A small child pulling children’s books off a bookshelf. A new report from the Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama (PARCA) found the number of third graders who scored proficient on a reading test went from 53% in 2023 to 62% this year. (Getty Images)
Alabama student performance in English Language Arts improved significantly in 2024, especially at the third grade level, according to a new analysis from the Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama (PARCA).
The analysis of Alabama Comprehensive Assessment Program (ACAP) results released Friday found ELA performance improved at every grade level in grades 3-8. Third grade students who scored proficient on the test went from 53% in 2023 to 62% this year.
“It’s unusual for performance to jump that much from one year to the next,” the analysis said.
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PARCA said that multiple factors likely contributed to the jump, including the implementation of a reading test required to promote a student to fourth grade; the compounding impact of the state’s goal to improve early literacy and the end of disruptions from the coronavirus pandemic, allowing for more uninterrupted schooling than in recent years.
“We saw reading scores earlier in the summer that showed an increase in reading sufficiency, but this shows that the schools are not just getting kids over that reading sufficiency line, but are moving students up to proficiency and beyond,” said Thomas Spencer, senior research associate at PARCA.
PARCA wrote that a possible reason for the jump was that the English Language Arts, which included a subsection testing for sufficiency in reading, mattered this past year. Students would be retained if they did not score above the threshold in the reading section.
The Literacy Act
The 2019 Alabama Literacy Act aims to improve literacy and have students on grade level by the end of third grade. The law’s retention portion, where students would not be advanced to the next grade if they did not score above the needed score on a reading test, was implemented this year.
“But as of this spring, teachers, parents, and students knew that the students had to clear the bar,” the PARCA analysis wrote. “Even though that sufficiency threshold was lower than the proficiency bar, the higher stakes likely increased attention and effort on the third-grade ELA test as a whole.”
PARCA wrote that less disruption from the coronavirus pandemic could also have contributed to higher scores. The students tested this past spring for third grade had normal years first through third grade.
“Finally, and fundamentally, the rise in third-grade ELA scores and ELA scores across the board indicates that the state’s investment in reading instruction is paying off,” they wrote. “The passage of the Literacy Act brought with it a renewed investment in early grades reading instruction. Funding for the Alabama Reading Initiative has more than doubled to over $100 million annually.”
Sen. Arthur Orr, R-Decatur, the chair of the Senate Finance and Taxation Education Committee, said in an interview Friday that legislators are close to fully funding the Literacy Act, but they still need to hire coaches for math. He said funding for literacy is based on need, and he hasn’t seen the State Department of Education’s budget request yet.
Orr also said there is concern about the slowing growth of the state Education Trust Fund (ETF) budget.
“We squirreled away a good bit of money to help ameliorate any type of funding loss,” he said.
The analysis said that the funding supported teacher training in the science of reading; K-3 schools having a reading coach; state-trained reading specialists to support schools; struggling readers being identified as early as kindergarten with parent notification and developing an intervention plan; and struggling readers being screened for challenges and being supported by specialists.
“We’re hoping that a perfect positive storm of factors, and I would hope that they kind of continue to increase,” Spencer said.
He said that he hopes the focus and expertise will continue to increase the scores, but that the state is weaker to an extent in the upper level grades. Spencer said that they have not seen the same scale of improvement in the upper grades, but he thinks the education establishment is aware of that and is hoping to spread the reading progress.
Science of reading
PARCA wrote that there was a concern that the science of reading, which includes an emphasis on phonics along with other skills, would help struggling readers but would slow progress for students who learned reading skills with more ease. But scores this year show a higher percentage of students exceeding grade level proficiency and a higher percentage of students meeting grade level expectations. The percentage of students approaching grade level but still below the threshold was the one that decreased the most, from 40% in 2023 and 27% in 2024.
Spencer said that the results indicate that all students are benefiting from the science of reading instruction model.
“If we were just shoving kids over the lower reading sufficiency benchmark, just trying to get them over that hump and that wouldn’t be that great an accomplishment, but to see everybody, people migrating to reading proficiency, right, or English Language Arts proficiency, and even farther into above grade level proficiency, I think it just it’s a credit to educators to see them making this this progress,” he said.
The analysis also said that proficiency had increased among all student subgroups, with the highest gains for economically disadvantaged students, which increased by six percentage points over all grades and subjects. Black student proficiency increased by 3.4 percentage points, while white student proficiency increased by 2.1 percentage points and Hispanic student proficiency increased by one percentage point.
“Still, the gaps between whites, Blacks, and Hispanics remain wide, with white grade-level proficiency rates in the range of 20 percentage points higher in ELA and Math,” said the analysis. “Meanwhile, Asian students achieve proficiency rates that are 15 percentage points or more higher than Whites.”
Students scoring proficient had also increased in math in every grade except third grade, but the gains were not as drastic.
“The state’s roll out of its math improvement plan is at an earlier stage than the literacy plan,” the analysis wrote. “The Alabama Numeracy Act, which passed the Legislature in 2022, mimicked many of the approaches employed by the Alabama Literacy Act, including deploying coaches to elementary schools to help classroom teachers improve early-grades math instruction. Those interventions, backed by increased investments, are ramping up.”
Spencer said that math has always been the state’s “Achilles’ heel.”
He said it looks like the state is going in the right direction.
In science, the percentage of fourth graders scoring at proficient increased, but the percentage of eighth graders declined.
Spencer said that, looking forward, there is a worry that the investment in reading and the growing investment in science and math needs to be protected as the Education Trust Fund growth tapers off.
“Even if times get tougher, we’ve got to preserve that investment,” he said. “Before, we’ve kind of taken our foot off the gas and lost momentum.”
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