Robertson, George Sundborg, Dora Sweeney, H.R. Vanderleest and Armstrong, who would become Sheldon Jackson College president in June of 1956 and serve until 1966.
    Next to them were Anchorage’s Dorothy Awes, Seaborn Buckalew, Edward Davis, Helen Fischer, Victor Fischer, John Hellenthal, Herb Hilscher, Marvin Marston, Steve McCutcheon, George McLaughlin, Chris Poulsen, Victor Rivers, and Barrie White; Fairbanks’ Frank Barr, John Boswell, E.B. Collins, George Cooper, James Doogan, Maurice Johnson, Robert McNealy, Leslie Nerland, Ralph Rivers, Warren Taylor and Ada Wien; Cordova’s John Rosswog; Dillingham’s Truman Emberg; Homer’s Yule Kilcher; Kodiak’s Jack Hinckel; Kotzebue’s John Cross; Nenana’s Jack Coghill; Nome’s W.W. Laws, John McNees and Peter Reader and M.J. Walsh; Palmer’s Jim Hurley; Seward’s Irwin Metcalf; Unalakleet’s Maynard Londborg; and Valdez’ William Egan and Thomas Harris.
    Armstrong rose one more time, to propose a charter for Alaska’s children.
    “You are Alaska’s children,” he began. “We bequeath to you a state that will be glorious in her achievements, a homeland filled with opportunities for living, a land where you can worship and pray, a country where ambitions will be bright and real, an Alaska that will grow with you as you grow. We trust you; you are our future. We ask you to take tomorrow and dream; we know that you will see visions we do not see. We are certain that in capturing today for you, you can plan and build.
    “Take our constitution and study it, work with it in your classrooms, understand its meaning and the facts within it. Help others to love and appreciate it. You are Alaska’s children. We bequeath to you the land, the mountains, the lakes, the skies. This is your land and we ask you to possess it.”
    Johnson said it was an incredible thing to say to the children as you’re starting a new state.
    “An Alaska that will grow with you as we grow,” he said. “We trust you.”
    He then addressed the state board members.
    “Here’s the thing,” he said. “You were their future. When they said ‘we trust you’ they were talking to you as the 2018 state board of education. They were talking to all of us. We were their future and they said we trust you and they said take tomorrow and dream. And in capturing then a state for us, we can plan and build.”