Cooperating for Growth in the Wiregrass
Before the Coronavirus pandemic, economic developers in Southeast Alabama recognized the advantages of pulling together as a region rather than each city and county trying to recruit new industry independently. Wanting to take cooperation to a new level, they asked PARCA to investigate how other regional economic development organizations across the state and across the […]
Alabama Tax Revenues Remarkably Resilient in 2020
Tax revenue flowing into Alabama’s General Fund and Education Trust Fund held up surprisingly well in 2020 fiscal year in spite of the Coronavirus pandemic, thanks to an extremely strong state economy preceding the pandemic and a flood of federal aid that followed the pandemic’s arrival. Remarkably, both Alabama’s General Fund and its ETF grew […]
Raising Educational Attainment by Keeping College Graduates
Only about half the students who earn four-year degrees from Alabama colleges are found to be working in the state five years after graduation, according to a new study by the Alabama Commission on Higher Education. The study, which compared graduation records to labor force data, found that 62% of in-state students who earned a […]
Agenda for Alabama’s Third Century: Raising Educational Attainment for All
While Alabama continues to gain on other states in the percentage of adults with a high school diploma, it is falling further behind the national average when it comes to the percentage of the population with a bachelor’s degree or better. This is important because higher educational attainment is correlated with higher rates of labor […]
Alabama First Class Pre-K Research Gains National Exposure
The National Institute of Early Education Research (NIEER) at Rutgers University has recognized research on the persistence of the impact of First Class Pre-K. Researchers from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, PARCA, ThinkData, and the Alabama Department of Early Childhood Education published a peer-reviewed article in the International Journal of Child Care and Education […]
COVID-19 and Public Education: Lessons Learned Last Spring
Alabama schools are set to re-open in August, with plans for local systems to offer educational services through traditional on-campus schools, remote on-line education, and a hybrid of traditional and remote learning options. With the novel Coronavirus still spreading, all plans are subject to change. Already, the state’s largest system, Mobile County, and the Selma […]
School Discipline and Race in Alabama
Black students face harsher disciplinary measures than white students for similar offenses, a PARCA review of public school disciplinary records has found. Meanwhile, Alabama is one of few states nationally, and the only state in the Southeast, that has no uniform statewide policies requiring due process when students are suspended or expelled. Suspensions have been […]
2019 ACT WorkKeys: Preparing Students for Work in a Time of Uncertainty
High school seniors and recent graduates are preparing to enter a workforce that has been disrupted, hopefully only temporarily. In a matter of weeks, the nation has gone from record low unemployment to levels not seen since the Depression. Employers are adapting to a new set of work conditions and the demand for new skills […]
College Freshmen in Need of Remedial Education
The percentage of first-time college students from Alabama public high schools assigned to remedial courses in math and English has continued to drop overall and, in the most recent data available, dropped dramatically for those attending two-year colleges, according to data from the Alabama Commission on Higher Education (ACHE). Graduates studying in four-year colleges needing […]
Alabama ACT Scores for the Class of 2019
Alabama public high school students’ performance on the ACT was down slightly in 2019 for the second straight year, after hitting a high point in 2017. Alabama students’ average score was 18.9 on a 36-point scale, compared to 19.1 in 2018 and 19.2 in 2017. Over the past five years, Alabama composite and subject scores […]