Alabama state schools superintendent concerned about some math scores

Alabama State Schools Superintendent Eric Mackey listens during the Alabama State Board of Education's regular meeting on February 9, 2023 in Montgomery, Alabama. (Brian Lyman/Alabama Reflector)

State Superintendent Eric Mackey presented statewide assessment test results Tuesday that showed improvement in reading scores but worrying trends in math scores.

The statewide preliminary Alabama Comprehensive Assessment Program (ACAP) scores in English Language Arts (ELA), math and science generally showed a year over year increase in proficiency.  Speaking to the Alabama State Board of Education, Mackey said that they are using the term “proficient” similar to how the National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP), a nationwide test of student achievement.

The NAEP has three categories: below basic, basic and proficient. ACAP uses four levels, so Mackey said they assume levels three and four are like proficient on the NAEP, Level 2 would be basic and Level 1 would be below basic in the terms of the NAEP.

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Third-grade proficiency in ELA went up from 54% to 63% between 2023 and 2024.

But Mackey said the Level 1 scores for fourth grade students were at 19%. In other words, 19% of fourth graders were scoring at below basic. This group of students is the one who took the NAEP test in the most recent administration.

Mackey also said that this group of students showed regression, as the Spring 2023 third graders was 14% at Level 1.

“So we don’t know what that will look like,” he said. “Overall, I’m not predicting bad test scores. But I’m telling you, those are the kinds of things we’d have to think about. Those are the students we’re talking about.”

Alabama lawmakers have made a major push to improve reading scores by the end of third grade. In 2019, the Alabama Legislature passed the Alabama Literacy Act, aimed to have all students reading on grade level by the end of third grade. The act provides for reading coaches and allows students not reading on grade level by the end of third grade to be held back a year.

Language in the budget and law says that reading coaches through the Alabama Reading Initiative are only intended to work with teachers through third grade.

“Nobody is going out and cutting anybody’s money if there’s some overlap there,” said Mackey. “I can assure you but, at the same time, we don’t want to stretch them too thin.”

Board member Tracie West, District 02, said that she thinks it would be common sense for upper grade teachers who have students with identified weaknesses to need some extra coaching.

“I realize that translates into dollars in order to do that, but it seems like a very natural common sense thing to do,” said West.

Mackey said the scores for math were good for fourth grade down, but second and third grades had decreased.

“It’s been asked 1,000 times in this department in the last few days,” he said. “I can’t tell you why.”

In 2022, the Legislature passed the Alabama Numeracy Act, which aimed to increase math scores. The Act included the creation of the Office of Mathematics Improvement and allocated, subject to the budget, math coaches to K-5 schools.

He said that math coaches weren’t deployed until this past year, so he said it’s not an “indictment” of their  work. The coaches aren’t in 20% of the schools yet.

He also said that the deployed coaches were instructed to focus on fourth, fifth and sixth grade, so it could be that some people did not focus there.

He also said that the other “real disturbing” trend is that seventh and eighth grade Level 4 math scores are in single digits, at 5% and 6%, respectively. He said that students might be getting a little behind every year until around 20% proficiency in the eighth grade when they go into Algebra 1. He said that over half of the students are basic, with gaps in their knowledge, so they are going to struggle in Algebra 1. Mackey said they could still become engineers, but they’ll need tutoring and extra support to get there.

“That’s kind of where we are now,” he said.

For science, Mackey said they had a “trend of no change basically” in science. In science, proficiency year over year went from 41% to 43% for fourth graders, remained at 30% year over year for sixth graders and went from 41% to 38% for eighth graders.

He said that may not be surprising because the “real focus” math, ELA and reading in the earlier grades.

Among other test scores, Mackey also presented the scores for the ACT with Writing and said that the scores for the juniors are “pretty close trends.”

“Science went up a little bit but there are other subjects that went down a couple of points, but we’re really not seeing a massive change,” he said.

In the 2021-2022 year, the Average ACT State Composite Score was 17.3, which increased to 17.4 in 2022-23. In 2023-24, the score was also 17.4.

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