Alabama School Connection
Trisha Powell Crain on Top Education Stories of 2015
This year has been extremely busy on the Alabama education beat: a study commissioned by the state education department itself called school funding inadequate and unequal; state Senate President Pro Tem Del Marsh floated a draft bill that could, among other seismic shifts, tie teacher pay to student test results; and, as Alabama School Connection’s Trisha […]
Trisha Powell Crain Talks Money, Politics, and More in Alabama Education
There's never a shortage of stories coming from Alabama's schools. But before WBHM's and the Southern Education Desk's "Issues and Ales" education forum Thursday evening, we wanted to shed as much light as possible on the big picture behind the headlines. For better or worse, that backdrop always includes money and therefore politics. So our education reporter Dan Carsen sat down with Alabama School Connection founder and BirminghamWatch contributor Trisha Powell Crain to talk about that and more.
INTERVIEW: Trisha Powell Crain On Alabama’s Low NAEP Ranks
Alabama recently got some unflattering news about its students' proficiency, especially in eighth-grade mathematics. The National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, is a standardized test sometimes called "the nation's report card." On the 2013 test, Alabama eighth-graders ranked fiftieth out of 52 jurisdictions in math (schools on military bases and in the District of Columbia were counted separately). But as with most education topics, things are not quite as simple as they seem. WBHM's Dan Carsen sat down with Alabama School Connection executive director Trisha Powell Crain to go behind those results. She says we shouldn't put too much emphasis on one test, or be too surprised at Alabama's low showing.
