Fifty Alabama schools received special recognition during Thursday’s Alabama Board of Education meeting for their school report card grades, and improvements in student success, in the 2021-22 school year.

The recognition came alongside a little cash for schools in Birmingham, Huntsville, Haleyville, Lee County and Talladega County, among others. See the full list below.

Lawmakers created the Legislative School Performance Program in 2012 as part of the law creating school and district report cards, but didn’t fund it until 2020.

Beginning in 2020, lawmakers gave the Alabama State Department of Education $250,000 annually to award to schools showing academic excellence.

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The schools that were recognized were in one of two groups – top report card grades and most improved report card grades statewide.

The most improved statewide group is new this year. Schools on the most improved list raised their letter grade on the state report card by one letter grade.

Schools in the most-improved category received $8,000 each and the top 25 schools received $2,000 each. In previous years, the top 25 schools received $5,000 each.

Alabama Superintendent Eric Mackey said they added the most improved category this year to highlight the hard work schools are doing to improve learning. Improvement is important to recognize, he said.

“Some of them are most improved from pretty low,” Mackey said, “and some were middle, but they’ve moved way on up.”

Representatives of the schools attended the board meeting in Montgomery.

These are the 25 schools that improved their report card scores the most of all schools in the state. Click here if you are unable to see the table.

The 2022 report card grades were released in November.

The top 25 schools in the state are in the table below. Click here if you are unable to see the table.