The top reported proficiency rate is 83% in English language arts. The lowest is 57% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Pace Correspondence
PACE Correspondence is a public school operated by Craig City School District on Prince of Wales Island in Southeast Alaska. It serves students from kindergarten through twelfth grade, and its name and structure point to a correspondence, or distance-learning, model. Families who enroll here are generally choosing a home-based or remote instructional pathway rather than a traditional brick-and-mortar classroom, with the school providing curriculum, support, and oversight from its base in Craig.
The enrollment is sizable for a correspondence school, drawing students across the full grade range with a relatively even distribution from kindergarten through senior year. The student body is predominantly white, with a meaningful Alaska Native presence and smaller groups identifying as Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, two or more races, Hispanic, Black, and Asian. Economic data through free or reduced-price lunch counts was not reported, so the economic profile of the enrolled families is not available from the school's own records. Special population data, including students with individualized education programs and English learners, was also missing.
State assessment results for the most recent year are available but require careful interpretation. The school reported proficiency rates for math and English language arts at the third-through-eighth-grade level, and those rates appear strong on their face. The participation rate, though, was extremely low, with only a handful of students sitting for each subject assessment. Science results were suppressed entirely, likely because the number of tested students fell below reporting thresholds. For a correspondence school, this pattern is not unusual. Many students in such programs learn outside the conventional classroom and may not participate in standard state testing at the same rates as their peers in traditional schools. What this means in practice is that the reported proficiency figures reflect a very small slice of the enrolled population and should not be read as a reliable picture of academic outcomes across the whole school. A parent considering PACE may want to ask the school directly how it tracks student progress and what academic monitoring looks like for students who do not test.
No multi-year trend data was available, so it is not possible to say whether performance or participation has shifted over time. Graduation rate data was not provided, which is a gap for families of high-school-age students. Program offerings, course access, staffing, discipline, and attendance information were also absent from the available data, so the narrative of what a student's day-to-day experience looks like must come from conversations with the school rather than from these records.
Craig itself is the largest community on Prince of Wales Island and functions as a commercial, government, and transportation hub for the surrounding island communities. The local economy is anchored by commercial fishing, fish processing, and timber, with a working waterfront supporting trollers, seiners, longliners, and other vessels. The U.S. Forest Service and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game maintain offices in town, and tourism related to charter fishing and hunting adds seasonal employment. The town is connected by a short causeway to Prince of Wales Island and is reached primarily by floatplane or by ferry from Ketchikan to Hollis, followed by a drive. Publicly reported sources describe a small-town built environment oriented around its harbors and waterfront rather than a pedestrian downtown. The surrounding Tongass National Forest provides extensive outdoor access. Census data shows a population decline over recent decades, though more recent estimates suggest modest growth.
No housing market data was provided for this entry, so a family considering relocation to the area would need to research local home values and rental availability independently. No comparison fact-set was available to position this school against neighbors in the region, and no district-level changes of lasting impact were identified in the district brief.
What the available information does convey is that PACE Correspondence offers a publicly funded, home-based learning option across all grade levels, anchored in a remote Southeast Alaska fishing and timber community. The academic picture from state testing is too thin to draw firm conclusions, and several core data points, from graduation rates to program details to economic demographics, are absent. Families drawn to a correspondence model in this part of Alaska will get the most useful answers by going directly to the school for specifics on curriculum, student support, and how progress is measured for students learning outside a traditional classroom.
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