Summary:
The city of Dillingham, Alaska, is served by the Dillingham City School District, which operates just two public schools: Dillingham Elementary (serving grades PK–5 with 180 students) and Dillingham Middle/High School (serving grades 6–12 with 223 students), for a total of about 403 students in a remote, high-poverty community.
There is a striking academic gap between the two schools. Dillingham Elementary is the relative standout, ranking 138th of 166 Alaska elementary schools (17th percentile) with a 1-star rating, while Dillingham Middle/High School ranks 60th of 62 Alaska high schools (3rd percentile) and has fallen to 0 stars. In 2025–2026, elementary students were more than twice as likely to be proficient in English Language Arts (22.9% vs. 9.8%) and math (19.8% vs. 11.5%) compared to students in grades 6–12.
The picture is not uniformly bleak. Both schools spend more than $22,000 per student with favorable student–teacher ratios between roughly 10.5 and 12 to 1, and 8th grade science at Dillingham Middle/High School actually beat the state average (37.0% vs. 35.2%). However, the district ranks 21st of 23 Alaska districts, and the middle/high school has declined steadily from the 21st percentile to the 3rd percentile in just three years. Its graduation rate of 78.2% means roughly one in five students does not graduate on time.
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