Standardized assessments need to be taken with a pinch of salt. They're generally designed for middle class students in middle class communities where English is the home language. Alaska is more diverse than the rest of the USA and often middle class communities are limited to our cities and road system. In my professional experience as a teacher/school administrator (now retired) I've found that the best use of standardized tests was to compare students longitudinally, so that if a student (or class of students) scores at the 25% nationally in third grade, but at the 35% in fourth grade they would have gained more than a year's growth in a year's time but would still be "failing" by the most recent score. Then you're comparing the same students as they progress and measuring growth, not failure.