With one legislative session finished and the next about eight months away, Alabama legislators will spend the time in-between deciding whether to develop an entirely new school funding formula.

The House and Senate committees that oversee the Education Trust Fund (ETF), the state’s education budget, held a joint meeting Tuesday to begin discussions about potential changes to the current public K-12 education funding formula.

“It has been 30 years since we changed our funding formula for education, and a lot has changed in the past 30 years,” said Rep. Danny Garrett, R-Trussville, the chair of the House Ways and Means Education Committee, in an interview after the meeting. “We are one of six states out of 50 that continues to fund the way we are funding, on a resource-model basis, so we are looking at what other options we have that would be better suited to that.”

It is the first in a series of meetings aimed at providing members an education on the workings of Alabama’s Foundation Program, the in the ETF which provides funding for schools around the state.

Many states fund their schools using a student-based model, one that takes into greater account not only the number of students within a given school system, but also the students’ composition, such as whether they are English Language learners or someone with special needs.

Under Alabama’s current formula, in place since 1995, the number of students creates a certain number of teacher units. That number of teacher units then becomes the basis of much of the funding.

At a recent State Board of Education work session, State Superintendent Eric Mackey had defined the school as a “hybrid program” rather than a true foundation program because those units are the basis of funding.

“You get what you get based on the number of units,” he said.

Connecticut, Kansas, California, Tennessee, Maryland and Texas have all moved to a weighted student funding formula in the last decade.

Members discussed not only the funding formula, but also underfunding of schools in lower-income communities with significant minority populations; the role of economic development incentives and their effect on school funding, and the lack of funding for special needs students.

Kirk Fulford, deputy director of the Legislative Services Agency, provided lawmakers with an overview of the Foundation Program.

The amount that schools receive is based on a unit count. The state takes the average number of students enrolled in the school or school system for the 20 days following Labor Day. The number is then divided by the divisor, set by the Legislature for the number of students within a set of grade levels.

If a school has 100 students, and the divisor for K-3 grades is 14.25, the school or school district has a unit count for K-3 grade teachers of 7.01. That is then converted to dollars based on the salary schedule that is set.

The number of principals, assistant principals and counselors for a school is also calculated based on units, and the amount of Foundation Program funding for the school is converted by multiplying that unit count by the money per unit decided by legislators.

Other types of funding are added to the Foundation Program allocation for schools, from transportation expenses to additional money specifically for math and science teachers along with special education.

Money to fund the cost determined for each district is shared between municipalities and the state. The formula is designed so that more affluent locations pay a greater share of the cost than those whose residents are lower income.

Local governments must set property taxes at a minimum of 10 mills in order to receive money from the Foundation Program.

For the coming year, the state portion of the ETF for K-12 schools, including the Foundation Program; transportation, and programs run through the Alabama State Department of Education, is about $5.5 billion. The local fund portion is about $831.5 million.

The amount in local property taxes collected for the school system will vary by the assessed value of the properties within the school system’s boundaries. Poorer areas will generate less tax revenues than more prosperous ones.

Lowndes County, for example, an area with a significantly lower-income population, paid roughly $1.3 million into the Foundation program. Mountain Brook, a wealthy suburb of Birmingham, paid about $7.3 million to the Foundation Program.

School districts with wealthier populations tend to record higher scores on standardized tests, according to an analysis based on FY21-22 spending and School Year 2022-23 scores

The local allocation has irritated some lawmakers who work to increase their economic development to increase school funding, only to have their state allocation reduced, leaving them net neutral.

“We always were under the impression that, ‘Wow, we bring in industry, and they pay $200,000 of property taxes to our schools,’” said Rep. Troy Stubbs, R-Wetumpka, who used to be on the Elmore County Commission. “We felt like we were improving our local schools because we were bringing in more money. However, Elmore County is only a participant in our Foundation Program with our 10 mills. We do not have any local funding. Because of that, all we were really doing was lowering the amount that the state contributed to Elmore County.”

In Tennessee, which moved to a weighted student funding formula in recent years, school districts were required to keep funding at previous levels, The state provided overall more funding to the education budget so that districts received more money by numbers, even if the share they received from the state lowered.

Garrett that the Educational Opportunities Reserve Fund, created in the 2022 regular legislative session, could be used in shifting the funding formula.

Schools receive additional funding for specific students, such as those with special needs, from the Foundation Program. The formula automatically factors in the number of students who have special needs at 5%. The unit count is then weighted up to 2.5 for those students to give schools additional dollars for more resources.

Currently, the sole adaptation in the formula is headcount, and doesn’t incorporate the specific needs of some in schools, one that is based on each student, might.

“We know the cost to educate a special needs child is, far and away, more than the average child,” said Sen. Arthur Orr, R-Decatur, the chair of the Senate’s education budget committee. “The cost to educate an English Language Learner is much more than an average Alabama child. Following the trend, or at least looking at the other states who have gone down this road, seeing if we want to consider changing our funding model, how we fund based on a type of student instead of just a student.”

The committees plan to resume the discussions at an August meeting.

Reporter Jemma Stephenson contributed to this story.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com. Follow Alabama Reflector on and .

The Alabama State Board of Education Thursday adopted a new literacy coursework for Science of Reading for teacher preparation programs in the state.

The , approved on a unanimous vote, comes after years of a state focus on literacy scores, especially in the lower grades.

State Superintendent Eric Mackey said the standards would apply to elementary teachers, collaborative special education teachers and “could be applied to some other areas also.”

“Mostly, they are focused again on early childhood and elementary teachers,” he said.

The Science of Reading is an interdisciplinary body of research about reading and issues of reading and writing. definition, cited in the standards, includes phonemic awareness and letter instruction as instructional practices but not emphases on larger units of speech, such as syllables.

The new standards also outlaw the “three-cueing” system in institutions of higher education and K-12 schools. The rule change defines three cueing as a “model of teaching students to read based on meaning, structure, and syntax, and visual cues.”

Three-cueing is a teaching strategy that is affiliated with “balanced literacy,” a compromise between whole language and phonics-based instruction that became prominent in the 1990s, Three-cueing encourages students to guess and look for clues, such as at pictures, when facing an unfamiliar word.

The skills associated with the Science of Reading were not taught in schools for many years, as reported by As of May 2023, 15 states had outlawed the use of three-cueing after Hanford’s reporting, with some lawmakers and policy makers citing the podcast, .

sponsored by Rep. Leigh Hulsey, R-Helena, would have banned the use of three-cueing, with some exceptions. The legislation passed the House of Representatives on March 5 but was among the many bills that died in the .

“This prohibition is specific to the teaching of foundational reading skills and should not be construed to impact the teaching of background knowledge and vocabulary as connected to the language comprehension side of Scarborough’s Reading Rope,” the reads.

Scarborugh’s Reading Rope is a visual representation of establishing proficient reading, according to the

Hulsey said Tuesday that her bill was “complementary” with the standards adopted by the board, and that she expected to bring it back next year.

“Ultimately, kids need to learn how to actually read, and that is done through the science of reading, learning how to decode sound out letters, and figuring out how to put those things together to actually decode the word and be able to be lifelong readers, versus someone who is just looking at words and guessing,” she said, “We’re not setting kids up for success if we’re not actually teaching them how to read.”

She said the exceptions in the bill were mainly for older learners and those with learning disabilities.

members of the Literacy Task Force cited teacher training and implementation as a hurdle in implementing literacy instruction.

Mackey said they had received comments earlier. They received no additional public comments on the current version, which they voted on the intent to approve months ago.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com. Follow Alabama Reflector on and .

The Alabama Legislature Wednesday gave final approval to a bill requiring children to complete kindergarten or an equivalent program after years of efforts from supporters.

sponsored by Rep. Pebblin Warren, D-Tuskegee, would require students to finish kindergarten or pass a test that shows first grade readiness.

The bill passed 35-0. It would align Alabama with a minority of states that require kindergarten. As of 2020, 19 states and the District of Columbia require kindergarten,

“I think now that we are fully implementing the Literacy Act that we need to do everything we can for these children early to give them a good foundation, so that they’re not coming into first grade already behind,” said Sen. Donnie Chesteen, R-Geneva, the chair of the Senate Education Policy committee and Senate sponsor of the bill.

Warren, who is currently in the hospital, said in a phone interview Wednesday that she was happy that it had advanced after seven years.

“This has been a battle I’ve been fighting and I’ve been fighting for the kids, because we got to find ways of making sure we can expose and educate our kids at early ages,” she said. “So we don’t have to wait until they get to the third grade to say that they can’t read.”

The bill passed after Sen. Rodger Smitherman, D-Birmingham, a vocal opponent of the legislation in previous years, amended the legislation to create a schedule of assessments.

Under the legislation, a student entering first grade in the 2025-26 school year will not be excluded from enrollment, but will take an assessment at the start of the school year and in the second semester to determine any deficiencies and allow resources to those who perform below standards..

For the 2026-27 school year, a student will take the assessment to determine readiness for enrollment and will also take the second semester assessment with the available resources.

The State Department of Education will also develop an informational campaign with priority given to areas with the lowest numbers of kindergarten enrollment.

“I will say that I think it may be an opportunity for us to catch whatever situations that may exist on the front end,” he said.

The House of Representatives has approved the legislation multiple times, but Smitherman had blocked it in the Senate.

Warren said she has not had a chance to receive a report on the added amendment yet. She said she wished that the bill would be starting next year.

Chesteenthat the bill was a priority for the Republican caucus.

The bill had received support from the Governor’s Commission on Teaching and Learning,

Alabama lawmakers have placed more emphasis on early education in the last decade.

The Legislature in 2019 created the Literacy Act, which requires students to be reading on grade level by the end of third grade, or risk retention.

The Alabama Numeracy Act, passed in 2022, aims to increase math scores in the state.

The Legislature has also increased funding for the state’s award-winning pre-kindergarten program, which consistently receives high marks.

The bill moves to the House of Representatives for concurrence in Senate changes or a conference committee.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com. Follow Alabama Reflector on and .

A coalition of education and civil rights groups plan to push for changes to how Alabama funds its schools.

A Thursday news release announcing the formation of the coalition said that Alabama is one of the few states to allocate money based on enrollment rather than needs from students.

Education budget chairs and have both spoken in the past about changing the way Alabama provides funding for schools.

“Alabama has not updated the way it funds public schools in more than three decades, and how we fund them creates large disparities across the state,” said Jason Meadows, the advocacy and partnerships director of A+ Education Partnership, wrote in the release. “Every child is different, and some children need more support to be successful. A better approach would be to consider the specific needs of students within each school system and ensure every school can fund the resources needed to help them and their families thrive.”

