Alabama saw record-breaking gains on the Nation’s Report Card this year, but state leaders say more targeted efforts – and more money – are needed to sustain recent progress.

“Even though we’re seeing more growth than the rest of the country, we’re still seeing many students who are struggling,” State Superintendent Eric Mackey said.

Over the past five years, Alabama has put more than half a billion dollars toward historic reading and math reforms, which leaders believe are now yielding promising results, especially for younger students.

Now the questions: How to extend progress to more students, and how much will it cost?

With the legislative session underway this week, education advocates are hopeful that recent test scores will garner more support for programs aimed at older and high-needs students.

“We’ve got good budgets, and they’re stable, and we’re working on keeping Alabama on the path that it’s on,” Gov. Kay Ivey told AL.com last week. “We’re convinced that we’re on the right path to continue to improve our scores in reading and math.”

Alabama is one of only two states to exceed pre-pandemic achievement levels in both fourth grade math and reading on this year’s National Assessment of Educational Progress. The state also has made the highest gains in fourth grade math in the nation since 2019.

But results weren’t all positive. According to NAEP results,

• Eighth-grade scores continue to fall
• Gaps between students who are doing well and doing poorly on most tests are widening
• Across most subjects, white and wealthier students saw more growth than their counterparts

Addressing those gaps may require new programs and funding, experts say, but also a more concerted effort to make sure schools and systems are on board.

“I’m all for let’s celebrate for a minute,” said Shelley Vail-Smith, president of the Alabama Campaign for Grade-Level Reading. “And then let’s get back to work because we still have lots to do.”

Will more money help move the needle?

Finance Director Bill Poole revealed Ivey’s proposed budget Wednesday, which requests nearly $10 billion for local schools and education initiatives, a 6% increase from current allocations.

The governor’s proposal exceeds what the state department recently requested for K-12 schools, but because a large portion will go toward retirement and insurance costs, it won’t cover the entirety of recent requests for new student assessments, or programs for struggling readers, gifted students, school safety and school-based mental health.

Ivey’s proposal does, however, add more funding to expand the following programs:

• Alabama Reading Initiative: $152 million, up from $143 million
• Alabama Numeracy Act: $95 million, up from $68 million
• English Language Learners Program: $28.5 million, up from $18.5 million
• Alabama Summer and Afterschool Program: $17 million, up from $3 million

In the meantime, the state is considering a broader overhaul of how it funds public schools.

Pandemic relief funds and recent reading and math reforms brought historic infusions of money into Alabama’s schools. But with COVID funding now gone, lawmakers are turning their sights toward revamping the state’s decades-old school funding formula. Ivey proposed pulling $100 million out of a reserve fund to kickstart the program.

If approved, a proposed hybrid funding plan would expand targeted funding for high-poverty schools and students who typically need extra support, such as English learners and students with disabilities. Currently, just 1-2% of state school funds are dedicated to specific student groups.

“Obviously money makes a big difference, if the money’s targeted and strategically applied,” Mackey said. “I think what we’re going to see is strategic investment in the areas of the state and the students who are struggling the most. And when we look at these data, the students who are struggling, it kind of all lines up.”

Experts say success not only depends on how funds are spent, but how focused schools are on improving outcomes for students.

“As a taxpayer, as someone who’s a citizen, we’re pumping a lot of funds into schools,” said Vail-Smith. “And so when they don’t move, what’s our response?”

Education spending in Alabama grew by 50% since 2013, according to a recent analysis by Edunomics, an education research center at Georgetown University. But reading and math scores haven’t kept pace. Mississippi, in contrast, which like Alabama overhauled literacy in recent years, has delivered more growth for the dollar.

Edunomics Director Marguerite Roza said successful states have not only had longstanding reforms focused on reading and math, but were specific about how they communicated their message to school staff.

“There is no silver bullet,” she said. “There’s no, ‘I invested in X, and I can sit back and watch the outcomes go up.’ That just doesn’t happen.”

She added that some of the best results are coming from schools that are drilling down on data and tying incentives to specific skillsets.

“Giving the ceramics teacher a pay raise doesn’t do anything to the math scores,” she said. “So money is going to be tight, and we’re going to have to be more laser focused on what we’re trying to achieve with each incremental dollar.”

Targeting struggling readers, older students

Alabama’s Literacy and Numeracy Acts, which were passed in 2019 and 2022, focus on early-grade reading and math, while the NAEP measures deeper-level reading, analytical and comprehension skills. State leaders said they are optimistic that work to boost foundational skills will pay off as those students reach upper grades.

But in the meantime, many of the state’s middle schoolers are lagging behind.

“We still have so far to go in those early grades, but we’re on the right track,” Vail-Smith said. “However, we have kids who are trapped in those upper grades that we’re not really getting much help to them, and I think that is a huge tragedy.”

Just 21% of Alabama’s eighth graders were proficient in reading, compared to 28% of fourth graders. In math, the gap is even starker: 18% of eighth graders scored at or above proficiency this year, compared to 37% of fourth graders (Can’t see the chart? View it here).

Bonnie Short, who heads the Alabama Reading Initiative, said the state is working to expand coaching opportunities for parents, teachers and administrators this year. They also are working to boost the number of staff who are trained to work with students with reading disabilities and will closely monitor students who struggled on third-grade reading tests.

“If we don’t keep to the spirit of the law, we’re not going to accomplish what we need to do,” she told board members at a retreat last week. “It’s got to be about more than a check box.”

In math, the state has recently implemented a screener to gauge fractional reasoning skills in older students. About 220 schools now have a math coach, Mackey said, with a goal to expand to 640 coaches by 2027.

Mackey asked for $52 million – up from $5 million allocated this year – from the legislature to support older students with reading, with the possibility of adding a middle-level math program in the future. Ivey is proposing $10 million in supplemental funds to go toward the program.

“We always ask for the moon,” Mackey said, noting that he would use the proposed funding to focus on improving reading for fourth and fifth graders. “That’s certainly substantial from where we’ve been.”

Retaining staff

Money isn’t the only barrier to students’ success, leaders said. While the state has bolstered efforts to place specialized staff in schools, many are still struggling to hire or replace qualified classroom teachers.

“It’s leaving those classrooms short, and I’m just not going to sugarcoat it,” Karen Anderson, who leads the state’s Office of Math Instruction, told board members.

Alabama now has 140 certified academic language therapists, who are trained to help students with dyslexia and other reading disabilities. Those staff members “made a big difference” in schools during the pandemic, Mackey said, but he is bracing for change as COVID funds deplete.

“We are worried that a lot of these interventionists are not coming back because the ESSER funds are leaving and that it’ll be more difficult to sustain those gains,” he said.

Mackey noted that some schools were coming up with creative solutions to sustain those roles, like bringing in retirees to do the work part time. The governor is planning to grant a $600,000 budget request this year to train more CALTs and pay them a stipend once they’re in the classroom.

Mackey said he will also work to focus on improving student attendance in the upcoming year, and will likely see expanded funding for more out-of-school programs, such as summer learning and intersessions.

“As I’ve talked to the governor and I’ve talked to legislative leaders, they’ve made it very very clear that they want to figure out where the biggest problems are, where the most strugglers are, and they want to target any new resources in those areas, and that makes me really happy,” Mackey said. “It makes me also very hopeful about Alabama’s future, because I think that’s the right thing to do.”