BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Alabama public schools mostly earned higher marks this year on their annual state report cards released Friday, with schools and districts showing progress – some incremental and others making big gains – on measures of educational achievement.
“Overall, I am really pleased with the direction we are going,” state Superintendent Eric Mackey said Sunday. “The only way to see if you are actually growing is year-to-year comparisons using the same measure, tied directly to your adopted standards – which is something we could not do for a long time.”
Since Mackey became state superintendent in 2018, the state has adopted new standards in English and math that are tied to standards used on the Nation’s Report Card and has created a standardized test for third through eighth graders linked directly to those standards.
“Now that we have all of that in place, we are seeing overall growth,” he said. “I hope we can keep our assessments in place for many years so we can measure growth as well as regression.”
There is mixed progress on test scores at the state level, with academic achievement up slightly and growth down slightly. Chronic absenteeism – the percentage of students missing 18 or more days of school – is down from 18% to 15% and the percentage of students graduating and earning a college or career readiness indicator is up.
“In lower and middle grades, I am especially focused on ELA (English language arts), and in high school mostly focused on the CCR (college and career readiness) rate,” Mackey said. “All of these are increasing in every demographic.”
The chart below shows the six measures that are part of the state report card letter grade for this year and the previous two years.
Click here if you are unable to see the chart.
Until 2022, Alabama schools had a unified report card for federal and state accountability. Alabama lawmakers split the report card into two separate report cards in 2022 to allow English learners more time before their assessments and progress counted on the state report card.
On both the state and federal report cards, the measures are broken down further by groups of students using race, disability status and economic status. Across the board students in the various groups are making progress, though historically low-performing groups continued to lag behind.
The information released annually goes beyond letter grades and academic measures. As for federal data the state released, it includes information on the demographics, grade levels and special education status of students. There is information on what types of certificates and degrees teachers hold.
Federal data includes breakdowns of how many teachers are teaching out-of-field and how many have two or fewer years of experience teaching. And measures of teacher effectiveness - based partly on test scores - are posted in spreadsheet form.
The information is there on principals, too. All of the goals the state has set for progress for different groups of students - based on race, disability and economic status among others - as required under the federal Every Student Succeeds Act are posted, too.
School and district-level report cards
Every school district and every school gets a report card. The number of districts and schools earning higher grades continues to grow after a slight setback during and immediately after the pandemic. The chart below shows the distribution of grades across Alabama’s traditional and charter school districts. Click here if you are unable to see the chart.
The table below shows each district’s overall report card grade for 2024, along with overall point scores for 2022, 2023 and 2024 to show progress over time. The table is best seen on a larger screen. Click here if you are unable to see the table.
At the school level, the news is mostly good, too. The number of schools earning A’s and B’s continue to rise, with the number of schools earning D’s and F’s continuing to decrease.
Schools earning D's and F's are considered "priority schools" and students zoned to priority schools are given options to move from that school to either a school earning a higher grade or to a private school using a tax credit scholarship available through the Alabama Accountability Act. There are 156 priority schools on this year's report card, down from 209 priority schools last year.
The chart below shows the distribution of grades across Alabama’s schools. Click here if you are unable to see the chart.
The state and federal report card websites post information by district or by school and allow you to compare up to three schools or districts at a time.
The table below shows each school’s overall report card grade for 2024, along with overall point scores for 2022, 2023 and 2024 to show progress over time. Click the year at the top of the column to sort grades or scores in ascending or descending order. The table is best seen on a larger screen. Click here if you are unable to see the table.
How scores are calculated
Scores are calculated in six different areas, but points are awarded differently among the categories. For example, scores for academic achievement and growth reflect weighted points awarded based on which of four levels students reached in proficiency and growth, respectively.
So the state’s score of 64.53 points in academic achievement does not mean that 64.53% of students reached proficiency. It means that some combination of students scoring at each of the four levels of proficiency in math and English language arts earned a total of 64.53 points.
A complete breakdown of how points and scores are calculated are available for both the state and federal report cards.
Two areas, graduation rate and college and career readiness rate are based on the percentage of students graduating on-time and earning one of ten college and career readiness indicators, respectively. These two measures lag behind one year, meaning the numbers on this year’s report card reflect students in the class of 2023.