ALABAMA SCHOOL JOURNAL

News from the Alabama Education Association

ell before No Child Left Behind unleashed a wave of standardized tests across the nation, Alabama had one of the most rigorous and high-stakes testing systems in the country. The system was a virtual alphabet soup of acronyms like DIBELS, ADAW, ASA and AHSGE, and it dominates Alabama schools like no other activity.     Testing gobbles up huge amounts of... Full story »

The economy of Alabama has deteriorated to the extent that education has suffered a loss of $1.4 billion since the 2007 school year. No segment of education has been able to avoid substantial cuts except employee salaries that are by law exempt. PEEHIP is one exception. For the current year, the PEEHIP Board voted to keep rates constant and... Full story »

Trying to understand today’s economy is like working with a 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle. The parts simply won’t fit together in any understandable pattern. For an example, one needs look no further than one’s own savings account. Most of us have lost money the last couple of years in our “rainy day account” and the value of our home... Full story »

As an old pessimist once said, “If it wasn’t for bad news there would be no news at all.” Well, education got some really bad news when the fiscal year ended on Wednesday, September 30. For the 2009-2010 school year, superintendents had been told to plan for nine percent proration but that turned out to be too low. The... Full story »

Gubernatorial Candidate Shrinks His Campaign to One Message: AEA is Evil  The dictionary defines obsession as the domination of one’s thoughts or feelings by a persistent idea, image, or desire. Other folks see it as the ultimate compliment. Bradley Byrne defines it as the Alabama Education Association. What educators see as a bizarre twist to the upcoming election season,... Full story »

Byrne makes dual school system key in campaign “We’ve got to have charter schools in this state,” a gushing Bradley Byrne exclaimed to a Dothan audience recently. Gubernatorial candidate Byrne has openly expressed his disdain for the 104,000 members of AEA. He has made that the center point of his campaign. He is the self-proclaimed reform candidate in the... Full story »

On September 29, Gov. Bob Riley declared  7.5 percent proration for the 2009-10 school year. The declaration marks the second straight year of proration for Alabama schools. Unless there is new, stable revenue for Alabama schools in the next legislative session, classrooms across the state face dire circumstances not seen in the state since the 1930s. Successive years of... Full story »

A recent study shows an alarming rise in family health care costs over the past several years, a trend seen in the family coverage of K-12 employees.    The average annual cost of family health insurance for Alabama employers and workers has seen a sharp increase over the past six years, according to a study by Families USA, a national... Full story »

The 24,500 retired members of AEA make up an important and growing part of the association. Not only are organized education retirees critical to protecting health and pension benefits, they also constitute one of the most effective advocate constituencies for protecting the Education Trust Fund and classroom spending. Knowing what our retired members think is an important insight into an... Full story »

It has been said that death and taxes are two things that are inevitable. Today we can add a couple of others: health care costs and college tuition. Health insurance is something everyone will need at some point, but its cost has made it unaffordable to many. It will become more costly in the future, given current trends. Policyholders... Full story »

Over the last few weeks, there has been much discussion about the national health care plan. Everybody has an idea and everybody thinks his plan is better than the other. The insurance industry has spent untold millions of dollars to fight a national health care plan because there are certain provisions that they just do not want. These people... Full story »

Across Alabama local school boards are finalizing their 2010 budgets ahead of the Oct. 1 fiscal year start. Proration and dwindling local revenues have made it a particularly difficult task, and local AEA affiliates and staff have been working with school officials to make sure budgets are the best they can be. Some of the biggest systems have looked to... Full story »

For years high stakes testing has been the rule for Alabama schools, and the bane of many Alabama teachers. Testing consumes instructional time, alters teaching practices from comprehension to memorization, and puts a major burden on students to perform in artificial ways. For the first time in a decade, the State Board of Education is making major changes to Alabama's... Full story »

B'ham News reports SBE hired spokesperson who may not qualify under ethics code In an obvious attempt to shrug aside charges of politicizing the Alabama Educator Code of Ethics, Dr. Joe Morton, state superintendent, told the members of the State Board of Education during a work session last week that "as God as my witness, without talking to any board... Full story »