A+ Education Partnership, an education advocacy organization, launched the coalition. Other members include Alabama Possible, Alabama Network of Child Advocacy Centers, Alabama, Goodwill, Faith in Action Alabama, Teach for America Alabama, Huntsville Committee of 100, EmpowerED Birmingham, Birmingham Promise, Alabama Arise, New Schools for Alabama, Mobile Area Education Foundation, Black Alabamians for Education, Breakthrough Birmingham, Baldwin County Education Coalition, Inc., Alabama State Conference NAACP, Education 4 Life, Hispanic and Immigrant Center of Alabama (¡HICA!), AG Gaston Business Institute, Alabama Expanded Learning Alliance, New Life Church of God in Christ, Montgomery Education Foundation, Alabama Families for Great Schools, VOICES for Alabama’s Children, Learning Little People, LLC, and John Wilson, Chief School Financial Officer, Baldwin County Board of Education, according the release.

Every Child Alabama is beginning by launching a

The 1901 Alabama Constitution, passed to take the vote from Black Alabamians and poor whites, includes tight property tax caps that make it difficult for local governments to raise adequate revenue for schools. , Alabama’s per-pupil spending in 2022 was $11,819, 36th in the nation. The national average was $16,340.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com. Follow Alabama Reflector on and .

The Equal Justice Initiative will soon open a third site in the Montgomery area memorializing victims of racial violence.

Freedom Monument Sculpture Park, a 17-acre site  located on the banks of the Alabama River on the north side of Montgomery, focuses on American slavery. Bryan Stevenson, the executive director of EJI, said the site aims to convey the brutality and horror of American slavery, and the resilience and hope of those in it.

“With any honesty about the lives of enslaved people, it is not just Alabama, it is all across this country, that we don’t have a very extensive or developed record about the experience of being enslaved, about living through enslavement, and about the legacy of slavery,” he said on Monday.

The park is scheduled to open to the public by the end of the month.

Montgomery was a major center of slavery and the domestic slave trade. In 1860, — 66% of the population — were enslaved.  The city served as the first capital of the Confederacy. According to EJI, some 400,000 people were held in bondage along the Alabama River just prior to the Civil War. The nonprofit says that rail lines near the park were built by enslaved people in the 1850s, and were used in the buying and selling of human beings.

The Black community in the city maintained a long tradition of activism, leading to the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955 and the Selma-to-Montgomery march in 1965, both key events in the modern civil rights movement.

“Montgomery, for a long time, has defined itself as the Cradle of the Confederacy, the heart of Dixie, which means we are centered in a space that, in many ways, connects to the challenges that we are trying to address and educate people about,” Stevenson said. “But I also think Montgomery has an important role to play in leading the nation.”

The opening of the park is one of the most highly anticipated events of the year, so much so that featured

Freedom Monument Sculpture Park serves to complement and build on the themes that are present at the other two EJI sites located within the city. The Legacy Museum looks at the history of slavery, segregation and mass incarceration and explores their impact on Black Americans and the nation as a whole.

The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which opened to national acclaim in 2018, honors victims of lynching in the United States. There are sculptures and features placed within the space that testify to the experiences of those who died and the impact it had for their loved ones.

“I still felt there was a need to have something that you could experience the legacy of slavery around,” Stevenson said. “I have been around to the plantations that exist in this country, and to be honest, I don’t think any really, honestly, present the story of slavery centered on the lives of enslaved people.”

The park is laid out in a circular path that traces the history of the institution of slavery and begins with the transatlantic passage of people kidnapped from Africa to be sold into bondage.

Visitors are presented with information about their ultimate destination in the country, from the south to even as far north as counties in New Jersey.

Further down the path, visitors encounter displays on how people were trafficked to Montgomery to be sold. There is a rail car on the grounds that people can walk into and experience how slaves traveled centuries ago.

The Freedom Monument Sculpture Park includes two 170-year-old dwellings from a plantation in Alabama where enslaved families lived for generations. The third dwelling is a replica that reveals the most common size and design of dwellings.

The site also includes a whipping post to give people a sense of the agony that people who were enslaved had to endure when they were punished.

Sculptures

The park features sculptures from different artists — many African American, African or indigenous — that focus on different aspects of slavery, from the brutality of bondage to the courage of the enslaved. The park is designed to mix art and history in depicting the struggles of those seeking freedom and justice.

One sculpture places fingers around a tree growing from the ground, was done by Eva Oertli and Beat Huber is called “The Caring Hand.” A second statue features two arms with one holding a club is called “Strike” by Hank Willis Thomas.

The park also includes bricks made by enslaved people 175 years ago that visitors will be able to touch, as well as chains used to traffic the enslaved.

The main attraction is a 50-foot-tall monument listing 122,000 surnames of the 4.7 million slaves living in the nation according to the 1870 Census, the first taken after slavery and the first that recorded the names of former slaves.

Visitors descended from enslaved people can use a website to trace where their ancestors lived. They can also stop by the visitor center to research the different locations where slaves lived and find the surnames of those who lived in those locations.

“The most extraordinary thing, I think, about people who were enslaved in this country is they are people who learned to love in the midst of sorrow,” Stevenson said. “I would not be here if my enslaved fore parents had not found a way to love in the midst of sorrow, to create something hopeful, like a family, like a future, despite the brutality.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com. Follow Alabama Reflector on and .

The Alabama House of Representatives Tuesday approved a a voucher-like program for schools after a debate lasting over four hours.

, sponsored by Rep. Danny Garrett, R-Trussville and known as the CHOOSE Act, passed the House on a 69-34 vote. Six Republicans joined Democrats in voting against the bill.

Supporters of the bill said it would give opportunities to students in struggling schools to find better education.

“The CHOOSE Act will provide an opportunity for students to learn and thrive in an environment that best meets their needs, which could be a public school,” said Garrett during the debate Tuesday.

Opposition to the bill came mostly from Democrats, who said that the bill would destroy public education in Alabama. Some likened the bill to a form of modern-day segregation.

Rep. Curtis Travis, D-Tuscaloosa, cited his experience during desegregation of schools in Hale County in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, when private schools serving mostly white students were built in response to federal desegregation orders. He said he was worried that the Legislature would be using tax dollars “to create separation.”

“It’s not that history tends to repeat itself, but that people tend to repeat history,” Travis said.

The legislation would allow households with school-age children to claim up to $7,000 in tax credits to be spent on certain education-related expenses, including private school tuition, tutoring or education services for children with disabilities.

The Legislature must appropriate at least $100 million for the program each year. The first 500 spots are reserved for students with special needs, defined by individualized education plans (IEP) or 504 plans.

The program will initially be limited to families making less than 300% of the federal poverty line, or around $75,000 for a family of three, but it would give priority to households with lower incomes. The funds would eventually be made available to all households. The special needs-reserved spots are not limited to the income level.

While Democrats have always opposed voucher and voucher-like legislation, Republicans from rural areas have also tended to be wary of voucher bills out of fear it would divert resources from their local schools.

Reps. Alan Baker, R-Brewton; Tracy Estes, R-Winfield; Chris Sells, R-Greenville; Randall Shedd, R-Fairview; David Standridge, R-Hayden and Tim Wadsworth, R-Arley voted with Democrats against the bill.

House Education Policy Committee Chair Terri Collins, R-Decatur, who introduced the legislation on the House floor, said the bill had “a lot guardrails” that protect public schools, such as allowing parents to judge school performance by comparing students’ results with those of students around the nation.

“I like accountability. I see that in this bill,” Collins said.

Democrats remained skeptical. Rep. Sam Jones, D-Mobile, echoed Travis and said that the legislation could promote segregation.

“What we have here, as I said earlier, is a real experiment, and for the sake of the kids in this state, I hope it works,” Jones said.

Garrett rejected the argument that the legislation could promote segregation, at one point saying that “we need to move past that.”

Rep. Barbara Drummond, D-Mobile, said that “accountability and transparency is not equal in this bill.” Private and public schools are governed by different rules, Drummond said.

“The same rules ought to apply to both public and private school, so we’ll have apples and apples. Right now, this legislation doesn’t do that,” Drummond said, adding that they don’t know if teachers in the private schools will be certified.

Garrett also blocked attempts by more conservative lawmakers to expand the program.

Rep. Arnold Mooney, R-Indian Hills, said he was concerned the legislation does not give parents enough choice and offered an amendment that would have provided that education service providers do not have to be approved by the Alabama Department of Revenue. The amendment was tabled 85-11.

“Opening this up to all children would be an amazing thing for this state,” Mooney said, adding that the amendment would allow any child to “compete” for the educational savings account.

Rep. Ernie Yarbrough, R-Trinity, offered another amendment that would have allowed the funds to be used for “micro” or hybrid schools. That amendment was tabled 82-9.

“I think it’s really important that we stand for the heart of what this bill is trying to accomplish,” Yarbrough said.

Rep. Ben Harrison, R-Elkmont, offered an amendment that would have expanded the allowed use of the funds in the educational savings account. The amendment would have allowed the money to be used for vocational or GED training; purchasing computer hardware and school uniforms, and transportation. It was also tabled 82-7.

“No two students, no two children are alike. They have different needs and different aptitude,” Robinson said.

Amy Marlowe, executive director of the Alabama Education Association, said in a statement Tuesday that while the association has worked with “others in a good faith way to fashion a bill that does not hurt Alabama schools,” a majority of Alabamians across the political spectrum oppose “unlimited funding being diverted from the Education Trust Fund for this program.”

“We want to continue to work to find common ground on this proposal as the bill moves to the Senate, but a cap must be included in the bill to protect the future of our local schools, or it should not pass,” she said in the statement.

The bill moves to the Senate.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com. Follow Alabama Reflector on and .

Gov. Kay Ivey Monday reaffirmed her support for creating education savings accounts at a rally on the Alabama State Capitol steps on Monday.

But Ivey and other speakers gave few details of what they would support on the issue, which has already drawn pushback from State Schools Superintendent Eric Mackey and other educators in the state.

“It will be sustainable, responsible and it’s how we will shape the future of education in Alabama,” Ivey told several dozen people at a rally for “School Choice Week,” a push to expand nontraditional public schools and publicly-funded private school options.

Education savings accounts are similar to vouchers in that they allow the use of money originally intended for public schools to be used for other items, including private school tuition. Vouchers send the money to an educational institution that the student attends. Education savings accounts go to the parents, who can use it for any number of services, including tuition, tutoring and counseling.

Ivey made expansion of education options The Alabama Legislature passed legislation expanding the Alabama Accountability Act, a scholarship program allowing students in low-performing schools to qualify for scholarships to private schools.

The governor told the crowd that her “top priority is ensuring education savings accounts bill crosses the finish line.”

What emerges from the session will be up to the Legislature, and likely Rep. Danny Garrett, R-Trussville and Sen. Arthur Orr, R-Decatur, the chairs of the legislative committees overseeing the Education Trust Fund budget, which would fund any type of Education Savings Account. Messages seeking comment were left with Orr and Garrett on Monday morning; neither man could be seen at Monday’s rally.

Sen. Larry Stutts, R-Tuscumbia, filed , which would have allowed roughly $6,900 to follow a student. The bill, filed late in the session, did not become law.

Rep. Ernie Yarbrough, R-Trinity, who filed a House version of Stutts’ bill, said Monday that he also supported an expansive education savings account option.

“It brings the free market back to education,” he said.

