Alabama Education Policy Primer

TOC	Table of Contents
Intro	Introduction by Kenneth K.Wong and James W. Guthrie
Ch. 1	Accountability, Assessments, and Standards
Ch. 2	Achievement
Ch. 3	Closing the Achievement Gap
Ch. 4	Finance and Funding
Ch. 5	Governance and Policymaking
Ch. 6	Math, Science and Technology
Ch. 7	No Child Left Behind (Elementary and Secondary Education Act)
Ch. 8	Reading and Writing
Ch. 9	School Choice
Ch. 10	School Leadership
Ch. 11	Teaching Quality
- - -	Education-ary

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Alabama Education Policy Primer Introduction

by Kenneth K.Wong, Ph.D., James W. Guthrie, Ph.D., Peabody Center for Education Policy, Vanderbilt University

A new era of educational accountability has transformed the agenda of public school reform. Building on the 1994 Improving America’s Schools Act, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) has its primary focus on the academic achievement of all students, particularly low-performing students in disadvantaged schools. NCLB requires states to establish and implement an accountability plan with well-defined standards for academic proficiency. It also requires states to hire highly qualified teachers who are trained in their instructional subject areas. Students are required to take annual tests in grades three through eight with results disaggregated by several subgroups, including racial and ethnic groups, special education students and English language learners. Additionally, NCLB allows for supplemental services and school transfers for students in schools identified as needing improvement. Clearly, achievement for all students must now be a primary objective of educational reform.

Alabama is well-positioned to meet the challenge of accountability as established in the federal NCLB legislation. At the time when NCLB was enacted, Alabama had begun to put in place a strong policy framework that aimed at raising school performance. The state’s accountability system put in place strong standards and has phased in student testing requirements (Wong 2004). Compared to other states, Alabama was a national leader in statewide standards in 2000-01 (Wong, Fordham, ACHIEVE). Alabama is phasing in student assessments in reading and math for grades 3-8 and 11 that will give policymakers an understanding of the status of student learning and what improvements need to be made.

Notwithstanding a strong accountability framework, Alabama faces tough challenges in its efforts toward meeting the goal of academic proficiency for all students in 2013-14. First, the social conditions pose a serious risk to school reform.According to the 2004 Kids Count Data Book published by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Alabama ranks 47 among the fifty states in terms of ten social indicators, which include percent of teens who are high school dropouts, percent of teens not attending school and not working, percent of children in poverty, and percent of families with children headed by a single person. Limited life chances outside of school will continue to constrain the schooling efforts to improve student performance.

Second, the state’s political history has frustrated school reform. Many political observers would point out that the debate over education reform in Alabama is shaped by the broader political context of the state, which may not be structurally distinct from one hundred years ago when the state constitution was written. An array of constitutional constraints in the structure of the gubernatorial office, the state legislature, and state education authorities tend to limit the terms of the debate over equitable and adequate funding, academic achievement, and teacher compensation, even though a new era of accountability is now upon the state.

Third, statewide leadership may need to broaden its public trust on school reform across the state. In recent years, governors from the two major political parties have tried without success in gaining public approval of school funding referenda. In 1998, Democratic Governor Don Siegelman won the gubernatorial race against Republican incumbent Fob James, Jr. with an education lottery — popular in neighboring Georgia — as his primary campaign issue but failed to receive public support for the proposal in a highly contested public vote. Three years later, in 2003, Republican Governor Bob Riley, who defeated his predecessor in a close race, proposed a series of tax restructuring proposals in a comprehensive reform package that was overwhelmingly defeated by the voters. In the end, neither governor could rally public support for funding school reform in Alabama.

Fourth, there is urgency in building capacity at all levels of the policy system so that successful strategies can be brought to a wider scale more rapidly. In the “Closing the Gap” series of its quarterly journal, “Working Toward Excellence,” the Alabama Best Practices Center has identified key lessons learned from high performing, high poverty schools in the state. Their “Secrets of Success” include strong professional leadership, high expectations, data-driven decision making, a passion for professional growth among teachers, parental engagement, and a collective conviction that they can succeed despite adverse social conditions (Volume 3, Numbers 1 & 2, 2003). Whether these promising lessons can be scaled up to districts and schools across the state constitutes a critical link to meeting the statewide accountability goals.

As an effort to begin to address the urgency in raising educational accountability in Alabama, the Peabody Center for Education Policy at Vanderbilt University is pleased to partner with the A+ Education Foundation to produce this inaugural edition of the Alabama Education Policy Primer. While the Primer must be seen as a work in progress, the two collaborating organizations have high hopes for the role that the Primer may play in the broader policy community. The Primer may serve as an analytic tool to engage policy makers and the public on school reform issues. It is designed as an open resource for legislators, senior state officials, members of local school boards, district administrators, practitioners, reporters and anyone who is interested in learning about the most pressing issues in K-12 education.

In the chapters that follow this introduction, a diverse group of policy researchers from Vanderbilt University and A+ Education Foundation will highlight the nature of various education issues, promising strategies, and the potential steps toward scaling up in the state of Alabama.

This collaborative project is designed to make a contribution to the current statewide efforts to improve student performance.While the social conditions and public trust remain a key challenge, there is a window of opportunity for building broad-based support in Alabama’s education system. The high expectations of No Child Left Behind have gained the attention of the public, the media, and policy makers to focus on accountability.With this first edition of the Primer, we hope that a collective enterprise of researchers, policy makers, practitioners, and an informed public will work together to advance the new accountability agenda in Alabama.