Tool for Comparing Performance on Alabama Public School Standardized Testing
The State Department of Education released the results of the Alabama Comprehensive Assessment Program (ACAP) in August. PARCA provides this internet-based data visualization tool to help educators and the general public to view their local results and to understand them in the context of peer school systems and the state as a whole. ACAP standardized […]
How Alabama Education Spending Compares
According to PARCA’s annual Public Opinion Survey, Alabamians of all political identities regularly cite education as the most important service provided by the state government. Better K-12 educational outcomes are correlated with stronger individual economic outcomes and more productive economies overall. Printable PDF report available here Serving over 710,000 students, Alabama’s public K-12 education system […]
New PARCA Education Research Center opens with statewide survey on school funding and choice – Alabamians say schools are underfunded and split evenly on the CHOOSE Act.
The Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama has launched the PARCA Education Research Center, a dedicated center within PARCA that houses the organization’s longstanding education analysis and expands it into a sustained, independent research program on the questions now facing Alabama’s policymakers and school leaders. The Center opens with the release of the 2026 Alabama […]
Alabama Sees Third-Grade Reading Progress Slow
Use the tabs to move between different views of the data and use the menus to focus in on the systems, schools, or subjects that you are most interested in. After multiple years of progress, Alabama third grade reading performance plateaued in 2026, with 11.8% of students scoring under the grade-level benchmark, roughly matching the […]
Graduation and Readiness Rates Continue to Rise
Use the tabs to move between different views of the data and use the menus to focus in on the systems, schools, or subjects that you are most interested in. Seniors in the graduating class of 2025 set records on two measures: 93% of seniors graduated on time four years after entering in 9th grade and 91% […]
Fewer 2025 High School Grads Passed Workplace Readiness Test
Use the tabs to move between different views of the data and use the menus to focus in on the systems, schools, or subjects that you are most interested in. Despite the increasing emphasis on college and career readiness in Alabama high schools, fewer students are earning work-readiness certifications through the standardized test known as […]
Houston County: Building A System for Success
The Houston County School System ranks 129th out of 140 school systems in Alabama in per-pupil expenditures. More than half its students — 57% — qualify as economically disadvantaged, slightly above the state average. And yet, Houston County outperformed every other county school system in Alabama on the 2025 ACAP, the state standardized test, in […]
ACT Scores Edge Down; Struggle to Recover from the Pandemic Continues
Use the tabs to move between different views of the data and use the menus to focus in on the systems, schools, or subjects that you are most interested in. The average ACT score for 2025 Alabama public high school graduates decreased slightly compared to 2024, stalling what had been an incremental recovery from a […]
Keys to Success in College and Career Readiness
This spring, all Alabama high school graduates will have to earn a marker of college and/or career readiness in order to graduate.1 In this installment of PARCA’s Keys to Success series, we visit Opp High School, which has been one of the state’s most successful schools at producing college and career-ready graduates. In fact, for […]
PARCA Partners with VOICES on the 2025 Alabama Kids Count Data Book
VOICES for Alabama’s Children published the 2025 Alabama Kids Count Data Book yesterday. For the 10th year in a row, PARCA worked with VOICES as a data partner for the project. Since 1994, the Alabama Kids Count Data Book has documented and tracked the health, education, safety, and economic security of children at the state and county levels. […]