Stutts and Yarbrough tend to be some of the most conservative members of the Republican supermajority Legislature.

Yarbrough lined out his plans for “true school choice:” universal for all students; flexible spending ability; protects autonomy of private and home schools, while making traditional public schools’ curriculum transparent and is not an “attempt” to increase government spending.

“I believe that true school choice does not increase the size or scope of government,” he said.

The bill has not been filed as of Monday morning.

Students and parents spoke about their own experiences with education options in the state at the rally also.

June Henninger, a fifth grade student at the private Montgomery Christian School, said that she benefited from her experience at the school. She said she was grateful for her education and her teachers.

“I’m ready for my next school of my choice,” she said.

Montgomery Christian School students are on scholarships through donations and from scholarships

“School choice” can refer to a number of things, namely charter schools, vouchers and/ or education savings accounts.

, State Superintendent Eric Mackey said that he would want the money to go to schools and would require accountability.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com. Follow Alabama Reflector on and .

It’s encouraging to see states take action to combat sweeping declines on the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP. Congress established NAEP, the only nationally representative benchmark, to understand what students know and can do in subjects such as reading, math and civics. “Decisionmakers need to see the facts clearly. They must make sense of a storm of confusing data and help lead the way to better schools. The Nation’s Report Card — if it is well-designed, clear and usable — can be a rudder against the storm,” read a . 

State leaders have responded to this call to use NAEP in varying ways.

Mississippi is among those most recognized for using NAEP as a lever for improvements; beginning in 2013, leaders there revamped state standards to meet the rigor of NAEP and overhauled literacy instruction. That led to . What set Mississippi apart was its stance that NAEP wasn’t something to brush aside or hide from. Despite low scores and poor rankings, the state used NAEP as a tool to galvanize and empower leaders to make improvements for students.

As executive director of the National Assessment Governing Board, I frequently talk with state and district leaders about their educational progress and recently conducted an informal review of how they’re using the NAEP data. There’s much to .

Several states, like Mississippi, are using NAEP, to raise expectations. In addition to putting coaches in schools to spur math achievement, Alabama leaders are leveraging the Mississippi model, publicly citing low scores and setting bold new goals, to overhaul standards and improve policies. These changes have led to . Virginia’s leaders are also citing NAEP as they implement reforms designed to better inform the public and improve schools. As Virginia Secretary of Education Aimee Guidera recently wrote in The 74, “We are using data as a flashlight, not a hammer, to inform better decisions at kitchen tables, classrooms, school boards and the State Capitol.”

Some states also are using the Nation’s Report Card as a resource for improving and developing their own assessments. For example, my home state of New Jersey is creating statewide history and civics assessments based on items from NAEP. Oregon is doing the same for science, and South Carolina leaders have been using NAEP frameworks, which guide content development on the Nation’s Report Card assessments, to inform their state reading and math tests. 

Leaders in districts that participate in the also are using NAEP data in pivotal ways. In Philadelphia, Superintendent Tony Watlington has spotlighted the district’s NAEP data to describe challenges students face and set goals for improving achievement. In Baltimore, Superintendent Sonja Santelises cited NAEP data when establishing plans to create more out-of-school learning opportunities for students. 

The NAEP assessments also include rich student and teacher survey data. It’s an underutilized resource that can provide context around achievement results. 

Recent findings that struck a chord with me identified disturbing declines in independent reading. Just 14% of 13-year-olds say they read for fun almost daily, down 13 points from a decade ago. As a mother of three school-aged children, and someone who spent much of my childhood with a dog-eared book in hand, I hope state and district leaders consider ways to tackle this problem and foster a love of reading in all students.

I also hope policymakers take note of recent NAEP teacher survey data showing educators lack confidence when it comes to closing students’ knowledge and skill gaps. This breaks my heart. Teachers work so hard every day and are hands-down my kids’ favorite superheroes — with Spider-Man and Wonder Woman as close seconds. Every time my daughter, now in kindergarten, sees her pre-K teacher in the hallway, she runs over and gives her a bear hug. It’s hard to remember not to run in the hall when Mrs. Dillon is there to greet you with a giant smile and warm embrace. She’s the same teacher who taught my daughter how to read by the end of pre-K, while coaching her on strategies for managing her feelings when things in class were upsetting or overwhelming. 

Although so many teachers, like Mrs. Dillon, exhibit extraordinary heroics to help their students, the magnitude of the learning gaps requires system-level changes and supports. Given the across-the-board achievement declines U.S. students are facing, more must be done.

By studying the data, openly discussing it and using it to drive much-needed progress, state education leaders and district administrators can go a long way toward ensuring all students get the world-class education they need to reach their goals and fulfill their ambitions — in school and in their lives.

Alabama has been trying to raise the literacy scores for younger readers in the state through legislation and support from the Alabama State Department of Education. The Alabama Reflector asked experts in the state what parents and guardians should be looking for and doing for their own children’s literacy.

Look at how your child pronounces a word

Sonya Yates, the associate policy director of early literacy for Excel in Ed, an education policy nonprofit launched by Jeb Bush and based in Florida, said that making sure parents understand bad habits might be the easiest way to explain.

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Yates is also the chapter vice president of the Alabama chapter of The Reading League, a nonprofit that aims to advance understanding of literacy instruction.

Yates said that it’s important to make sure a child sounds out a word. But if they also guess off of the first letter, Yates said, those skills might cancel each other out.

Yates also recommended to see if some specific strategies, such as guided reading or “daily five” are used.

“All of those are the ones that are talking about if you look at the first letter, literally, look at the first letter, close your eyes, open them and guess,” she said. “So, you know, and as an avid reader, I’m not sure that that would ever work for me.”

If a child doesn’t know a word, she said, have them say the sounds.

Read to your child things they are interested in and speak with them

In school, reading should be based around grade levels and specific skills. But when reading to a child at home, they should be reading something they want to read.

“If you’re just reading to your child, then you find something that’s in the interest of them because that’s building the other part of the science of reading,” Yates said. “We have the word recognition skills, and then the language comprehension.”

Yates said that parents or guardians reading to children is what helps build up the vocabulary skills. Parents should be reading books that “stretch” their child, she said, so that their oral vocabulary is at a higher grade level than their visual one.

“If a child comes to a word and they sound it out, for example, the word automobile, if they don’t have that word in their oral vocabulary, they’re never going to be able to pronounce it correctly because they’ve never heard it correctly,” she said.

Ruth Ann Moss, executive director of Birmingham Talks, an early literacy program, said that young children need to hear around 21,000 words a day for optimal brain development.

“So, when a child says something, a parent says something a child says something and then a parent says something that serve and return is six times more impactful on brain development than just hearing words,” she said.

Make sure your child knows letters

Yates said that spelling helps with the link between auditory and visual learning for literacy.

“Because that linkage between the visual and the auditory or the sound and the letters that we have to make sure that we’ve created those linkages for our children,” she said.

Yates said that, in some literacy programs, it’s like students learn formulas for spelling and sounds.

“In the word cake, that ‘A’ says its name because it has an ‘E,’” she said.

Moss said that something she is doing with her three-year-old daughter right now is using letters in the bathtub.

“It’s a really low pressure way for us to pick up a ‘M’ and say, ‘Do you want sound this letter makes?’” she said. “This letter says ‘Mmm.’”

More information on literacy, including family resources, can be found on the

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An Alabama state representative has filed a bill that would allow high school athletes to make money off of their image.

The legislation,sponsored by Rep. Jeremy Gray, D-Opelika, would be a name, image and likeness (NIL) bill for high school athletes. The bill is limited to the athlete and does not allow the use of “marks, including a school logo, school name, school mascot, or trademarked logo or acronym of an athletic association,” alongside some other restrictions.

“Because it’s already happening on a college level and what better way to get kids trained to the mindset of NIL by starting in high school,” Gray said in an interview on Monday.

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Alabama has had a state name, image and likeness law since 2021, The NCAA allows college athletes are allowed to profit from their image, name and likeness under NCAA NIL, ranging from the use of merchandise to autographs to running camps and clinics.

at least 30 states and Washington, D.C. have legislation that allows high school students to make money off of their image.

Gray’s bill says that no student athletes in the state “shall be prevented from receiving compensation for the use of his or her name, image, or likeness.”

Gray, who played football at North Carolina State, said he doesn’t think it’s fair that schools, but not the athletes, are allowed to make money off of athletes. One reason for the bill, he said, is the difficulty in predicting how long an athletic career might last.

“We may not make it to the NFL, NBA, WNBA, but a lot of athletes are training their entire lives for a moment where they can get actually compensated for their skills and talents,” he said.

Ron Ingram, a spokesman for the Alabama High School Athletic Association, said no one from AHSAA was available to comment this week.

Gray also said he wants to put Alabama on a level playing field with other state that have NIL laws for high school students.

“Monetization is important to me when it comes to student athletes, and especially on any level of high school, college or in the NFL because so many people are making money off the athletes and they’re not being able to capitalize on those opportunities, their sales, so this bill just really came from the premises of other states are doing it and we just need to move towards that,” he said.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com. Follow Alabama Reflector on and .

The , which opened its doors in 2020 — during the height of the pandemic — is the nation’s only high school focused on the integration of cyber technology and engineering into all academic disciplines. It is located in Huntsville, home to the Army Aviation and Missile Command and several major defense contractors.

A publicly funded commuter and residential 9-12 magnet school serving students from around the state, the Alabama School of Cyber Technology and Engineering offers free tuition for a diverse student body that is about 30% African American and 37% female. Some 120 of the 333 students live in the school’s dormitory. Students are charged only for the cost of food, which they split with the state. Local contractors help sponsor the school through donations.

The school is both college preparatory and vocational — aimed at readying students for well-paying careers upon graduation in high-demand, science-based fields, with the Department of Defense and with military contractors.

Underpinning the school’s focus is the urgent need for more American citizens to enter the national security workforce, because the country is falling behind technologically in several areas and U.S. citizenship is required to receive a security clearance.

The need is substantial. While China has four times the U.S. population, it has eight times as many STEM grads, and Russia has almost four times more engineers than the United States. And the problem will only get more pronounced as the need grows for a workforce that can develop new and increasingly complicated technologies that will be essential for national security.

“Many of the proposed advanced manufacturing and technology solutions to workforce shortages (particularly automation) and manufacturing issues (including additive manufacturing, hybrid manufacturing and digitalization) require a higher level of baseline skills. To implement these solutions, individuals must be trained and able to work in teams that combine deep engineering expertise with data analytics and policy knowledge to enable innovation and transform the manufacturing space,” the Department of Defense wrote in its on U.S. industrial capabilities.

STEM curricula focused on technical careers “must also be expanded into middle and high school education to attract and prepare candidates for advanced manufacturing at all levels — from engineering to the factory floor,” the report said.

That’s exactly what the Alabama school is accomplishing.

During its first year, in 2020, the school had 70 students set up in classroom space at a local university. By the following year, enrollment had doubled. When the current school year started in August, the headcount was 333 students, with more expected in successive years as word spreads about the school’s focus and unique approach to education.

