A clear explanation of the data and the method, so you can judge how much weight to give the numbers.
Every number here comes from the Report Card to the Public of the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development, for Alaska’s high-school tests: ELA and math in grade 9 (PEAKS in 2018 and 2019, AK STAR from 2022) and science in grade 10 (the older science test in 2018 and 2019, the Alaska Science Assessment from 2022). For each school and school district, and for each subject and year, these reports give:
Hidden numbers and the statewide row. Alaska hides a small group’s whole row, so a school or district is either shown in full or left out. Alaska publishes no statewide breakdown by level, so the statewide figures add up the district reports. We checked that sum against the statewide number of proficient students Alaska does publish: in every year and subject it lands within 1 percentage point, and it holds at least 95% of the state’s test takers.
Alaska tests ELA and math in grades 3 to 9 and science in grades 5, 8 and 10, so grade 9 and grade 10 are its high-school tests. A percentile compares a score with that year’s Alaska public school students in that grade who took the test, by the school where they tested: about 7,000 students in grade 9 ELA and math and about 6,500 in grade 10 science in 2025.
Alaska publishes the exact score range for each performance level (e.g. for grade 9 AK STAR Math, Proficient is 1590-1625). Given a score, we:
That gives the percentile: the estimated share of students in the group who scored at or below the entered score.
The bell-like curve on each chart is a truncated-normal distribution fitted so that its area within each performance level matches the level counts, centered on that estimated average score. It's there to visualize the shape of the group's scores. The level counts set the headline percentile (steps above); the curve only decides where inside the student's own level the line falls.
When a group's students nearly all sit in one or two levels, as at many small schools, the counts can't say how spread out their scores are. About 1 in 11 high-school groups are like this. Their curves are drawn no narrower than one fifth of the statewide spread, and inside the student's level the percentile spreads that level's students evenly instead.
Each test has four levels. On AK STAR and the Alaska Science Assessment they are Needs Support, Approaching Proficient, Proficient and Advanced; in 2018 and 2019 they were Far Below Proficient, Below Proficient, Proficient and Advanced. Proficient and above count as proficient.
The AK STAR ranges are from the department’s educator guides (Alaska’s State Board lowered the ELA and math cut scores in January 2024, and the 2023 results were released on the new ones). The PEAKS ranges are from the State Board’s July 2022 regulation change, which struck them. The science ranges are from the department’s science educator guides (2022, 2023 and 2026 editions) and, for 2018-2019, the older test’s technical reports. The tests changed in 2022, so a scale score before then doesn’t compare with one after, but a percentile does. The score range for each level, by year, is on the score guides.
The paid progress report puts every high-school test your child took in one table, with the percentile at each level from the school to the state, and charts each subject across the years.
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