Anniston Board of Education hears of high school's placement on 'failing' list

Nov. 18—Along with 78 other schools in the state, Anniston High School has landed on the Alabama Department of Education's "failing" school list. This is the first "failing" school list the state has issued since 2019 due to the pandemic.

The schools on the list scored in the bottom six percent of standardized test scores for reading, English and math, and as required by the Alabama Accountability Act, that condition puts the school in the "failing" category.

The Alabama Accountability Act provides tax credits to parents who take their children out of schools on the "failing" list and place them in private schools or nearby public schools. Anniston Middle School was on the list from 2013 to 2015, and Anniston High School appeared on the list in 2017 and 2018.

During a city school board meeting Thursday, members discussed the methodology of how Anniston High ended up on the list.

Superintendent Dr. D. Ray Hill said he received the information a couple of weeks ago that the high school would be on the list.

"Of course this disturbed me," Hill said, adding that the state school report cards that came out today assigned a grade to each school in the state. Alabama school report cards are based on test scores, graduation rates, college and career readiness, and attendance.

State school report cards released

On Friday the Alabama Department of Education released its report cards for state schools. The scores for all five Anniston city schools:

— Anniston High School 65

— Anniston Middle School 69

— Cobb Preparatory Academy 75

— Golden Springs Elementary 73

— Randolph Park Elementary 70

It was Hill's understanding that the report cards would not come out this year but rather next year.

Hill took note of what he presented as incongruities in the evaluation system.

"Talking with a few people we found out that you could be a 'D' school and be on the list this year but be a 'D' school next year and not be on the list," Hill said.

Alexis Clark, a principal on special assignment, then addressed the board about the failing school list.

"We've actually learned that there are two separate entities that we're looking at here," Clark said, referring to, one, the school report cards and, two, the failing schools list.

Clark said the failing school list is a creation of the Alabama Accountability Act of 2015.

"Basically what they do is to look at the unweighted academic achievement from the previous year so we're looking at the unweighted academic achievement from last year," she said.

"When we talk about unweighted that's going to be the students who receive a three or four based on what they scored on the ELA and math part of the ACT," Clark said, "It's unweighted because they're not getting any extra points for this particular list, and what they do they rank all of the schools in the state and then the bottom six percent are put on this list."

"You can be on the list this year and not be on the list next year ... when you think about it, every school in Alabama could be failing but the bottom six percent is the ones that's gonna end up on the list unfortunately," Clark said.

"Whereas when we look at the report card grade, that's what we found interesting — the college and career readiness and the graduation rate is not pulled from the same year," Clark said, "It's pulled from a year earlier."

"This year our college and career readiness and graduation rate is not from last year but the year before," Clark said, "But the attendance, the academic achievement, growth all of that is pulled from last year so you really have different kids that you're looking at in the same pool."

Taking it all in

School board president Robert Houston and fellow board members tried their best to take in all the evaluation metrics used to gauge student and school performance.

"It's a state of confusion," Houston said.

Houston said the notation of calling a school a failing school insinuates the children are failures.

"You're telling our students that they are failures because they didn't pass a stinking test, at the end of the day our children will take that wrong," Houston said.

Board member Trudy Munford said the tests are biased anyway.

"So maybe just what they had on the test was just what they didn't learn in the classroom, Munford said.

"So there's no such thing as a failing student, you explain that to them the test is failing, who can make a test anyway that would encompass all individuals with all the demographics that we have today," Munford said.

Munford said a change needs to take place at the state level.

"Make them come up with another word besides failure, improving if they want to use that, but not failure," Munford said.

A plan to exit the list

Hill said there is a plan in place for improvement to get the high school off the list.

"We have a couple of programs that are being fully implemented, I know that the principal has actually had a conversation with the students," Hill said.

Hill said that one program is Jumpstart, which helps students with ACT test preparation, and another is an online ACT test preparation that lets students strengthen their deficiencies.

Hill pointed out that the graduation rate used to factor the rankings was the year before last when the graduation rate was 81 percent, while this year it was 93 percent.

Questions about sales tax

Earlier in the meeting Houston spoke about the joint meeting between the Anniston City Council and the school board concerning the flap over the one percent sales tax increase that was passed by the council in 2012.

During the joint meeting that was held on Nov. 8 Houston brought up the sales tax that was earmarked for the police and firemen's retirement fund, economic development and education. During the meeting Houston said that the amount of money allocated to the school system from the tax since the measure was passed was $2,621,000 while the retirement funds for the police and firemen received $22,324,200 and $20,615,062 respectively.

Houston said since the joint session there's been a lot of questions and comments coming in about that particular tax increase.

"The public needs to know what's going on," he said.

Houston said he has dug data for two months finding out who was on the city council and who was on the school board along with other related information.

Houston proposed putting together an informative video with the entire storyline of the one percent sales tax.

Houston said that each board member will have a fact sheet to accompany the video to better tell the story.

"You'll have the minutes of the January 31, 2012, city council, you'll have the ordinance, you'll have the resolution and you'll have a copy of the Anniston Star article on that same day, you'll have the complete package, that's the story," he said.

Houston said the video will contain real data and not "subjectivity."