The top reported proficiency rate is 30% in Math. The lowest is 10% in English language arts.
Original Research by School Decision on Mclaughlin Secondary School
McLaughlin Secondary School sits on Providence Drive in Anchorage, part of the Anchorage School District. The address places it near the University of Alaska Anchorage campus and the city's major medical centers, in a part of town that mixes institutional, residential, and commercial uses. The school serves grades six through twelve, but its enrollment is extremely small and weighted heavily toward the upper grades. The vast majority of students are in eleventh and twelfth grade, with only a handful in the middle grades. This is not a typical comprehensive secondary school in scale or shape, and the small numbers shape everything else about how to read the data.
The student body is distinctive in its composition. The largest single group by far is American Indian and Alaska Native students, who make up a clear plurality. White students form the next largest group, with smaller numbers of Hispanic, multiracial, Black, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander, and Asian students. This composition stands out from what most Anchorage schools look like and may reflect a specific mission or program focus, though the data does not state one. Free and reduced-price lunch information, special education counts, and English learner counts were all missing from the available data, so we cannot characterize the school's economic demographics or language support needs from what was provided. A parent may want to ask the school directly about these.
State assessment results from the most recent year are available but come from very small tested groups, which makes them difficult to interpret with confidence. In math, the proficiency rate among tested students was modest, with roughly a third demonstrating proficiency. In English language arts, the rate was notably lower, with only a small fraction of tested students reaching proficiency. Science results were reported only as a broad range because the tested count was too small to release a precise figure. Participation rates sat below full enrollment, meaning a portion of eligible students did not test. With only a handful of students in the middle grade band who would take these assessments, any single year's results can swing widely based on which students were present and tested. These are not numbers a parent should read as a stable trend. They are a snapshot from a tiny sample, and a parent would be right to ask the school how it supports literacy and math growth and what assessment results look like over multiple years.
No graduation rate was provided in the data, even though the school serves through twelfth grade and has a substantial senior class. This is a gap. It may reflect the school's classification or the way the state reports for very small or alternative settings, but the data does not specify the reason. A parent considering McLaughlin for a high school student should ask directly about graduation outcomes and postsecondary pathways.
The Anchorage setting matters here. The city is Alaska's commercial hub, built on defense, oil, aviation cargo, and tourism, with big-city amenities sitting alongside immediate wilderness. The school's location near the university and medical district puts it in one of the more institutional parts of the Bowl, close to postsecondary options if the school has partnerships or dual-credit arrangements. Housing in the surrounding zip code runs somewhat below the state benchmark for typical home values, and rents are moderate relative to income, so the area is comparatively accessible for Anchorage. No information about specific academic programs, career pathways, staffing ratios, or extracurricular offerings was available in the data, so we cannot characterize what the school day actually looks like beyond the enrollment and assessment figures.
What the data does tell a parent is that McLaughlin is a very small, unusually configured secondary school with a distinctive Alaska Native and Native American student majority, limited and hard-to-read test results, and unanswered questions about graduation, economics, and program offerings. Those are the questions worth bringing to the school directly.
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