The Alaska Legislature opened an 18-month study of the state’s troubled public education system on Tuesday as lawmakers convened the first meeting of their Task Force on Education Funding, established by law this spring. 

Alaska’s public schools rank among the worst in the country according to national standardized testing data, and members of the bipartisan, bicameral task force have been charged with identifying ways to improve performance by changing the way schools are funded and…

Rashah McChesney is a multimedia journalist and editor who has reported and edited newsrooms from the Deep South to the Midwest to Alaska. For the past decade, she has worked in collaborative news as the...