Alabama’s public schools and school systems will be getting their first-ever letter grade report cards Thursday.

The letter grades and performance information for each of Alabama’s 1,325 public schools and 173 school systems will be posted at the Alabama State Department of Education’s website by 10 a.m., said Michael Sibley, director of communications for the department.

It’s been a decade since Alabama last issued official report cards for state schools. Report cards were printed and shipped to schools for the 2006-2007 school year, in part to satisfy requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind law.

The letter grade report cards, based on test results and other measures of yearly progress, are a new requirement of the Alabama Accountability Act, passed by the state Legislature in 2012. The act also required the identification and release of a list of the state’s “failing schools,” those with students testing at the lowest 6 percent on the previous year’s ACT Aspire standardized tests.

With Thursday’s report cards, Sibley said, “The schools will receive a letter grade and each school system will receive a letter grade, both based on their performance on the ACT Aspire, plus indicators including chronic absenteeism, academic achievement and growth. For schools with a grade 12, graduation rate and college and career readiness are also factors,” he said.

Sibley said most of the data included in the report cards has been available to the public online previously.

“The difference is, this is the first time all this information is put in the same place and in a simple dashboard format that is easy to understand, and, of course, has a letter grade attached.”

State Sen. Terri Collins, R-Decatur, who sponsored the accountability act, has said the multiple measures and indicators, plus test results, on the new report cards give a well-rounded view of what is happening in state schools and reflect opinions from educators. The purpose behind the report cards and letter grades, she said, is for each school and system to know how it is performing and to set goals to improve.

Most of the performance measures in the report cards are based on student scores on the ACT Aspire standardized test system, which the state will not be using in 2018. The state has not selected a new test to use in the future.