The top reported proficiency rate is 47% in Math. The lowest is 28% in English language arts.
Original Research by School Decision on Anvil City Science Academy
Anvil City Science Academy is a charter school serving grades five through eight, sitting along the Nome-Teller Highway about three and a half miles from the center of Nome. It operates within Nome Public Schools, the district that serves this remote regional hub on the Seward Peninsula coast. Nome itself is a small town reachable only by air or water, unconnected to the Alaska road system. The community blends Inupiat and non-Native residents, with an economy built on offshore gold mining, tourism, fishing, reindeer herding, and Inuit handicrafts. The Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race finishes here each March, bringing a seasonal wave of visitors. Major employers include the Bering Straits Native Corporation and the Sitnasuak Native Corporation, both headquartered in Nome, along with Alaska Airlines, which provides daily service from Anchorage.
The school is small, with an enrollment that fills just a few classrooms. Each grade level carries a roughly equal share of students, which gives the building a balanced feel across the four grades it serves. The student body is predominantly Alaska Native, with a substantial portion identifying as two or more races and a smaller share identifying as white. Every student qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch, which reflects the broader economic realities of a remote Bush community where subsistence activities remain prevalent and living costs run high.
On state assessments, Anvil City Science Academy posts mixed results. Math proficiency sits near the middle of the range for Alaska schools, with roughly half of tested students meeting or exceeding proficiency. Science performance is similar, with about two-fifights of students reaching proficiency. English language arts is the softer area, with fewer than a third of students scoring proficient. All of these results come from the AK STAR and ASA assessments administered across grades three through eight, though this school only tests its fifth through eighth graders. Participation was full, which means the scores represent the entire eligible student body rather than a partial sample. A parent may want to look into the ELA results further with the school, particularly to understand how the curriculum supports literacy growth across the middle-grade years.
No multi-year trend data was available, so it is not possible to say whether these proficiency levels are improving, declining, or holding steady. The data also does not include breakdowns by grade level within the school, which limits how precisely a family can map the results onto their own child's expected trajectory.
The school does not serve high school grades, so there is no graduation rate to report. IEP and English learner counts were not reported in the available data, and the school's Title I status was not specified. Information on course access, staffing, attendance, discipline, and specific program offerings was not available. The district brief for Nome Public Schools turned up no parent-relevant changes or initiatives from recent years that would shift what a family encounters when enrolling.
What the available picture does convey is a small charter middle school in an isolated Alaska hub, serving a predominantly Alaska Native student body, with solid math and science outcomes relative to state expectations and a clear area for growth in literacy. Families drawn to a smaller setting with a science-oriented identity and a connection to Nome Public Schools may find it worth a closer conversation, particularly about how reading instruction is structured across the upper elementary and middle grades.
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