No formal entrance exam is required. Prospective students provide three years’ worth of academic transcripts, attendance sheets and disciplinary records, as well as recommendations from a current STEM teacher and another from a guidance counselor. They submit letters of interest from themselves and their parent.

Applicants from home schools or private schools additionally must provide results from a standardized assessment, such as the SSAT. But there is no minimum qualifying score for admission. Scores are one of many evaluation criteria and are meant to provide insight into the academic potential of incoming applicants. Students who advance in the application process also undergo a personal interview.

Once admitted, students are not allowed to fail their classes. Rather, they must master concepts to advance; they must repeat the class until they achieve proficiency. Proficiency is particularly important because higher-level math and science classes, with their keen focus on cyber technology and engineering, build on concepts from earlier courses. The school doesn’t use a traditional grading system; rather, teachers rate students on a continuum reflecting various levels of mastery of concepts, then correlate those to a 4.0 grade-point scale.

Students receive four years of instruction in math, science, language arts and social studies, but with cyber and engineering curriculum woven throughout. So, for example, in the first year of social studies, students are taught the history of engineering and technology. The second year is the history of cryptography taught through the lens of world events, such as World Wars I and II. By the third year, students are taught civics and economics, touching on cyber-related concepts like cryptocurrency and blockchain.

They engage in real-world learning through internships with defense companies such as Raytheon, a major corporate sponsor, which accepted 16 students from the school as interns this year.

Tailoring the education for high-tech industries and ensuring proficiency in concepts all along the way ensures that students are math and science literate but also well-rounded. Thus far, the results are impressive. Some students are receiving job offers upon graduation, while others have been accepted at top-notch schools like Georgia Tech, Vanderbilt, the University of Texas, Georgetown University, American University and the University of Southern California.

The nation is facing a sweeping talent gap in STEM that is a national security vulnerability. Alabama School of Cyber Technology and Engineering offers one powerful model for closing that gap while driving student achievement.

The Alabama State Reciprocity Committee Wednesday discussed the potential impact of changes to federal regulations on distance learning.

The committee, which focuses on higher education issues, works to address State Authorization Reciprocity Agreements (SARA) in Alabama. to streamline regulations from the U.S. Department of Education around distance learning opportunities. The committee has representatives from two-year colleges, four-year colleges and Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

The focus of Wednesday’s discussions were changes made to increase federal oversight over higher education institutions.

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The changes were made under , where representatives of parties significantly impacted by changes to higher education work with the Department of Education to reach consensus with the Department.

Regulations will

Heather Hall, dean of the college of nursing at University of South Alabama, said that placements for clinical work now need to be made within 45 days and within a reasonable distance. She said that these requirements may be more complicated for more specialized fields.

“So if there’s not a NICU located within that reasonable located geographical area, then that would be okay, because it’s so specialized,” she said. “However, that can only be used a certain length of time,” Hall said. “You run out of reasons why you’re sending students so far from one state to the next or across the state to clinical placement.”

says these requirements will not apply to post-graduation requirements, such as medical residences.

Hall said that increased reporting requirements that keep track of placements means that they will need more staff. She also said that a student turning down a placement does not mean that a school is freed from the 45-day requirement.

“Everything has to be documented,” she said. “Everything has to be in compliance, and we have to start moving quickly to make sure that our students are placed.”

Tonjanita Johnson, senior vice chancellor for academic and student affairs for the University of Alabama System, said she’s heard from staff that they would like a centralized system to maintain the required information.

“Understanding the resources that may be needed would be helpful for I’m sure for just more than those of us sitting around the table,” she said.

Ron Leonard, director of special operations at the Alabama Commission on Higher Education, said that if they join the State Authorization Network, he thinks the organization will help the colleges keep up with changes to federal regulations.

“They’re at the forefront of keeping up with federal and state regulations,” he said. “As was mentioned earlier, there is so much coming down the pike, that it’s hard for people to keep up.”

The State Authorization Network provides training, support and opportunities to help institutions to work together to navigate regulatory requirements for out-of-state activities, .

Leonard said they have applied for a grant for membership. If only a small number of institutions want to join, they can likely cover the cost. If all institutions want to join, there would be a cost but it would be discounted. He said that some institutions in the state have already joined.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com. Follow Alabama Reflector on and .

Jennifer Church, the lead special education teacher at Pelham Ridge Elementary School in Pelham, knows how much her colleagues do before stepping into a classroom.

“The referral meetings, eligibility meetings, IEP (individualized educational plan) meetings, the parent contacts just to organize all of that,” she said. “Writing the IEPS … providing the services to the students each day and then also helping with any general education assignments that need to be helped with in the classroom.”

And to keep special education teachers in place, the Alabama State Department of Education is asking the Legislature for a little bit more.

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The department’s budget request includes a call for a stipend for special education teachers in the hopes of recruiting new teachers and retaining existing ones in areas with shortages.

Michael Sibley, spokesman for the department, said over email that the stipend amount requested is $5,000 and 20% ($1,000) benefits for each teacher.

A new teacher in Alabama with a bachelor’s degree would make A new teacher in Mississippi at a would make A new teacher in Georgia with a would make the base teacher salary in Tennessee is $42,000.

Special education is a term that covers a range of specialties, and special education teachers work with students with a range of needs. Some of those specialties have greater shortages than others. But the department for now but, for now, they are looking at a flat stipend across the board for special education teachers.

Mackey said the goal is to convince people to become special education teachers.

“This year, the Legislature provided a $1,000 stipend but it only went to special ed teachers who were paid for out of the state budget, foundation program budget,” he said.

This year’s request would cover teachers paid for by federal and local funds, as well. His goal is to provide the stipends for every special education teacher in the state.

Both Mackey and special education educators across the state have said that it’s important that specially trained teachers are the ones who work with special education students.

“If you’re a parent of a child that has these really severe needs, then you want to make sure you have the most qualified teacher working with them,” he said.

Akeliah Palmer, a collaborative resource and special education teacher at Edgewood Elementary School in Selma, said that she has about 30 students on her caseload.

She said that special education is hard to staff, so she hopes the stipend might help in recruiting.

“For them to keep the stipend would be a great idea because it may recruit more workers to come over to [special education],” she said.

Church said that forging personal relationships is also important for her role as a special education teacher.

“It’s not just one blanket plan for the children,” she said. “It’s individualized to each child. So we write these for their strengths, their weaknesses, the services that they need. It also has to be legally defensible.”

Cynthia Rysedorph, special education department chair at Mountain Brook High School, said that she thinks a stipend could encourage teachers to stay in the classroom.

“It was somewhat empowering, I think, just to feel recognized,” she said about this past year’s stipend..

Retention is critical, Mackey said, because of the volume of work special education teachers do.

“Because of special ed is obviously an area that’s intense focus, there is a lot of additional paperwork because the significance of some federal rules around that, so we often hear teachers say, ‘You know what, I’m going to leave teaching special ed, and just teach fourth grade, because it’s the same pay,’” he said.

Mackey said that the department is targeting teachers trained and certified to teach both special education and elementary general education. Some of those teachers might have gone to general education, and he wants the stipend to encourage them to come back to special education. He said those teachers are certified under collaborative special education.

For now, he said, the department is looking at a flat stipend, but Mackey left open the possibility of offering more in areas with particular shortages.

“That’s something certainly could be discussed,” he said. “Like, you know, the Legislature comes back and wants to talk about, ‘Well, what if we do a different amount for a child, for a teacher who has students with learning disabilities versus one with students who have medical disabilities?”

Last year, the Department asked for $68 million and received $4.6 million for special education stipends. This year, the department has requested for $34 million. House education budget chair Danny Garrett, R-Trussville, said in October he did not have any information about the funding this year going up as he has not seen the request or had discussions.

The Alabama State Board of Education’s budget request goes to the governor’s office. The governor makes a recommendation of her version that then goes to the Legislature who will approve their version of the budget.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com. Follow Alabama Reflector on and .

Having spent years focusing on reading skills for early elementary school students, the Alabama State Board of Education is seeking funds to boost literacy after third grade.

The State Board of Education on Oct. 12 approved a budget request for “struggling readers beyond grade 3” for $22 million. Last year, the Board had requested $3 million, but did not receive any funding for the program.

State Superintendent Eric Mackey said during the September work session that the earlier program had been a small one for a small number of students. The rest of the board members wanted to see something larger.

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The $22 million would go to professional training for teachers. Mackey said in a phone interview they’ve heard from superintendents that they want an equivalent professional development for teaching literacy for teachers from fourth to sixth grade, like kindergarten through third grade under the Literacy Act.

“Some of them are already doing it but this would give us a chance to really expand that,” he said.

The Alabama Literacy Act, passed In 2019, aimed to get all students reading on grade level by the end of third grade and boost overall literacy scores in the state.  The bill provides funding for teaching training and reading coaches to ensure students master reading. Students that are not reading at grade level by the end of third grade could be held back a year.

At the September work session, Mackey said that the department need funding for readers beyond third grade because the law states that Alabama Reading Initiative funds cannot be used beyond that point.

But students don’t stop struggling with reading after third grade.

Vicky Askew, a reading specialist with Tallapoosa County Schools, said that continuing reading instruction past the third grade is important. She said that some students in her system are getting reading intervention in fourth and fifth grade, if they have enough instructors who work with at-risk students in learning literacy.

“I feel like they need it because we can’t just say, ‘Oh, they’re in fourth grade: Good luck,’” she said.

House Ways and Means Education chair Danny Garrett, R-Trussville, said he was not familiar with the specific request in the board’s budget, but he supports literacy.

“Reading is a priority for the Department of Education and also for the Legislature,” he said.

Rep. Terri Collins, R-Decatur, the chair of the House Education Policy committee and the sponsor of the Literacy Act, said Tuesday she has not looked into what exactly the board is asking for, but she said she was happy to hear about the request.

“I think that we will see a large group in summer school this year which is one of the ways to  go ahead and move towards promotion, which is what we want for all of the students but we want to make sure that they’re reading,” she said.

Collins said that having teachers know how to teach the science of reading, a body of research about learning literacy, is a good thing.

In the National Assessment of Education Progress, or the “nation’s report card,” scores released in 2022, Alabama improved relative to many other states due to learning loss in other states. Alabama’s own scores were relatively stagnant and remained below average.

NAEP proficiency is not equivalent to Alabama grade level.

Mackey that the department had been focused on elementary grade level scores for a while and middle school had not received as much attention.

Mackey said this funding is part of a focus on the middle school years. He said the Numeracy Act, which focuses on math improvement, looks at grades kindergarten through eighth grade. The Literacy Act, he said, also discusses intermediate years.

“It’s just that it’s not funded, so we’re asking for some funding,” he said.

The education budget is first reviewed by the governor, who will make a funding request to the Legislature when the Legislature returns for its regular session in February. Mackey said he  doesn’t know what the grand total for the Education Trust Fund will be.

