Policy Update: Alabama: Sending a Message

Vital Statistics
127	Public school districts
1,340	Public schools
738,000	K-12 enrollment
38.6%	Minority students
23%	Children in poverty
13.1%	Students with disabilities
$3.3 billion	Annual K-12 expenditures (all revenue sources)

"If they do not meet improvement measures by this spring, they could be candidates for intervention," says Joseph B. Morton, the deputy state schools superintendent.

The state has not yet taken control of any schools. But the accountability process is one measure by which Alabama is sending the message that it is serious about improving its chronically low-achieving schools.

State officials have stressed that intervention will be swift and sweeping, including the removal of the principal and close supervision of teachers with the possibility that ineffective ones will be fired after a year.

Schools are evaluated based on their scores on the Stanford Achievement Test-9th Edition. If most students score below the 40th percentile, a school is placed on "academic caution." If students score below the 23rd percentile, the school goes on "academic alert."

Another critical part of the accountability program is focused on high school students. Beginning with this school year's sophomore class, students face tough new graduation standards, with an exit exam geared toward 11th grade levels of knowledge.

"To our knowledge, that is the most rigorous requirement in the nation for core subjects," Morton says. "Our current graduation exam is essentially a basic-skills test at the 8th or 9th grade difficulty level."

This year's sophomores will take a preliminary version of the new test this spring, but that will not count as one of their four chances to pass the exit test. But if they pass one or more subject tests on the exam--in reading comprehension, language, mathematics, and science--they will get credit for that portion.

Some educators worry about how many students will not be able to pass the new exit exam. But state leaders stand by the tougher exam, saying that it's needed to prevent high school students from graduating without the skills needed in the modern economy.

The state's interest in accountability extends to report cards with letter grades for key data for all its schools. The education department's third such report cards went out last fall. They include indicators such as a school's scores on the high school exit exam, 5th and 7th grade writing tests, and college-admissions tests. Other indicators include the dropout rate and the percentage of teachers with bachelor's and master's degrees.

Alabama schools got an overall grade of C from Superintendent of Education Ed Richardson. "It's a mixed review," he said in releasing the report cards in November. "I'm extremely pleased that in every subject tested we have exceeded the national average on the Stanford Achievement Test for the second year in a row. However, I'm concerned that the percentage of students passing the graduation exam has leveled off or slightly decreased as shown on the report card, and our writing scores are low."

"They've gone over much better than we thought," he says. "There was great fear initially. But we had 112,000 hits on our Web site the month we came out with them."

The accountability measures were the result of legislation or state school board action before 1998. Last year's legislative session was short on major school reform activity.

The legislature approved an 8.5 percent pay raise for teachers and a $550 million bond issue for capital improvements in public schools and colleges.

Lawmakers also passed a measure requiring a brief period of "quiet reflection" at the start of the school day. Republican Gov. Fob James Jr. signed the bill into law, but he said no state legislation on prayer or a moment of silence was worthwhile without an amendment to the U.S. Constitution clarifying the religious-expression rights of students. (Such an amendment failed in a U.S. House vote last spring.)

The governor lost an intense re-election bid in November to Lt. Gov. Don Siegelman, a Democrat. Siegelman defeated James by emphasizing economic development and a state lottery that would pay for college scholarships, prekindergarten, and other programs.

Dean Argo, the spokesman for the Alabama Education Association, said the teachers' group, an affiliate of the National Education Association, made no endorsement in the gubernatorial election because it considered both candidates friendly to public education.

"Fob James probably did more education reform in four years than any other [Alabama] governor," Argo said. "We're very hopeful that the reforms that have taken place will go the next step."