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State Department Violated Federal Disability Laws, Test Accommodation Policy Must Be Rewritten

The Alabama State Department of Education must rewrite the policy outlining who qualifies for testing accommodations after the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) found the current policy violates rights of students with disabilities. That mandate...
Posted On Sep 26 2016
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When Test Data Is Used to Illuminate Hard Work & Success

What if we used test data not to punish, but to illuminate hard work and success? Well, that’s what we did. Here’s the story, published on collaborative partner BirminghamWatch’s web site this morning. At Hueytown Elementary School, Love and Data Tack...
Posted On Dec 17 2015
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ACT Aspire Results by School. On a Map.

[This article was updated on September 29, 2016, to include Per Pupil Expenditures for FY15 on the map.] A couple of weeks ago, we shared two years of district-level ACT Aspire results. On a map. This time, we’re diving into two years of school-level results. On a map....
Posted On Nov 25 2015
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Alabama’s ACT Aspire Results. On a Map. Two Years’ Worth.

The Alabama State Department of Education released the results of the 2015 ACT Aspire results on Thursday. What follows are a series of maps. And tables. Read the directions. Click the buttons. To find your individual school’s results, click here. For the results that...
Posted On Nov 13 2015
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Achievement Results for Students in Special Education

With the Alabama State Department of Education (ALSDE) proposing changes to the way parents can file complaints when they believe their children are not receiving appropriate special education services and accommodations, it was time to take a look at the 2013-2014 ACT Aspire...
Posted On Oct 11 2015
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ACT Aspire Resources

School districts were provided with the 2014-2015 ACT Aspire results for their students in July. Some school districts have released those results to their students, while others have not yet done so. As such, I thought it useful to gather some ACT Aspire resources here. The...
Posted On Sep 09 2015
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Here Are the Standardized Tests Our Schoolchildren Will Take This School Year

Here’s a look at the state-mandated standardized testing for students in grades three through twelve (ninth graders take no state-mandated standardized tests). The chart does not reflect any testing required by local school district and local school officials. There are a...
Posted On Aug 24 2015
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Spring Break Season Has Begun!

Spring Break begins for two Alabama school districts this week: Alexander City and Pike County. Another four districts take the week off the following week. The bulk of Alabama’s 136 school districts take off either the week of March 23 (60 districts) or March 30 (63...
Posted On Mar 08 2015
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ACT Aspire: Interactive Tables

NOTE: The ALSDE published an updated spreadsheet on February 17, 2015. None of the data points changed except that those districts with zero or less than one percent of students scoring at a particular level (I, II, III, or IV) are now represented with “<1%”. We...
Posted On Jan 21 2015
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ACT Aspire and PLAN Results: Disaggregated

Here they are. The numbers. The spreadsheet. The graphs. The Alabama State Department of Education quietly posted the results in a new section of their web site. District-level results began leaking out late last year, sparking conversations in an erratic manner, not really...
Posted On Jan 21 2015
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What You Wanted to Read About Education in 2014

Time to look back and…keep looking ahead. Here is what you were most interested in reading about in 2014. #1 – ACT Aspire Results: What to Do with Them – September 25, 2014 [All articles on the ACT Aspire] #2 – The Principal, the Test Scores, and the...
Posted On Jan 07 2015
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What the ACT Aspire Results Really Show

The agenda for the Alabama State Board of Education work session for December 11 shows the second topic to be “Student Assessment Report”. While it hasn’t been confirmed, some of us are hoping that State Superintendent Dr. Tommy Bice will share the long-awaited...
Posted On Dec 10 2014
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ACT Aspire Results: What to Do with Them

Word on the street is that the ACT Aspire results have been released to schools and districts…and will be heading home to students’ families in the near future. The ACT Aspire reading and math tests were administered to students in the 3rd through 8th grades in the...
Posted On Sep 25 2014
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State-Mandated Testing for This School Year

The 2014-2015 state-mandated testing schedule has arrived.  Two new things for this year: (1) the Alabama Science Assessment (ASA), given in grades 5 and 7, is being replaced by the ACT Aspire Science exam in spring 2015. The decision to use the exam was made back in 2013 when...
Posted On Sep 08 2014
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Is Using Test Results a Good Way to Compare Schools?

In this age of accountability, test results, and cool comparison tools, it is all too easy to reduce schools to test scores. But is this really a good way to compare schools? After all, that test score is only the result of one test on one day. We intuitively know that schools...
Posted On Aug 21 2014
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ACT Assessments – What You Need to Know

Annual standardized testing season is here. The ACT Aspire and ACT Plus Writing will be administered to Alabama’s public school students later this month. Here’s what you need to know. ACT has a full suite of tests to assess where a student’s achievement is in...
Posted On Apr 09 2014
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ACT with Writing Is Back On Again

Proving once again it’s who you know, the ACT with Writing has been un-uninstated, or re-instated, for the 2013-2014 school year. It will be administered to all Alabama public school 11th graders on April 23, 2014. Makeup tests will be administered on May 7, 2014. In a memo...
Posted On Aug 07 2013
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New Tests for Our Children in Alabama’s K-12 Public Schools

UPDATE 9/6/14: Tests have been updated again. Go here to see the latest. UPDATE 3/9/14: Found the most recent updated list, revised November 15, 2013, of all standardized tests for Alabama’s children. Here’s a link to the PDF and the image is displayed below. Two new...
Posted On Apr 16 2013
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