He said that their roughly $6.2 billion request, which is just for kindergarten through twelfth grade, is probably more than will be allotted.

Higher education funding also comes from the Education Trust Fund but is not included in the department’s request.

Later, he said, the department will work with executive offices on a real budget number to identify priorities and how funding is allocated.

Mackey said their role is identifying needs in schools, not balancing the budget.

“So we’ve identified needs, and we’ve asked for a lot,” he said.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com. Follow Alabama Reflector on and .

BIRMINGHAM — Training remains a major challenge for implementing new state literacy guidelines, educators said at a meeting of a state task force on Thursday.

Members of the Alabama Literacy Task Force also discussed implementing a “continuum” of training on the new standards and expressed concerns about not reaching all children.

“As long as we allow what I call the fraying of the edges, there’s those that are going to accept that,” said Jackie Zeigler, the District 1 representative on the Alabama State Board of Education.

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The Alabama Literacy Act, passed in 2019, put reading coaches in schools and provided for special training for K-3 students struggling with reading, with an aim of having students read at grade level by fourth grade. Third-grade students who are not reading at grade level run the risk of being held back.

The law also created the Literacy Task Force about reading programs, continuum of teacher training in the science of reading and an annual list of vetted assessments.

The 2023-24 school year is the first year of full implementation after several delays of the retention portion of the Literacy Act.

The Alabama Legislature made changes to the law last spring, including changes to the amount of time that previously purchased assessments could be used by districts. Assessments vetted by the Task Force will be valid for three years beginning with the 2023-24 school year. In that time, assessments can be added but not removed.

Task Force Chair Kristy Watkins, director of curriculum instruction at Jasper City Schools and a new member of the group, said that one of the problems she has been seeing on the district side is getting teachers to teach to the course of study standards, not the textbooks.

“That is where I am struggling,” she said.

Watkins said she has had questions from a teacher about first-graders not being taught adverbs, which are not in the standards. Watkins said the teacher told her she does not have the time.

Short said that she remembered she could not get everything done in a textbook each year, so she had to shift her idea to teaching the five big ideas of the textbook.

The discussion came in a small group discussion that went through previous memorandums issued related to the Alabama Literacy Act.

Cailin Kerch, clinical coordinator of early childhood elementary at the University of Alabama, said that a new test for the early childhood reading instruction will be more “rigorous” in the science of reading than the previous version.

Science of reading

The is a body of research that looks into how kids learn to read. The skills associated with learning to read were not being taught in many schools for many years, as reported by

balanced literacy rose in prominence in the 1990s as a bridge between phonics and whole language instruction. Whole language was the philosophy that kids learned to read through exposure. Balanced literacy includes methods such as “three-cueing,” which encourages kids to look for clues, such as at pictures, to guess an unknown word.

Watkins said that she sometimes gets teachers who are not trained in science of reading before they come to her.

“I have to retrain you to come in and do science of reading,” she said. “So, it’s aggravating.”

In the whole group discussion, the Task Force also discussed losing some districts. Zeigler said that she worries about “most” in terms of helping most but not all kids.

Bonnie Short, director of the Alabama Reading Initiative, said that districts who are further along in their progress might not be able to access all of the help that they might need.

Limited support (LS) schools are defined in the Alabama Code as being schools not in the bottom 5% of reading proficiency. An Alabama Reading Initiative regional literacy specialist will visit Limited Support One schools once a month. An Alabama Reading Initiative regional literacy specialist will visit Limited Support Two schools quarterly. The local superintendent will “determine the level of limited support that each regional literacy specialist shall provide.”

Short said more intervention might be required.

“Even our LS one schools that get monthly support, they really need more than that,” she said. “And our LS two schools, while they may be trucking right along, they may need additional pieces and parts. But I’m limited.”

Short also suggested a cohort for some of the highest performing districts so they can share their skills. She said they still have room to grow but less than other districts.

Reading camps

Another aspect of the law that they needed to look further into were the summer reading camps.

Under the law, the camps are under the Task Force. The Alabama State Department of Education has been mostly working with that portion so far, said Mark Dixon, president of A+ Education Partnership, an advocacy group that aims to improve public education in Alabama.

“It was something that we received funding for, to be able to support,” Short said after the meeting about the summer learning programs.

The summer learning programs are avenues to improve literacy instruction for students outside of the normal school year.

Some of the changes, such as extending the amount of time that some current assessments are allowed to be used, has given the Task Force some time to work more on other things such as a continuum of training. Dixon said that some of those changes could be to their benefit.

“You’ve given yourself a little breathing room,” he said.

In discussion, the members said that they could use that time to focus on the “continuum” for teachers and other school employees outlined in the law. A smaller subcommittee had looked into that portion of the law in the past. Since then, other legislation, like the Numeracy Act, has passed, so they want to make sure they do not overwhelm teachers. They also said they want to bring in other groups and look at what other states are doing.

Short said that she does some work with higher education groups.

“Do you start with those groups separate?” she asked the members. “Do you start with those groups together? I think it’s probably important to have our vision board.”

The next meeting will be in January.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com. Follow Alabama Reflector on and .

Summer reading camps are helping students make gains in literacy, the director of the Alabama Reading Initiative told members of the Alabama State Board of Education on Thursday.

Bonnie Short, the director of the Alabama Reading Initiative, said that students who have been attending the Alabama summer reading camps have improved their reading, and not just avoided the “summer slide.”

After kindergarten, students who attended the camps saw an average growth of 6.37%, Short said. After first grade, students who attended the camps had an average growth of 5.44%. After second grade at the camps, students grew, on average, by 4.00%, and, after third grade, students grew an average rate of 2.91% in the camps.

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Just over 29,000 students attended the camps over the summer, Short said. After kindergarten, 5,677 students attended. After first grade, 8,090 students attended. After second grade, 7,752 students attended. After third grade, 7,497 students attended.

For people who research literacy, Short said, the aim of summer reading camps is to see an average growth of 0%, which would mean that students are avoiding losing progress over the summer. Short said that positive growth, as seen in the Alabama numbers, is even better.

“We don’t want to see them go down, but of course I want growth,” she said.

Short did not provide data on how students improve or lose their reading skills over the summer without these camps.

The summer reading camps are an aspect of the Alabama Literacy Act, which provides resources to schools to improve reading but could require students to repeat third grade if they are not on reading level by that point. The camps need to have at least 60 hours of literacy instruction.

The Act, first passed in 2019, was delayed

Gov. Kay Ivey told reporters after the State Board of Education meeting that she would veto further delays.

“They give me a bill to change the date, I’ll veto it,” she said.

Short said that about 75% of the children enrolled in the program attended the camps.

“That looks really suspicious because they are all the same, but, truly, that is the data,” she said.

Short said that she is expecting higher rates of attendance in future years when the stakes for students are higher.

Research on summer learning loss is mixed, according to a , but an analysis of summer math programs suggests that formal summer programs benefit students who are already struggling academically.

State Superintendent Eric Mackey said students in the camps would almost all be students with low scores in the Alabama Comprehensive Assessment Program (ACAP). Short said that students who are in a gray area of passing or failing by just a few points are also invited.

“We can start inviting children to the summer reading camps today based on the information we have from the earlier screener,” she said.

Tracie West, District 2 board member and vice president of the board, said that she has superintendents who have been disappointed with their turnouts. Short said that transportation is a possible reason.

Short also said that, while they need their 60 hours of summer reading, they also want to incorporate more aspects into the camps, such as softball.

“I want our summer reading camp programs to have opportunities inside them that are beyond just reading,” she said.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com. Follow Alabama Reflector on and .

The Alabama State Board of Education may ask the Alabama Legislature for money to add air conditioning to state school buses, most of which lack it.

At the September 14 Board meeting, members of the state Board considered asking for a one-time supplemental bill to add buses to districts most in need.

“One of the things we might encourage on top of the budget is to say, ‘You know what, we’d like to have another one-time flow of money into fleet renewal with a focus on getting rid of buses that don’t have air conditioning,’” said Eric Mackey, state superintendent.

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Only 48% of buses in the state have air conditioning, according to Alabama State Department of Education data. Chad Carpenter, transportation specialist for the ALSDE, said in a phone interview that buses can get 20 degrees hotter than the air outside.

Carpenter compared school buses to passenger cars and said that, when he was a kid, his parents had options between buying cars with or without air conditioning. Many people bought cars without air conditioning because it was cheaper. Then, as technology advanced, air conditioning became cheaper and then standard.

“I wouldn’t be real surprised if air conditioning on school buses doesn’t become pretty standard in the next few years,” he said.

Last summer was the hottest season since 1880, Josh Willis, climate scientist and oceanographer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, attributed the heat to long term warming and marine heat waves in combination with the weather pattern known as

Alabama’s hottest summer, until 2023, had been in 1883,

Mackey said at the board meeting that all special education buses in the state are legally required to have air conditioning and that has been the law for some time.

“It’s not a new requirement,” he said. “I won’t say for sure there’s not one somewhere, but I’d be really surprised if there’s a special ed bus in the state that is not air conditioned.”

According to data provided by the Alabama State Department of Education, only a few school districts or charter schools had zero buses on route with air conditioning in the 2022-23 school year.

Daleville City, with 14 routes, has no buses on route with air conditioning. Elba City has four bus routes and no buses with air conditioning. Fairfield City has seven bus routes and no buses with air conditioning. Jacksonville City has 16 bus routes and no buses with air conditioning. Orange Beach City has three bus routes and no air conditioning on buses. Troy City has two bus routes and no buses with air conditioning. Tuscumbia City has zero buses with air conditioning and one bus route. Life Academy has three bus routes and no air conditioning.

city school systems can purchase school buses, but county school systems must provide transportation. City school systems and charter schools are only required to offer transportation for students served by special education,

Sen. Arthur Orr, R-Decatur, chair of the Senate Finance and Taxation Education committee, said that he has not heard any talk of supplemental funding for buses yet.

“At the legislative level, because we’re one of the last along the line of the appropriations process, it’s a little early to know whether that’s going to be a high priority request from the education community,” he said.

Mackey told board members they were able to get a one-time supplemental appropriation last year of around $130 million to buy new buses. Two districts, Wilcox County and Shelby County, were given the most funds to buy air conditioned buses, based on need. ALSDE data shows that Shelby has 18.73% of their buses air conditioned currently, or 59 on 319 bus routes. Wilcox has 62.16% of their buses air conditioned, or 23 on 37 bus routes.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com. Follow Alabama Reflector on and .

OZARK– The Ozark Dale County Library Board of Trustees Wednesday approved new policies that will require more parental supervision of children in libraries but did not explicitly remove or ban any books.

The approval came in a meeting that was far less tense – and far less crowded – than that followed challenges to books with LGBTQ+ content by local officials. The new policies will require more children to be accompanied by adults and limit children’s access to certain parts of the library.

Members of the board said Wednesday the changes would reaffirm the role of the parent and protect staff from potential legal liability.

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“The only defense our librarians would have when a child checks out that book a minor checks out a book that may or may not have that kind of material in it is because their parents allowed them to do so,” said Christina Faulkner, the board’s secretary.

