Data, data, and more data 

As is happening nationally, educators and policymakers are immersed in data to pinpoint what’s going well and what isn’t. Alabama’s K-12 education ranking is generally in abysmal territory, and lawmakers know that doesn’t bode well for the future of the state, either economically or population-wise.

The number of children in public schools declined for the fifth year in a row, an indicator that fewer families are making Alabama their home.

AL.com published a lot of education data this year. Readers ate it up, looking at everything from U.S. News and World Report top high school rankings, to teacher and principal pay.

In addition to two rounds of school and district grades (that’s farther up the list), the state department released report cards for teacher preparation programs at Alabama’s colleges and universities for the first time in many years.

Some data posts you may have missed:

These career tech jobs pay the most for Alabama high school students

Are Alabama’s high school graduates ready for the next step?

Are men or women running Alabama schools?

This is a look at the percentage of graduates in the class of 2017 that earned at least one college or career-ready credential. It is typical of the types of education data AL.com made available to readers this year.

Full story: Are Alabama high school graduates ready for the next step?

For more education data, click here.

The Alabama Accountability Act: five years on, what’s the impact?

The Alabama Accountability Act is entering its sixth year of existence, and AL.com dug up and analyzed more data about the law’s impact on public education.

Participating private schools are required to gain accreditation within three years of accepting students using tax-credit scholarships available under the law, and that resulted in nearly 60 schools being dropped from the program in June—three years after the new requirements went into effect. Many have rejoined the program, and a complete list is kept up-to-date on the Alabama Department of Revenue’s website.

In September, the second bi-annual report on whether students using tax-credit scholarships are performing better on tests was published. Bemoaning the lack of continuity of data among public and private schools—making it difficult to do a comparison—researchers concluded there isn’t much difference between test results of students in private schools using the scholarships and those students in public schools. Researchers made multiple recommendations to make comparisons better, but some of those recommendations would require legislative action.

The scholarships, AL.com found, are going mostly to students of color who are zoned for large city or county school systems. And while federal tax law changes made donating to scholarship granting organizations profitable for donors, the IRS is reconsidering those rules which could have a big impact on the desirability of making those donations.

Related:

Here are the Alabama private schools enrolling the most students on tax-credit scholarships

Accountability Act scholarships going mostly to students of color, reports show

Good news from two Alabama school systems

Readers gobbled up the good news this year, too.

Our story about how rural Pike County schools are closing the achievement gap among white students and African American students caught on with readers.

And the story we published about Winfield City schools becoming the first district in the world to have all of its schools STEM-certified through the international accreditation agency was well-read, too.

Photo – Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (seated) is shown with AdvancEd and Winfield school officials celebrating the district’s success having all schools earn STEM certification, a first in the accreditation network.

Math changes on the way

Who could have guessed that math would have been such a popular topic among readers? It appears the math changes that came along with Alabama’s adoption of the Common Core State Standards in 2010 aren’t big faves among parents.

The state department has begun working toward making changes, and that includes which subjects are taken in which order by high school students.

The Alabama Board of Education is expected to take up the discussion at their February work session and vote on the changes as early as March.

Alabama gets a new state superintendent

In April, the state board appointed Alabama native Eric Mackey as state superintendent. The majority of the board went with the safe pick, the Alabama native who knows his way around. Mackey served for eight years as the executive director of the School Superintendents of Alabama and has been integrally involved with both local school superintendents and state-level policymakers and lawmakers.

Gov. Kay Ivey’s involvement in the search—she’s president of the board—brought stability and calm to a board that had been roundly criticized for its handling of former superintendent and Massachusetts native Michael Sentance, who resigned in September 2017 after barely one year on the job.

Mackey’s choice came as a surprise to some who thought Jefferson County Superintendent Craig Pouncey would get the job. The board’s 5 votes for Mackey and 4 votes for Pouncey showed there is still division among which direction the board wanted to take, but the split vote hasn’t appeared to interrupt the board’s progress.

Meanwhile, Pouncey’s lawsuit alleging board member Mary Scott Hunter, R-Huntsville, and a state department attorney conspired to block him from becoming state superintendent in 2016 continues. The trial in that lawsuit is scheduled for August 2019. Hunter did not run for re-election to the board and will be replaced by Wayne Reynolds in January.

Mackey became the third permanent state superintendent appointed in a seven-year period. Counting two interim superintendents—Philip Cleveland after Tommy Bice retired and Ed Richardson after Sentance resigned—there have been a total of five men leading the state’s public education system since 2011.

Racial tension in K-12 schools

Three high-profile racial incidents plagued Alabama’s schools in 2018. In January, a teacher at Hoover High School, the state’s largest school, resigned after admitting to using a racial slur when asking students to turn down their music.

In June, Birmingham activist Carlos Chaverst confronted Jefferson County Board Member Donna Pike at a school board meeting, calling her a racist for social media postings supporting actress Roseanne Barr, whose television show was canceled after Barr used a racial slur on Twitter.

