Primary and Secondary Education
Public primary and secondary education in Alabama is under the overview of the Alabama State Board of Education as well as local oversight by 67 county school boards and 60 city boards of education. Together, 1,541 individual schools provide education for 743,364 elementary and secondary students.
Public school funding is appropriated through the Alabama Legislature through the Education Trust Fund. In FY 2006–2007, Alabama appropriated $3,775,163,578 for primary and secondary education. That represented an increase of $444,736,387 over the previous fiscal year. In 2007, over 82 percent of schools made adequate yearly progress (AYP) toward student proficiency under the National No Child Left Behind law, using measures determined by the state of Alabama. In 2004, 23 percent of schools met AYP.
While Alabama's public education system has improved, it lags behind in achievement compared to other states. According to U.S. Census data, Alabama's high school graduation rate – 75% – is the second lowest in the United States (after Mississippi). The largest educational gains were among people with some college education but without degrees.
There have been concerns about literacy. 130 high schools out of 367 in the state either failed reading or were classified as "borderline" for 11th graders for the school year 2008-9. 60% of Alabama's school systems had at least one school that failed reading or was borderline.
The state provides education from grades Kindergarten through grade 12. It established a pre-kindergarten program. This program was recognized in 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010 as having the highest quality standards, tied for first place with North Carolina. In addition to state funded pre-k programs administered through the state, some public schools in the state offer pre-k through the use of local and federal funds. The appropriation for the state funded pre-k program is $18,376,806. Currently, 7% of the state's four year olds participate in the First Class program.
Read more about this topic: Education In Alabama
Famous quotes containing the words primary, secondary and/or education:
“At the heart of the educational process lies the child. No advances in policy, no acquisition of new equipment have their desired effect unless they are in harmony with the child, unless they are fundamentally acceptable to him.”
—Central Advisory Council for Education. Children and Their Primary Schools (Plowden Report)
“Readers are less and less seen as mere non-writers, the subhuman “other” or flawed derivative of the author; the lack of a pen is no longer a shameful mark of secondary status but a positively enabling space, just as within every writer can be seen to lurk, as a repressed but contaminating antithesis, a reader.”
—Terry Eagleton (b. 1943)
“Whether in the field of health, education or welfare, I have put my emphasis on preventive rather than curative programs and tried to influence our elaborate, costly and ill- co-ordinated welfare organizations in that direction. Unfortunately the momentum of social work is still directed toward compensating the victims of our society for its injustices rather than eliminating those injustices.”
—Agnes E. Meyer (1887–1970)