The top reported proficiency rate is 52% in Science. The lowest is 43% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Ursa Major Elementary
Ursa Major Elementary sits on JBER, the Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson military installation in Alaska, and operates within the Anchorage School District. The school's listed grade range appears as a single repeated designation rather than a clear span of grades, and the data does not clarify what that designation means. A parent trying to place a child here would need to confirm the current grade configuration directly with the district. More fundamentally, the school's operational status is listed as inactive, meaning it is not currently open. State assessment results exist only for a prior reporting cycle, so they describe a school that was functioning at that time, not one enrolling students now.
When the school was operating, its state testing results painted a mixed but middling picture. In math, somewhat fewer than half of tested students reached proficiency. In English language arts, just under half did. Science was the strongest subject, with a bare majority of tested students proficient, though the science assessment covered a much smaller group of students than the math and English tests did. Participation was near-universal across all three subjects, which means the results reflect nearly the entire student body rather than a self-selected subset. The state changed its assessment names and proficiency cut scores around this testing cycle, so year-over-year trend comparisons are not available, and the results stand as a single-year snapshot. Average scale scores were not reported for any subject, which limits how deeply one can interpret the proficiency figures. A parent looking at these results as historical context would see a school performing in the moderate range for its state, with science as a relative bright spot and math as the softest area.
The school's enrollment, demographic, free-or-reduced-price-lunch, special education, and English learner data are all missing from the available records. Without these, it is impossible to characterize the student composition, the share of families receiving meal assistance, or the presence of specialized services. Given the school's location on a joint military base, the student body almost certainly drew heavily from military families, but the data does not confirm that, so the observation stays as a reasonable inference rather than a stated fact. No civil rights data, discipline records, course access information, staffing figures, or attendance data were provided either.
JBER itself is not a civilian town. It is a large military installation formed by merging Elmendorf Air Force Base and Fort Richardson under a base realignment process. The installation is divided into two main areas, JBER-Elmendorf on the former Air Force side and JBER-Richardson on the former Army post, and knowing which side a family lives on shapes gate usage, housing, and daily commute. There is no civilian commercial main street or downtown. Retail, medical care, and community services are provided through base facilities such as the commissary, exchange, and military medical treatment centers. The federal government through the Department of Defense is the dominant employer, with host-unit and tenant-unit personnel supporting Air Force wings, an Army airborne brigade, guard and reserve components, and major commands focused on Pacific and Arctic missions. The base sits at the foot of the Chugach Mountains along Cook Inlet, and outdoor recreation is a defining feature of life there. Getting around is car-dependent given the distances involved across the installation. Anchorage's municipal parks, public library system, and transit service exist outside the gates and serve the broader city.
No housing value or rental data was available for JBER, which is expected because on-base housing is allocated through the military rather than sold on the open civilian market. Families stationed here typically live in military housing or in neighborhoods in the surrounding Anchorage area, and housing decisions are shaped by assignment and command structure as much as by market conditions.
The Anchorage School District brief returned no specific parent-relevant changes such as recent referendums, curriculum shifts, or property tax adjustments, so there is nothing to report on that front. The comparison fact-set used to position schools against their county peers was not available for this entity, so the school's standing relative to neighboring schools cannot be characterized here.
What the record leaves is a school that served a military-community population, produced moderate state test results with a relative strength in science, and is now inactive. A parent encountering this school's name would want to confirm with the Anchorage School District whether any successor school or restructured program now occupies this role on the base, since the data stops short of explaining why the school closed or what replaced it.
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