In the Lower Kuskokwim School District, third-grade children taught almost exclusively in the Yupik language may be required to pass federal tests written in English.

In Alaska, where Natives speak 20 aboriginal languages and dialects, meeting a uniform federal law could ultimately be too expensive, and conflict with Native cultural traditions as well as the local control that the rural villages treasure.

"Not many states face the issues that we do," said state Education Commissioner Roger Sampson.

Under the federal law, students would be tested annually from grades three-through-eight and again in high school.

States could make accommodations for language barriers, but after three years in U.S. public schools, the children would be required to take English-only tests.

Aside from the Heritage Language programs in more than 30 rural public schools, Anchorage has more than 93 languages spoken by students, Sampson said.

Already cash-strapped, the state can little afford to translate tests into more than 100 languages, education officials said.

And even if it could, the Yupik language, though spoken by thousands of Alaska Natives from Norton Sound to Bristol Bay, does not translate as completely as Spanish or other European languages.

For instance, mathematics to American children is based on units of 10, where increments of 20 are used in Yupik math. Numerous English words have no Yupik counterparts.

The Lower Kuskokwim School District, which oversees schools in Bethel and surrounding villages, has had an intensive Yupik language program for about 30 years, said Superintendent Bill Ferguson.

The Juneau Empire