The board Wednesday voted on changes that were discussed at the meeting about the potential accessibility of some books to minors. The initial informal complaint to the library focused on rainbow stickers on books with LGBTQ+ content, but the library Board of Trustees had mainly focused on potentially age-inappropriate sexual content.

The changes include:

• Raising the age of children needing to be accompanied by an adult from 10 to 13.
• Adjusting age ranges for sections of the library and adding age range stickers to books in the young adult section, based on publisher’s recommendations.
• Signage saying all books may not be in line with parents’ wishes and offering assistance from staff for questions and concerns. The sign will also ask parents to monitor their children.

A three-member committee will consider where a book challenged ahead of the August meeting should go.

Public speakers in attendance thanked the Board for the work the library has done over the last several weeks. 

“I think the parental control, if that’s the right word, is it, you’ve done a fabulous job,” said Jim Hill, who said at the August meeting that he wanted books monitored.“And I want to say thanks. I’m not trying to isolate any group or, it’s not about me or another person, it’s about our children or grandchildren.”

Other speakers also expressed gratitude for the library’s efforts but said they were concerned that these compromises would lead to more and more concessions.

“You’re going down a rabbit hole,” said Gene Lynn. “You’ve done nothing wrong.”

Libraries across the country and state are facing challenges to books. The Prattville City Council earlier this month narrowly rejected a contract that would have limited the local library’s autonomy

At the previous meeting, Board Liason Monica Carroll read a sexually explicit passage from “The Mirror Season” by Anna-Marie McLemore. The website says the book tells the story of a girl following a sexual assault at a party. The book was one of two formally being asked for reconsideration by County Commissioner Adam Enfinger.

Adam Kamerer, who started a Facebook group that opposed the moving of books, said that he did not think it was appropriate that two board members had shared negative views of the book at the last meeting.

“I don’t believe any member of the audience was aroused or sexually excited when that passage was read,” he said. “We were certainly moved to an emotional feeling. We were disturbed, horrified and uncomfortable.”

Michael Cairns, vice-chairman of the board, later said that the board does not have authority to overrule the appointed committee’s decision about whether the book should be moved up to the adult section.

Later in the meeting, Carroll said that she valued different opinions and said they rely on the process.

“Without the process, we don’t know how you feel,” she said. “We don’t know about the books because we do not have the staff to read them all.”

The board was not given the names of the people who will review the book but received information on their backgrounds. They are a professor, a teacher and a lawyer.

At the end of the meeting, Cairns criticized those he described as “prominent” community members for claiming that the board members do not care about children.

“Nothing could be further from the truth,” he said.

Also at the meeting, the board discussed the farewell reception for member Imogene Mixson, who served 30 years in two stints.

“When I have been asked the question about why I would serve so long, it was an easy question to answer because I always say the same thing, and it’s a repeated response,” she said. “It is such a wonderful place that provides resources and services to all the people of Ozark and all the people of Dale County of all ages from children through all the adult ages, including senior adults, with a strong commitment to work with partners and agencies and all of the funding agencies, all the volunteers, the Friends of the Library. Much of my life has been spent in libraries and I’ve loved them those days from childhood until this day.”

The library will be closed Thursday to work on the new system.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com. Follow Alabama Reflector on and .

The future of a bill that would effectively mandate kindergarten in Alabama still faces an uphill battle, even as members of a state education commission said that they support the bill.

During a Wednesday meeting of Governor’s Commission on Teaching and Learning — a group of educators, lawmakers and officials — State Superintendent Eric Mackey said the Literacy Act, if they are unable to read at grade level, has led many principals to focus on first grade.

The superintendent, in a presentation , said that some are retaining first graders if they believe they are at risk of retention later in their academic careers.

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“When you get that before third grade, that’s all the better, which is why I think what we hear from our principals are doing is largely focusing on first grade,” he said.

Mackey also said that principals want to learn who’s on track in those early years, but the assessments they have do not currently track as well with the state test.

Rep. Alan Baker, R-Atmore, had also said that it was important that they focus on grades before first grade.

“And that really captures really what it’s about, that is the prevention that is identifying those students early on, early as possible,” he said. “And then providing the necessary interventions and supports all the way through and not just waiting.”

Some commission members had questions about why kindergarten was not mandatory in the state and if there was a way to make it mandatory.

Carey Wright, former Mississippi State Superintendent of Education and a member of the panel, said that Mississippi had been able to mandate mandatory attendance for those who enrolled in kindergarten.

“And that helped a lot with our kindergarten in terms of first grade readiness,” she said.

The Alabama House of Representatives last spring passed a bill known as that would have required a student to pass kindergarten or an equivalent test showing readiness for first grade. The bill passed out of a Senate committee but did not come to the Senate floor for a vote.

Sen. Donnie Chesteen, R-Geneva, said that the biggest opposition was “one senator,” as many in the room laughed.

Sen. Rodger Smitherman, D-Birmingham, spoke multiple times in opposition to the bill. He said it felt like it would hold more students back.

Smitherman and the bill’s sponsor Pebblin Warren, D-Tuskegee, said they would discuss the bill further in the fall.

A message was left with Warren Wednesday afternoon. As of 2020, only 19 states and the District of Columbia required students to attend kindergarten, according to .

Smitherman, reached Wednesday afternoon by phone, said that his stance on the bill has not changed since the end of the legislative session. He said he is still planning to meet with Warren later this fall, though not in the next couple of weeks.

“It will be addressed, but right now, there’s no scheduled meetings at this time,” he said.

Smitherman cited concerns about the bill including retaining students and a lack of infrastructure to support the needs of first grade readiness, such as busing.

“It’s a great soundbite, and it’s a great, it’s an ambitious goal,” he said. “But we can’t help these children like we need to unless we put the proper structure, the proper resources, and have the proper instructors there.”

Supporters of the first grade readiness bill insisted during debates over the legislation that . But Brown, the Montgomery Public Schools superintendent, wondered why the state could not simply mandate kindergarten, without the extra test.

“What I’m imagining in my mind is: I’m going to get my driver’s license, and my test run is an IndyCar race,” he said. “If I crash, now, I got to go back to school to take the test. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. I want to get them on the front end.”

“Some of us agree with you,” said Rep. Barbara Drummond, D-Mobile. “At least in the House.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com. Follow Alabama Reflector on and .

A program that allows college students to finish STEM degrees and earn teacher certification at the same time aims to address an ongoing shortage of educators in Alabama.

UTeach Alabama, part of a program , allows college students to earn a STEM degree and a teacher certification at the same time. Lawrence Cooper, STEM program manager at the Alabama STEM Council, an , said that the program will assist in lessening the STEM teacher shortage.

“Now they can do all that in the same four years, and it doesn’t cost them any more as part of their college education,” he said.

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The program aims to address a major teaching shortage in Alabama and around the country. A Brown University study estimated there in August 2022. Alabama does not track the number of teaching vacancies, and the Alabama State Department of Education’s job board is not an accurate representation of vacancies.

education certificates from the Alabama public colleges and universities have been declining in the last decade and a half. The number of certificates granted in elementary education, math, science, English and reading and social studies have all decreased since 2010.

Social studies certificates have increased since 2019. But in 2021, math and science produced the lowest number of certificates at 114 and 101, respectively, among those subjects. The subjects also had more nontraditional certificates than English and reading and social studies.

In Alabama, non-certified instructors can get emergency certificates if a district has a need. Alabama also offers .

Elementary education had the most nontraditional certificates (1,049), but also produced the most traditional certificates (1,279). Emergency certification grew 1052% from 2010 to 2021.

The University of Alabama, Montevallo, Troy and Jacksonville State University were the only colleges to produce more elementary teaching certificates in 2021 than in 2010.

Expanding program

UTeach is growing from one (University of Alabama Birmingham) to seven sites (Athens State University, University of West Alabama, Alabama A&M, Auburn University and Auburn University of Montgomery) with money appropriated by the Legislature.

Cooper said applicants were asked to submit projections for how many students will graduate with certifications in the next couple of years. He said that the state is estimated to gain 250-500 new STEM teachers.

“We know that there’s a national problem, there are not enough people going into the teaching of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, so the UTeach model helps to fill those gaps,” he said.

At a July Alabama State Board of Education work session, State Superintendent Eric Mackey told reporters that they plan to review these sites.

He said that the Legislature had appropriated the money for the six sites as a kind of pilot program.

Cooper said each site can receive up to $3 million over the course of five years.

“My suspicion is by this time next year, the Legislature will increase that, and we’ll probably add four or five more,” he said.

Cooper said that there is not anything specifically tied to UTeach in keeping the graduates in the state, but he pointed to Alabama’s TEAMS program. In the TEAMS program, STEM teachers who work in hard-to-staff schools get an extra stipend.

Cooper said that 70% of UTeach graduates work in a Title I school. receive more federal funding and have high percentages of poverty.

A report released by the earlier this month said that the program has spent $98.5 million has 2,608 teachers.

The report said that the program is hard to define as successful or not due to a lack of reporting and clear goals. The report pointed to Alabama not effectively tracking teacher shortages as one of its hurdles and also recommended that the process to become a TEAMs teacher be streamlined.

“Although the TEAMS program had a short window to be implemented and lacks defined measures of success, there is still time to take corrective action to ensure the intended outcomes are being accomplished,” wrote the report.

The report said that the increase in pay was the main driving force behind teachers applying for the program, but the pay raise, and consequent disparity, caused morale issues among other teachers.

Amy Marlowe, the executive director of the Alabama Education Association, a teacher’s organization said in phone interview Thursday that the led to the lowest teacher retirement rates they have seen in 10 years. She also said retired teachers have returned to the profession.

“We didn’t expect people who had been retired some maybe 10, 15 years saying, ‘You know what, I’ve got a chance here to permanently raise my retirement for the rest of my life, so I’m going to go back in and take advantage of it,’” she said.

In the the Legislature approved teacher raises of at least 4%, with more experienced teachers getting as much as a 20% raise.  lawmakers approved a 2% pay raise.

Marlowe said they are also advocating for raising the starting salary from $44,226 to $45,000 to encourage graduates to stay in Alabama.

“And I think that’s gonna have a lot to do with keeping them in state,” she said. “And then other than those factors, you know, it comes down to just the same socio economic factors that play into anyone moving into a state or out of state, if they’ve got the cost of living, what that looks like, the education opportunities, the business opportunities, all those things that go into an attractive community.”

Mackey said that a financial incentive could be implemented in the future and referenced previous incentives. He said in the 1990s, the Legislature was trying to get teachers to use computers and said if teachers took three technology classes, their master’s degree would be paid for.

“You can entice people into what you want them to do if you offer the right incentives,” he said. “I guess that’s the thing: And, so, I think that we could see us in offering some incentives with these UTeach teachers to stay in the state.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com. Follow Alabama Reflector on and .

An Alabama State Department of Education official told legislators Tuesday that a law aimed at improving student math achievement will be ready for intervention in 2025.

