Alabama schools improved their overall grade to 85 points out of 100 available on both state and federal report cards for the 2023–24 school year, according to preliminary data presented to state board of education members during their work session on Nov. 14.
That’s slightly above last year’s totals of 83 and 84 on the federal and state report cards, respectively.
Letter grades are designed to make school performance transparent for families and communities.
State Superintendent Eric Mackey shared the breakdown of points earned in each of six categories. The Alabama Department of Education posts state and federal report cards on its website.
Weighted point values, percentages
Report cards contain a mix of weighted point values and percentages. Scores for achievement and growth are weighted point values — higher achieving students and those with higher levels of growth in achievement from year-to-year are worth more points than students with lower levels.
Scores for absenteeism, college and career readiness and graduation rate are the percentage of students in that category.
Points for English language proficiency are earned based on whether English learner students meet the targets for achievement growth year over year.
Bright spot
One bright spot is that fewer students are chronically absent. Chronic absenteeism, while still high at 14.8%, was not as high as some thought it would be, Mackey said. That is the percentage of students who missed 18 or more days of school during the school year.
That rate is down from 17.9% of students who were chronically absent during the 2022–23 school year.
“We did have a statewide issue (with absenteeism), but it’s getting much better in most of the state,” Mackey said, noting lingering challenges in inner cities and metro areas.
Until 2019, 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.
With district and school-level report cards set for release on Nov. 22, Mackey said a committee is reviewing whether to tweak indicators, measures or weights for future report cards.
Alabama lawmakers mandated letter grades for schools in 2012, but grades weren’t first issued until 2017. In 2015, Congress passed the Every Child Succeeds Act which required states to devise a way to sum up a school’s performance, but gave states broad latitude to determine how they wanted to do that.
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EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written by Trisha Powell Crain and originally published by Alabama Daily News. It is reprinted with permission.
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