Tag: Alabama public school
Lawmakers: Schools Unfairly Hurt by Report Cards’ Treatment of Non-English Speakers
On the most recent state-mandated school report card, Russellville City Schools had a graduation rate of almost 96% and its score for academic growth — improvements made by students — was an impressive 99.46. Ninety-one percent of students were considered college and career ready, better than the state average of 75%, and it had a low chronic absenteeism rate.
Still, the system is labeled a “B,” largely because of its performance in academic achievement, a category of the report card based on students’ performance on a standardized test.
Of Russellville City Schools’ nearly 2,500 students, more than 600 are English language learners who are not proficient in the language.
“That’s 23% of my students who can’t read the test,” Superintendent Heath Grimes said. “We’re giving 660 students a test they can’t read.” Read more.
ProPublica: How Jeff Sessions Helped Kill Equitable School Funding in Alabama
(The U.S. Senate confirmed Jeff Sessions as the next U.S. attorney general Wednesday on a vote of 52-47.)
In the early 1990s, children across Alabama’s large rural stretches still attended faltering public schools, some with exposed wiring and rainwater leaking into classrooms. The education was in disrepair, too. Teachers couldn’t assign homework for lack of textbooks. A steel mill announced it would no longer hire local high school graduates because most tested below the eighth grade level. In short, Alabama’s most economically disadvantaged students, primarily black children and those with disabilities, were missing out on a basic education.
Then, for a moment, change seemed possible. A civil-rights lawsuit challenging the system for funding Alabama’s schools succeeded, and the state’s courts in 1993 declared the conditions in the poor schools a violation of Alabama’s Constitution. Gov. Guy Hunt, who had battled the litigation, accepted defeat, and vowed to work with the courts to negotiate a solution for equitably funding all of Alabama’s schools.
“This is a unique and timely opportunity to make historic improvements in Alabama’s public schools for our children,” Hunt said at a news conference in 1993, “and we will not miss this opportunity.”
