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The Future of Public Education Tour – Make Plans to Attend

Here is your chance to engage with the state superintendent of education. Alabama’s State Superintendent Dr. Tommy Bice kicks off a 12-stop tour across the state to share information about public education initiatives on Tuesday, August 26, at 6 p.m. at Lee High School in...
Posted On Aug 25 2014
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Testing – How Much and What’s It Used For?

Much of the criticism of Alabama’s College and Career Ready Standards (CCRS) and the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), which are contained within the CCRS, has centered around standardized testing: how much testing and how the results will be used. So let’s look at...
Posted On Mar 10 2014
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So Who Is Sponsoring the Senate Takeover of K-12 Public Education?

Three bills have been introduced to usurp the power granted to the State Board of Education (SBOE) and State Superintendent: SB380 – Provides for termination of English Language Arts and Math courses of study and revert to prior courses of study. SB438 – Calls for...
Posted On Mar 09 2014
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Senate’s Attempt to Takeover K-12 Education: Public Hearing Tuesday, March 11

Thirteen members of the Alabama Senate have come together to attempt what can only be called a takeover of K-12 public education. They all are sponsors of SB443. A public hearing has been called for Tuesday, March 11, at 10:00 a.m. in Montgomery in Room 304 (which does not have...
Posted On Mar 06 2014
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Graduation Rates Across Alabama – The Class of 2013

Graduating from high school results in a lifetime of higher pay. 80% of Alabama’s students who entered high school in the fall of 2009 graduated in the spring of 2013. State Superintendent Dr. Tommy Bice shared the good news about Alabama’s graduation rate, the...
Posted On Feb 25 2014
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Tools to Measure and Compare Students and Schools in Alabama

As legislators grapple with how much money to allocate to our public schools, and the public grapples with whether public schools are the right place to educate their children, and educators work to prove their effectiveness, one thing has become crystal clear: we need better...
Posted On Jan 20 2014
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Where to Get Daily News About K-12 Education in Alabama

Where do you get your daily news for K-12 public education in Alabama? Do you wait for it to come across your internet feed? Hunt for it on al.com or your local newspaper or digital news site? Check your Twitter feed? Coverage of K-12 education news is inconsistent in Alabama,...
Posted On Dec 22 2013
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Test Scores? Who Cares?

The used-to-be-counted-as-something-but-don’t-matter-this-year standardized test scores from Spring 2013 are now available to view. But don’t attempt any analysis unless you have a few extra hours to compile your own spreadsheets. The standardized testing ritual is...
Posted On Nov 17 2013
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Meaningful Partnerships, Part 2: Get Informed, Get the Data

Anytime you are forming a new partnership, you learn all you can about that partner, right? If it’s a business partnership, you learn how successful the partner has been, the techniques used to make them successful, and so on. The same path needs to be taken to forming a...
Posted On Aug 29 2013
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Notes from the State Board of Education Meeting and Work Session – July 9

Here is the full writeup on the Tales from the Meeting blog. We have a new head of the State Board of Education: Dr. Charles Elliott. Even though Governor Bentley is technically the President, he rarely attends. Ella Bell was re-elected as President pro Tem. Calhoun County got...
Posted On Jul 10 2013
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Alabama’s Not the Only One Implementing Achievement Measures by Subgroups

By now, you’ve most likely learned of the approval of Alabama’s waiver from simplistic pass/fail measures under No Child Left Behind (NCLB). You’ve probably also caught wind of the controversy surrounding setting performance measures and benchmarks, known as...
Posted On Jul 08 2013
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What You Need to Know About Alabama’s Waiver and How Student Achievement Will Now Be Measured

As the news spreads about Alabama’s Plan 2020 and the pieces contained within, it has become painfully obvious that very few Alabamians, even those in education, understood what was actually in the Plan and the details of how student achievement would be measured…the...
Posted On Jul 03 2013
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Alabama’s Waiver Part 3 – Rewarding, Supporting, and Grading Our Schools

[Click here to view as a printable PDF] This is the third and final installment in a series looking at the accountability provisions in Alabama’s waiver that rids us of the old way of calculating Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). In Part 1 and Part 2, we learned about various...
Posted On Jun 26 2013
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AYP As We Know It Is Over – Alabama’s Waiver Part 1

[Click here to view as a printable PDF] This is Part 1 of a three-part series. Part 2 is here. Part 3 is here (added links 3/9/14). The ALSDE announced on Friday that the U.S. Department of Education (USDOE) has granted its ESEA Flexibility Waiver Request (the...
Posted On Jun 24 2013
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The State Board of Education Work Session: Tell Us How You Really Feel

C’mon, y’all. Tell us how you really feel. If you want to know how State Board of Education (SBOE) members really feel about the recently-concluded 2013 legislative session, look no further than the video of the May 23 Work Session. Here are my notes on the meeting,...
Posted On Jun 03 2013
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The Alabama Accountability Act – Part 2 – Tax Credits and Transfer Options

UPDATE: Changes were made to the AAA in June 2015. Here is a link to the update. The Alabama Accountability Act (AAA) has three parts: the Flexibility portion, the Tax Credit/Transfer portion, and the Educational Scholarship Grant Organization/Scholarship portion. Please read...
Posted On May 28 2013
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Where Does Your School System Rank?

What did you think of when you read the title of this post? Where does your school system rank? Did you immediately think of sports? Well, think again. I’m talking academic rankings. It’s so very important to be #1, particularly in the sports world. Being #1 in the...
Posted On May 13 2013
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How Do You Define and Measure Success in Your Neighborhood Schools?

It’s simple to measure success on a football or baseball field. The higher the number of wins, the more successful the team, right? You win a trophy or a championship at the end of the season, and you know you’re successful. But how do you measure success in your...
Posted On May 10 2013
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Standardized Testing Time Is Here – Why Do We Bother With Testing Anyway?

My children’s introduction to standardized testing was in the spring of 2002. I recall being asked by my youngsters why they had to take “those” (standardized) tests in elementary school. They didn’t receive any grades for the tests, so what was the point?...
Posted On May 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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When School Districts Don’t Share Information They’re Required to Share with Us

I spent my Sunday looking through Alabama’s school district web sites (jealous?) for a set of documents called “Accountability Reports”, which are three sets of reports that each of Alabama’s school districts are required to make available to the media,...
Posted On Apr 10 2013
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Race-Based Performance Targets – It’s Happening Here in Alabama, Too

NBC News broadcast a story on Thursday, March 7, about the race-based performance targets that many states have moved to in search of a waiver from No Child Left Behind 100% proficiency targets.  Alabama has submitted performance targets based on race, socioeconomic, disability,...
Posted On Mar 18 2013
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League of Women Voters of Greater Tuscaloosa Presentation Materials Posted Here

I had the pleasure of sharing information about the changes that happened, and are happening, from the top-down in Alabama’s K-12 schools with the League of Women Voters of Greater Tuscaloosa on January 8.  Just wanted to share this powerpoint with y’all as well. The...
Posted On Jan 20 2013
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2012 Year in Review for Alabama’s K-12 Public Schools

It might be simpler to post what didn’t change in 2012.  Students, teachers, principals, curriculum….all have had major changes this year.  Many more changes are in the works, but have not yet been approved and/or implemented.  And while I know that many of these...
Posted On Jan 01 2013
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If Not AYP to Measure Progress, Then What?? Alabama’s ESEA Waiver Request

Let’s face it.  Schools and education officials never liked AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress). The pass/fail method placed what many believed was an unfair label on schools who failed to meet the benchmarks set under No Child Left Behind (NCLB).  As we inched toward the...
Posted On Dec 04 2012
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