2018 College-Going Rates for Alabama High Schools
PARCA is sensitive to the challenges of the Coronavirus pandemic. We are responding with reports we hope are helpful. It is also important to continue moving forward. History tells us that disease has always been a part of our lives and that time is on our side. We will eventually win this war. This brief […]
Help Wanted: Alabama’s Labor Force Participation Problem
Alabama has record low unemployment, one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country. And yet, the percentage of Alabamians actually working is lower than almost any other state. This seeming paradox explains, in part, why Alabama has lower per capita income than most other states and higher rates of poverty, despite those historically low […]
2019 Test Results for State Schools Show Little Change in Student Proficiency Levels
Alabama is scheduled to implement its new state education tests this spring. In the meantime, statewide results from the Scantron assessment in 2019 have been released by the Alabama State Department of Education. They show little change from 2018. In both years, less than half of Alabama public school students in grades three through eight […]
Alabama’s Third Century
Alabama spent 2019 looking back at its first 200 years of statehood. In 2020, it seems appropriate to look forward to the next 100. PARCA’s annual meeting, held Friday at Birmingham’s Harbert Center, was inspired by that theme: Taking lessons from the past in order to chart the way to a better future. Along with […]
Alabama May be Catching on but Not Enough to Catch up
New estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau show Alabama attracting more migrants from other U.S. states, but the state likely doesn’t have enough population momentum to avoid losing a congressional seat after this year’s Census count. Alabama added 15,504 residents between July 1, 2018, and July 1, 2019, the period covered by the estimates. Only […]
Mississippi’s Progress Not a Surprise; It was Part of a Plan
When the 2019 results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) were released last week, the good news was that fourth-grade students in our neighbor state, Mississippi, scored at the national average in both reading and math and that eighth graders there made significant gains in reading and math as well. On all four […]
ACT WorkKeys – An Assessment of Workforce Readiness Among High School Graduates in Alabama
The WorkKeys Assessment is a standardized test given to 12th graders in Alabama public schools. The assessment is meant to measure skills relevant to many of today’s work environments. In 2018: 64 percent of Alabama high school graduates in 2018 were deemed workforce ready as measured by the ACT WorkKeys assessment, a year over year […]
College and Career Readiness in Alabama
In 2012, the Alabama State Board of Education adopted Plan 2020, which embraced a vision for the state education system led by the motto: “Every child a graduate. Every graduate prepared.” The plan called for raising Alabama’s high school graduation rate to 90 percent, while at the same time producing graduates who are better prepared […]
First Class Pre-K Lowers Discipline Rates During Students’ Middle and High School Years
Children who have participated in Alabama’s First Class Pre-K program, a voluntary, public early education program, are about half as likely to be involved in disciplinary problems throughout their school careers as students who didn’t participate in First Class Pre-K, and the most pronounced differences between the two groups are evident in the students’ middle and […]
Practices of Top Gaining Schools on the ACT
After publishing ACT results for the graduating Class of 2018, PARCA contacted several of the schools and systems in Alabama that showed the largest improvement in average composite ACT scores between 2015 and 2018. PARCA wanted to know what, if anything, the schools did, either specifically for the ACT or in general, to improve students’ […]