Black and Hispanic students see gains on Alabama report card

Black and Hispanic students saw gains in reading and math last year, according to data released by the Alabama State Department of Education last week.

The state’s overall grade on the report card was an 87. Sen. Arthur Orr, R-Decatur, the chair of the Senate Finance and Taxation Education Committee, said in a phone interview Monday the improvement should motivate educators.

“It’s certainly encouraging, and should give our frontline educators a lot of satisfaction that they’re truly making a difference, and not just for grades on a report card, but in the future of these children’s lives, meaning that they’ll hopefully go on to graduate and enter the workforce or be able to go to college, if they so desire,” he said.

For the 2024-25 school year, overall English Language Arts (ELA) proficiency was 56.18%, up from 52.8% in 2023-24. Overall math proficiency for last school year was 33.37%, up over the 31.15% in 2023-24.

Black and Hispanic students saw increases in these subjects as well.

In ELA, the percentage of Hispanic students graded proficient increased from 40.56% in the 2023-24 year to 44.18% for the 2024-25 academic year. Black students saw their proficiency increase from 36.59% to 40.17% in the same time frame.

In math, 16.34% of Black students were proficient in the 2024-25 year, up from 14.47% in 2023-24. Hispanic students’ proficiency improved from 20.67% to 23.75%

Orr credited the gains to the Literacy Act, passed in 2019, and the Numeracy Act, passed in 2022. Both laws create additional resources for reading and math instruction in elementary school grades.

“We put in hard stops with the fifth grade for math and third grade for literacy, which brought a whole lot of attention on the early grades in elementary school to help support these students and get them where they need to be in making the additional investments we’ve concentrated on pull-out sessions after school hours,” he said.

Science proficiency saw a slight decrease in the 2024-25 school year sitting at 38.91%. In the 2023-24 academic year, the overall proficiency was 39.04%.

Black students’ proficiency in science increased slightly in the subject going from 20.11% in the 2023-24 school year to 20.34% in the 2024-25 school year. Hispanic students saw a larger increase in proficiency, going from 26.13% to 27.12%.

Rep. Danny Garrett, R-Trussville, called the decrease “flat” in a phone interview Monday and said there was improvement in other areas.

“So certainly there’ll be an area of focus going forward, but we’re pleased with the continuous progress we’re seeing in the federal scores,” he said.

Proficiency is measured by taking data from the Alabama Comprehensive Assessment Program (ACAP). Students are placed into four levels, level one being the lowest and level four being the highest. In order to be considered proficient, students have to rank in level three or four.

On ELA, the state saw 120,173 students in level three (32%) and 90,791 students in level four (24.18%). In level three, 34,057 were Black students and 12,783 were Hispanic. In level four, 13,885 students were Black and 6,609 were Hispanic.

Math and science saw fewer students ranking as proficient. Only 90,921 of students (23.98%) placed in level three for math and 50,246 students (31.20%) placed in that same level for science. 153,403 (40.46%) students ranked in level two for math and 65,360 (40.59%) ranked in level two for science.

Garrett said legislation including the RAISE Act, which gives additional funding to public K-12 schools to students’ address educational needs; TEAMS Act, which offers eligible math and science teachers up to $20,000 for teaching math and science if eligible.

“We should see continued improvement in those areas of student need, but the goal is, you know, to get everybody proficient. But there’s four levels of proficiency, and rarely do you go from level four to level one, but you work your way up. And that’s what we’re seeing,” he said.