MONTGOMERY- A bill that would bring unprecedented transparency and awareness of school performance is scheduled to be debated Thursday, April 19 in the Alabama House of Representatives.
House Bill 588, sponsored by Rep. Terri Collins (R-Decatur), would establish a simple, comprehensive and consistent system to grade school performance, allowing parents and community leaders to better understand how their local schools are faring.
“Parents deserve to know how their child’s school is measuring up,” said Rep. Collins. “If we don’t have an honest, data-based assessment of how schools are actually doing, how can we know what improvements need to be made to ensure our children are getting the best education possible? This bill will provide a comprehensive, consistent, easy-to-understand evaluation of school performance and encourage more parental and community involvement in local schools.”
Under this bill, schools would be evaluated based on several performance indicators such as state-authorized assessments, achievement gap, college and career readiness and learning gains in a system implemented by State Superintendent of Education. A universally-comprehendible A-B-C-D-F grade would be assigned to each school and made public, and all schools would be graded consistently so that grades of one school or system may be compared to the grades of any other school or system.
Rep. Collins began working with House Speaker Mike Hubbard and other lawmakers to develop the proposal after a meeting with former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who told them implementing an accurate, consistent, easy-to-understand school grading system was the single reform most responsible for Florida’s extraordinary gains in education.
“Governor Bush’s record of improving public education speaks for itself. He told us this reform led to communities becoming more engaged in their public schools, demanding excellence. That kind of community ‘buy-in’ is exactly what many schools in Alabama need in order to improve,” Rep. Collins said.
Speaker Hubbard applauded Rep. Collins for this bold, yet simple policy reform.
“Rep. Terri Collins is a champion for improving public schools, and we are lucky to have her in the Alabama Legislature,” Speaker Hubbard said. “This is a common sense reform that will result in local communities becoming more informed about what’s going on in their public schools and, therefore, more involved. While we work to improve our overall education system from the ground up, we must also allow parents, educators and community leaders the tools to fix local problems with local solutions. That starts with transparency.”
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