, passed in 2022, aims to improve math scores. Karen Anderson, director of math improvement for the Alabama State Department of Education, said the law tries to help students understand the concepts of math and how they work, rather than just teaching them techniques.

“One of the tricks that students are told is when they are dividing a fraction by a fraction you flip it you multiply,” she said. “Well, I want students to understand why that is.”

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Anderson said there has been some discussion about the implementation of individual recommendations and questions about the qualifications of math coaches from House members after.

Members of the House Ways and Means Education committee appeared most interested in training ahead of the implementation of the act. Rep. Danny Garrett, R-Trussville, the chair of the committee, asked how the task force, which makes curriculum recommendations, was operating. Anderson said that the task force worked well together.

“We do have very spirited conversations, but I find those spirited conversations frankly very refreshing because we are able to discuss varying points of view, but those conversations do not deter us from our goals,” she said.

Rep. Terri Collins, R-Decatur, asked about specific training, referencing the professional training used for teachers in conjunction with the Literacy Act, which has the goal of all third-graders reading on grade level.

At this stage, Anderson said, there is no training with the same reputation of quality as LETRS for math.

“Training is not something that you could really jump into just kind of right off the bat, we really need to be sure that teachers have the pedagogy and that they have the content,” she said.

Anderson said they need to ensure teachers with emergency certifications are just as qualified as traditional teachers. Emergency certifications are offered to teachers who have not completed a traditional college or university pathway and have received certification under special circumstances.

In recent years, there has been an effort to implement the science of reading, a multidisciplinary body of research about how children best learn to read. LETRS and the Literacy Act both focus on the science of reading.

Unlike literacy, a science of math .

House Minority Leader Anthony Daniels, D-Huntsville, asked about the qualifications of math coaches, which includes a master’s degree or other approved professional development. Anderson said they are looking for professional development that could be equivalent to a master’s degree.

“We’re in the room scoring resumes and just providing support to districts, so we really want to guide them to find the best possible individuals but simply having a bachelor’s degree is just not enough to serve in this role,” she said.

Daniels said he hopes they will look at the qualifications and experience of people beyond just the degrees that a person holds.

“I just think sometimes we look so much at degrees, to where we end up missing someone that has a proven track record of overcoming all of the odds and their students being able to overcome all of the odds with just a bachelor’s degree but with a number of years of teaching experience,” he said.

In her presentation, Anderson said she hears from people that they can’t do math and don’t like the subject (Garrett identified himself as a math person), and she doesn’t think people would respond to people talking about reading in the same way.

“How many times have you had folks say ‘Ugh, I can’t do math, my mama couldn’t do math, my son probably won’t be able to do math either,’ ” she said. “That has always upset me because if you had heard someone say, ‘Oh, I know about half my letters. I really couldn’t read. Well, my father couldn’t read either.’ You would be really upset about that.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com. Follow Alabama Reflector on and .

Alabama’s unemployment rate currently sits at the lowest number in state history: 2.2%. 

But with just 51,445 unemployed workers in the state, according to the most recent data from , there are still about 126,346 open jobs in Alabama. 

Placing those numbers beside Alabama’s mediocre population growth data (4.82% growth since 2020), it’s clear that Alabama won’t likely be able to fill all of those openings with unemployed Alabamians or transplants from other states. 

Instead, some experts say the state should look inwards. Specifically,  that officials should turn to their schools.

In West Alabama, that is exactly what some Tuscaloosa leaders have been focused on since 2017: connecting education and industry to directly prepare students for the workforce while they’re still in high school. 

A partnership between the Tuscaloosa County School System, Mercedes-Benz U.S. International, the nonprofit West Alabama Works and  created a pilot program in modern manufacturing within Brookwood High School that has since been replicated in 24 schools across Alabama. 

It’s built around what they call modern manufacturing career and technical education (CTE), and across schools, the program educated nearly 400 students .

“The success of this program really goes into the industry,” Brookwood CTE Principal Tripp Marshall said. “Our center is a lot different than most high schools, I’d say, because we’re totally industry-driven. What we want to do here, what we want to become, what we want to grow our kids who are our products into is specifically industry-driven into what they need.” 

What students need to learn

Even though Brookwood is a blue collar town like many others in Alabama, Marshall said that when they started building out the program, he was shocked by how few technical skills kids have.

“Believe it or not, there are a lot of students in this generation of kids that do not know anything about tools,” he said. “That was the biggest crunch as far as what our industry needed, some kids that actually knew how to hold a hammer, and that’s what we gave them.”

The curriculum starts with the core skills from the : safety, hand and power tools, construction math, materials handling, construction drawings, rigging and employability. 

Then, students move on to train for certifications from the Manufacturing Skill Standards Council. These certifications have , and Marshall said the school also benefits from students earning them. 

The Alabama Department of Education, or proof that the student possesses the minimum skills required for entry-level employment.

“These generalized skills for an industry, for construction, weigh in heavy favor for our industry partners because they realized that if these kids don’t have these skills, they’re going to spend a lot of time and money trying to train them,” Marshall said.

How Brookwood got students to buy into the program

In the first year that Brookwood High School’s manufacturing program was up and running out of its shiny, new career annex, there were only 16 students enrolled. 

The program was perfectly designed with the contributions of industry partners, but Marshall and other school administrators had to actually find enough students to go through it. That’s when they turned to YouScience, a company that specializes in connecting students with the industries for which they are best suited. 

“The research has found that if you connect a student with a career outcome of any kind that’s personalized to them as an individual, their academic engagement rates and their academic performance all skyrocket,” YouScience CEO and founder Edson Barton said. “It boils down to kind of Psychology 101. Everybody needs a purpose, and if you don’t have a purpose for what you’re doing, then you lose interest.”

Students at Brookwood take the YouScience career test in the ninth grade, and by examining their aptitudes, the results point students to specific career sets that they may never have considered before. 

Barton said the YouScience test works beyond the capabilities of a standard interest survey, so it avoids pigeonholing students based on stereotypes and internal biases. 

Thus, instead of questions like “Do you like woodworking?” or “Do you enjoy taking care of others?”, the YouScience test has students complete a series of brain games to demonstrate whether they have aptitudes for skills like idea generation or numerical reasoning. 

When Brookwood students show a propensity toward manufacturing or engineering, counselors suggest they enroll in the CTE program. After the first year of testing, about 75 students tested with those aptitudes, and the program grew from its initial 16 students to 55.

Now, as the program looks to begin its sixth year, 180 students plan to take CTE classes. 

A student’s perspective

Three years ago, current Brookwood senior Mariana Zapata was one of the students who tested strongly for manufacturing. Her guidance counselor suggested that she enroll in the CTE program, but because she had always planned to go into the medical field, Zapata was unsure. 

She needed an elective credit, though, so she decided to give the class a chance. 

“I didn’t know anything about manufacturing. Like I didn’t know what the term was or anything, until I started taking the class and then learned that manufacturing is building and the processes of fabricating things,” Zapata said. “We would make projects, and we would work together in the classroom. It was more hands-on than any other class, so that’s what I really enjoyed about it.”

After her first year in the program, Mercedes-Benz offered Zapata a paid apprenticeship at its plant in Tuscaloosa. She spent her junior year working there three days a week, and it’s her summer job too. 

With the money Zapata earned at Mercedes, she was able to save up and buy her own car. 

“It took a while, but I was able to do it,” Zapata said. “I really enjoyed doing it and earned good money as a part-time job. I learned a lot about that industry that I wouldn’t have known if I’d never taken the class.”

While Zapata said she still plans to stick with her goal of pursuing a career as an ultrasound technician, she’s proud of the work she accomplished in the manufacturing program. She learned hard skills, helped get cars built and made enough money to achieve her goal. 

“It was an opportunity,” she said, “and I took advantage of it.”

This story was originally published in

So when other students at McGill-Toolen Catholic High School in Mobile, Alabama, started talking last summer about Flight Path 9, a new afterschool and summer program that teaches high school students early skills to build airplanes, Joseph was hooked.

A partnership between Bishop State Community College and airplane manufacturer Airbus, Flight Path 9 is a fledgling pre-apprentice program designed to put high schoolers on a path to careers at Airbus’ only U.S. airplane assembly plant located right in their backyard.

Berault and more than 40 other just-graduated high school seniors from across the Mobile area attended classes at Bishop State from 4 to 8 p.m. two nights a week this past school year. 

This summer, they pack a workshop floor at Bishop State for 32 hours a week to learn manufacturing skills like riveting, precision cutting and using multimeters. 

In August, most will become full apprentices at the Airbus Final Assembly Line, where they will be paid real salaries while they continue to learn and work on the A220 airliners used by Delta, Air Canada and Air France.

“Some students say, when you’re going into this two days every week, ‘I just don’t want to do that,’ because it’s taking up their senior year,” said Berault, who graduated this spring. “But I think it was completely worth it.”

“I feel like I feel like I didn’t know much of anything when I came into this program, but the amount I’ve learned in the past couple months is just insane.”

Fellow trainee Nicole Olivares, whose parents both work for Airbus, was also excited for a chance to work in aviation. She urged students to join the program, even with the classes two nights a week.

“I think it’s so worth it,” she said. “You can still do other things. You have a life outside of Flightworks.” 

Based in France, Airbus is one of the two largest airliner manufacturers in the world. It’s also very used to training new employees at a young age. As is typical in Europe, its plants there start students as full-time apprentices at around age 15 or the equivalent of junior year of high school here.

But that’s part of the culture in Europe, where general high school education typically ends after 10th grade and students must shift into either a career skills or an intense university academic path. With the United States locked into its 12-year system of students working toward a general high school diploma, Airbus can’t just bring its European model here and start apprentices at 15. Students still have to finish high school.

But company officials knew even as they opened the Mobile plant in 2015 that they needed a pipeline for high school students to train to work there. Michelle Hurdle, director of workforce and economic development of Airbus Americas Inc., started visiting other Airbus facilities and began working with schools, community groups and Bishop State to create a curriculum and program that launched in 2019. After a hiatus because of the pandemic, the program re-started in fall of 2022.

“We want our facility to reflect our community,” Hurdle said. “So what better way to do that than to recruit and train and grow from within because that’s what creates loyalty.” 

Students in the program earn a certificate in Aviation Manufacturing Technology from Bishop State, several industry certifications for working with things like blueprints, sheet metal and multimeters and they also leave with 18 credit hours that can go toward an aviation manufacturing associates degree when Bishop launches that degree program in fall of 2024.

Having credentials that matter to most manufacturers, not just for Airbus, was important from the start, said Hurdle and Akareem Spears, dean of workforce and economic development at Bishop State,

“Just say 5-10 years from now, they don’t want to work at Airbus, they still have these credentials that they can take with them,” Spears said. “These individuals have something that are tangible that they can carry with them.”

During the school year, Bishop State instructors and others from a nonprofit created by Airbus teach the evening classes. Students are not paid for that time, but are given dinner at the school.

“No mama wants to cook at 8:30 when your children come home,” Hurdle said.