Pike’s fellow board members called for her resignation, but Pike refused, saying she was sorry for the posts and she learned a lesson.

In September, the Jefferson County Board of Education approved a code of conduct for board members, required by law since 2013, that called for board members to “refrain from using social media or communication platforms so as to call the Board’s commitment to meeting and maintaining the foregoing commitments into question.”

In September, a picture of six white male students standing with their boots on top of a black male student lying face down on the floor of Moody High School in St. Clair County surfaced on social media. The original post was captioned, “We got us one.”

All of the students pictured apologized for the photo, but not before the photo circulated through social media and generated a wide range of reaction, from those saying people were taking it too seriously to those saying it was highly offensive.

Gardendale gives up on forming new city school system

The city of Gardendale was dealt a big blow in February when a federal appeals court ruled that officials could not form their own school system and agreed with a judge’s finding that racial motives were involved in the attempt to split from the Jefferson County system.

After initially saying they would appeal, Gardendale Mayor Stan Hogeland and Gardendale Board of Education President Michael Hogue announced they would not continue efforts to form a new school system.

“A lot of citizens are just tired. I would hope anybody that looks at this and say that had to have been a tough process,” Hogeland said at the time, noting the first visibility study done in hopes of establishing a school system happened in 2012.

Gardendale residents voted to fund an independent city school system in November 2013. The pursuit was costly, and a lawsuit asking the court to require the return of taxpayer funding is ongoing.

Meanwhile, in south Alabama, Gulf Shores school board continues to breakaway from Baldwin County, becoming the first city to do so.

Related: Called racist on a national stage: How does Gardendale, an aging city, bounce back?

Letter grades for schools show improvement, but there’s still work to do

Alabama education officials released two sets of letter grades for schools in 2018.

The first round, released in February, reflected results from both the 2015-16 and the 2016-17 school year. Statewide, schools earned a grade of 79, a high ‘C.’ While no districts earned an ‘F,’ of the 1,247 schools that received grades, there were 137 A’s, 352 B’s, 437 C’s, 217 D’s, and 104 schools earned an ‘F.’

The second round, released Dec. 28, showed marked improvements in grades across the state. Statewide results showed an increase of one point overall, raising the grade from a high ‘C’ to a low ‘B,’ with 80 points. At the school level, there was an obvious shift towards the high end of the grading scale. The number of schools earning A’s rose from 137 to 202, and the number of F’s dropped from 104 to 39, 634 schools maintained their same grade from last year, but that includes the 21 schools that maintained F’s.

As schools were still on holiday break when grades were released, Alabama school officials celebrated their improved grades by posting on social media, thanking teachers and students for their hard work.

State education officials withheld details of the grades, delaying the unveiling of a unified report card showing both state and federally-required data due to technical issues with the website. They missed the federal Dec. 31 deadlines for posting accountability data required under the Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA but plan to have it online by Wednesday, Jan. 2.

School safety front and center after Huffman, Parkland and Santa Fe shootings

School safety discussions occupied much of the spring and summer after a former student gunned down 17 students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., on Feb. 14. The national reaction was strong, and survivors of the shooting stepped front and center into the national debate over gun safety, organizing the March for Our Lives national grassroots coalition.

Gov. Kay Ivey appointed agency heads to the Securing Alabama Facilities of Education, or SAFE, Council on Mar. 6, but the very next day, on Mar. 7, Huffman High School senior Courtlin Arrington (pictured) was shot and killed at school by a fellow student who had brought a gun to school.

Birmingham-area students held a town hall on gun violence and organized their own chapters of March for Our Lives, and held marches across the state in coordination with the national march.

Alabama lawmakers accomplished little regarding safety during the legislative session, only passing one law allowing schools to use money previously earmarked for technology to be used for school security purposes.

The SAFE Council’s report, released in May, included 10 recommendations, but no funding. Education and law enforcement officials agree that adding a trained and certified school resource officer to each campus is the ideal solution, but funding is a challenge. State Superintendent Eric Mackey has requested $20 million for school safety in the Alabama State Department of Education budget for fiscal year 2020.

On May 18, a student at Santa Fe High School in Santa Fe, Tx., shot and killed 10 students and staff and wounded 10 others.

Days before the Republican primary, Ivey announced the creation of the Sentry Program, allowing trained administrators to have access to a firearm kept on campus in a biometrically-sealed safe. Reactions to the program varied, and it is unknown whether any schools are participating, as that information is kept a secret to ensure safety of participants.

Law enforcement officials took threats made by students seriously, and nearly 50 Alabama students were disciplined for making threats after the Parkland massacre.

In August, Alabama school officials described new safety measures put in place as they opened for the 2018-19 school year.

President Donald Trump’s school safety commission released findings of their work on Dec. 18. The report included more than 100 policy recommendations and stressed better mental health services are needed for students. The commission said little on gun safety.