Preliminary state report‑card shows small improvement; data to be published today

The Alabama State Department of Education reported preliminary accountability results to the State Board of Education, saying the state's overall numeric report‑card average increased from 85 to 87 and that district- and school-level data would be published publicly after districts had a chance to review the results.

Dr. Marcus Vandiver, who presented the preliminary figures, said federal-reporting indicators improved across nearly every category except 'growth,' where the state missed a small change by a hundredth of a point. “You'll see that we've gone from an 85 to an 87,” he said, and added that the department had seen increases in A and B grades and decreases in C, D and F counts.

Vandiver told the board the department follows a compliance-monitoring schedule and had allowed superintendents a two-week window to review the materials before the public release. Board members asked when and where the data would appear; department staff said the report card would be available on alabamaachieves.org under Reports and Data and that the public posting would be accessible at the announced release time.

Board members discussed plans to recognize high-performing and most‑improved districts at a future meeting. Department staff also noted the workload involved in preparing district- and school-level exports and said they would provide district-specific copies if the full compilation file proved too large for immediate attachment to board materials.

The department welcomed questions and indicated staff will return to the board in February to honor top-performing and most‑improved schools after the initial release.