In the summer, students are paid a $40 per day stipend as they take classes for five weeks. Airbus declined to say what apprentices are paid during the 14-month apprenticeship. As apprentices, they are monitored and have their work checked by full employees and only work independently after completing the apprenticeship.

Airbus and the college want to go even further with Flight 9 over time.

“Hopefully, we can start younger, and start getting into middle schools, and maybe by elementary school,” Spears said. “We can introduce multimeters, and all those kind of things early on, and we built an ecosystem.”

Berault said he may go back to school some day to earn the Federal Aviation Administration’s Airframe and Powerplant license or to be an engineer. For now, though, he is anxious to start as an apprentice.

“I love the work.” he said. “I love being busy. I just like having stuff to do with my hands, like getting to drill, getting to do electrical, stuff like that.” 

Logan Greene, a teacher in Hoover City Schools had his students read, a memoir of a Holocaust survivor. He heard there was an opportunity for the author to come speak to students. But it would require them to raise $1,000 in around two weeks.

“I told the kids there’s no way we can do it,” he said.

But his students reacted enthusiastically. Five of them stood outside of basketball games for two weeks and raised over $2,000.

Greene said that effort by his students showed him the interest in the subject, and the power it has. He started looking for ways to “grow my own practice.”

“That showed me kind of the power of Holocaust education in schools and that led me to start researching how could I grow my own practice,” he said. “How could I get better? And I discovered the Birmingham Holocaust Education Center and started doing workshops and attending the teacher cadres and then it all snowballed from there.”

Alabama, like most states, does not mandate the teaching of the Holocaust. The state’s social studies standards, due to be revised in the next few years, could potentially include a Holocaust component in the future. 

But even without a mandate, there is enormous interest from schools in the subject. The Holocaust Education Center, which recently established a home in Birmingham’s Temple Emanu-El, instructs teachers on how to teach the Holocaust to students in pedagogically sound ways. Gov. Kay Ivey went to the dedication ceremony on May 22.

“I think students want to learn about every hard history, because they like controversies and because I think that they want to make the world a better place,” said Zoe Weil, director of educator engagement at the Holocaust Education Center.

‘Sometimes there’s just not an answer’

Dan Puckett, chair of the Alabama Holocaust Commission, said that learning about the Holocaust is essential for students.

“I think it gives us a much better understanding of who we are,” he said. “Human rights, you know, understanding the value of human rights, the value of civic engagement, I mean, all of that’s necessary for a civil society. Everything that happened in the Holocaust, that we’re looking at, was actually a result of state-sponsored actions and none of it was illegal. It was sponsored by the German government, the Nazi government.”

Ann Mollengarden, an applied researcher at the center, said they do not prescribe a specific curriculum for teachers on the Holocaust, but they do make pedagogical recommendations. Some teachers may only have two or three days to address the subject.

One of the things the center emphasizes is that there are no simple answers when it comes to the Holocaust. 

Mollengarden said teachers need to explain the history and discuss motivations. Every group, she said, had their own reasons for making the decisions they did. 

Teachers should be prepared to be unable to answer the students’ questions, she said.

“A teacher always wants to be able to give an answer to a student and sometimes there’s just not an answer,” she said.

The center also recommends teaching history from different perspectives: perpetrators, victims and bystanders.

“This is not just A-to-B-to-C-to-D history,” she said.

Gretchen Skidmore, director of education initiatives at the United States Holocaust Museum, said that the Holocaust became more of a part of public school education in the 1970s, when more survivors began speaking about their experience. She also cited the influence of “Holocaust,” a 1978 NBC miniseries credited . 

Since then, she said that Holocaust education has evolved from the facts of the Holocaust to looking at the reasons behind it.

“We want people to not only know what happened, but how and why it happened and that is a major change,” she said.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has resources for educators, including a

Greene said that the center is constantly changing their practice, and he’s constantly updating his pedagogy alongside them.

“People sit here and they think history is just history and it’s there,” he said. “But it’s really quite the opposite. We’re always adjusting our practice and we’re always finding new ways to really increase our ability to educate not only students but the public about the Holocaust.”

When asked about lesson plans for what a student might learn, Greene pointed to the organization , where he is interning this summer, as one he would use.

Their sample lesson plan for studying the Holocaust involves connecting themes to the present day and learning about Jewish life before the war. It includes videos of a survivor and a liberator, and a map of where Jewish people lived prior to deportation.

Centering survivors

Greene said that ten years ago, he would have been far more likely to compare the Holocaust to other events in history. Now, he said, he might look at similar themes across history but probably wouldn’t make the comparisons, which he says is not good practice.

“The Holocaust itself is a very unique event in human history,” he said. “So when you try to make direct comparisons, it can be fruitless to try to compare this genocide to other ones. Secondly, when that happens, it is very common for comparisons of pain to happen. And that’s just something we don’t want to do in education. We don’t want to sit here and look at it as was this genocide worse than others.”

Holocaust educators have always stressed the need to have survivors at the center of the lessons. While reading survivors’ accounts is strongly encouraged, Greene said, the use of video or audio accounts are recommended. 

“We always want to let them tell as much of the story as possible,” he said.

Greene’s students have grown up in an online and multimedia age, so video of Holocaust survivors humanizes them to students. Hearing and watching survivors tell their stories, he said, conveys emotions that students may not get from just reading passages or diaries.

“It helps to turn the Holocaust into a grouping of individual stories about the larger event,” he said.

Mollengarden said that simulations – where students are asked to play people who may have experienced the terror of Nazi persecution – are not recommended pedagogy. 

For example, students told to stand together in a small square, as a way of experiencing what it would have been like to be in a box car, lack the feeling of the life before that exact moment. 

“Do those students understand the terror before they were even put into the boxcars?” she said. “Do those students understand the conditions people were living in before they went into those boxcars? Do the students understand how families were torn apart, and some were in one place in one somewhere and another or that they did not know where they were going? I mean, you cannot, you cannot fathom this.”

Legislators over the last two years have introduced legislation to ban the teaching of “divisive concepts” in Alabama public schools. Among other provisions, the bill would ban teachers from instructing students about members of one group being inherently responsible for the suffering of another. The bills have not become law. 

Greene said that the teaching of “divisive concepts” does come up when he’s teaching the Holocaust. Teaching against hate and intolerance should not be divisive, Greene said, but he knows that other teachers have anxiety over the concept. Greene said that he has spoken with other teachers during workshops and had conversations with parents.

Rep. Danny Garrett, R-Trussville, a member of the Holocaust Commission, which provides some funding to the center, cosponsored the divisive concepts bill but said that he did not believe that the legislation would have impacted Holocaust education.

“The Holocaust, in my mind, is not a divisive concept,” he said.

Greene said that it’s important for teachers to be constantly updating and learning more about their practice and new ways to teach in the best way possible. For example, he implements Google maps in his teaching. He can “walk” his students down the street to the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam.

“Just like doctors, just like lawyers, just like accountants, just like newspaper reporters, we want to make sure that we are doing the absolute best job and most effective research-based methods for educating our students because that’s how we do the best job to prepare our kids for this ever-changing world,” he said.

Mollengarden also said the Center is a resource for teachers, and they can reach out for help or resources that the Center may not have but could provide access to.

“We want to be there for teachers, and I think that’s our primary goal,” she said.

What is lost

The Center houses an archive of letters, pictures and artifacts from the Holocaust. On a recent visit, archivist and librarian Rachel Jones Lopez pulled out two pairs of scissors from one of the boxes. 

One of the pairs of scissors is in good condition. She said the man who donated it said it was his grandmother’s, who came to the United States shortly before the Holocaust began. She was a seamstress, and the scissors were her livelihood.

The other pair of scissors were burned, and had another piece of metal, perhaps an eyeglass frame, melted into them. The donor found the burned scissors at Auschwitz in the 1970s or 80s in a place called “Canada,” where all of the items stolen from the Jewish people taken to Auschwitz were thrown. (The Nazis thought of Canada as a place of wealth, Jones Lopez said.)

The donor took the burned scissors because they were so similar to his grandmother’s.

“This is someone who left before things got bad, and this is someone who didn’t,” she said.

Jones Lopez says she thinks the tactile experience gives people a stronger connection to Alabama history.

She also pulled out postcards collected by a survivor when he was a young boy traveling through Europe. He was disguised as a Catholic orphan after being rescued by a French organization.

Most of the postcards had a place and a date. She also showed a book where he just collected the autographs of people as he traveled through Europe.

“So you can kind of trace where he was, that he just collected these postcards as he went,” she said.

Greene said sharing these stories mean a lot to him. 

“Students want to learn this material,” Greene said. “I really believe that when you sit down with kids, and you can have these hard conversations with them, but they ask incredible questions. And they are incredibly invested in learning this and students are more empathetic than we give them credit for sometimes, and they want to learn how to make the world a better place and they want to learn how to stand up against things like this.”

Greene said that one of the most impactful things he had learned from the Center was the small number of survivors left. Weil said there are 173 documented Holocaust survivors in Alabama who are still alive. Only a few survivors can still speak about their experiences. 

That, Greene said, has brought an urgency to his work. 

“Teachers are going to be really the keepers of this story from now on,” he said.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com. Follow Alabama Reflector on and .

The percentage of Alabama third graders reading on grade level decreased 2% between 2022 and 2023, according to Alabama Comprehensive Assessment Program (ACAP) scores released by the Alabama State Department of Education on Thursday.

76% of Alabama third graders read on third-grade level this year, compared with 78% last year.  In 2021, 77% of third graders read on grade level.

State Superintendent Eric Mackey said there are reasons that the numbers might not have changed as they hoped. The test has changed since last year to focus more on the science of reading, so the test includes components that were not previously tested.

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The superintendent also suggested that the COVID-19 pandemic might have had an effect. This year’s third graders were kindergarteners in the 2019-20 school year. After the first COVID-19 case in Alabama was confirmed that March, Alabama schools went to distance learning about two months before classes ended.

“Obviously, it’s not going the direction we want,” he said.

Alabama rose in rankings for the National Assessment of Education Progress, or “The Nation’s Report Card,” after many states lost ground due to the pandemic. However, the state still lags the country. 28% of Alabama fourth graders were deemed proficient or higher on the NAEP in comparison to the national average of 32%.

Second graders saw a smaller year-to-year decline. In 2023, 79% of second graders read at grade level, compared to 80% in 2022. In 2021, 78% of second graders read on grade level.

The third graders who make up these numbers are not going to be retained under the Literacy Act. Retention begins this upcoming school year.

Mackey said they are also planning to evaluate which textbooks were used in classrooms. He also said that some classrooms did not get textbooks until last November.

Bonnie Short, Alabama Reading Initiative director, said that the districts that had the greatest growth had used the LETRS (Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling) training. is a professional training course that offers instruction for teaching the science of reading.

Not all LETRS trained districts did well, however, so she stressed that it was about implementation. She said that many districts with growth had varied instructional programming.

“What was not varied was professional learning,” she said.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com. Follow Alabama Reflector on and .