Tuscaloosa City School Board Celebrates System’s Surge in State Scores

Academic achievement is improving across the board in Tuscaloosa City Schools, according to record-high scores on state report cards recently released by the Alabama Department of Education.

Some board of education members, a handful of principals and superintendent Mike Daria hosted a roundtable discussion on Thursday to celebrate the significant progress the scores reflect. Overall, the system rose from a score of 80 in 2023 to an 84 in 2024.

The scores measure not only academic performance and growth, but also categories including college and career readiness and chronic absenteeism. Report card scores increased at 13 TCS schools, and the other 7 either held steady or saw single-digit declines.

Those boosts, in some traditionally underperforming and underserved schools, brought TCS to it's highest-ever overall score.

"What you see here and what we're proud of is that we're a system making progress. This last report card shows that progress," Daria said. "I want to be clear, we're not yet at the A, and we will be an A as a school district. But what you see here today is progress toward that "A."

Daria said the 84 score is the highest TCS has achieved since the ALSDE began issuing report cards in this format back in 2018.

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"These results here that we have today and that we're seeing are directly connected to good principals and teachers in our schools, boots on the ground, doing the work, plus the interventionists, the summer learning, all of the things we put in place together have been captured in these results," said District 6 board member Marvin Lucas. "Thank you, not just to each person here today, but to every single principal, teacher, reading interventionist, the Community Partners who came in and worked with the students to be Reading Allies, partners like Phifer Wire, all of those were a part of making sure we take care of every child."

During the roundtable, Daria and the board wanted to highlight two kinds of principals - those who dramatically improved underperforming schools and those who found ways to boost scores that were already the best of TCS.

"Certainly this board is super proud of these results. When I came on the board eight years ago, our vision was for the high achievers to continue to highly achieve, but also for the low-achieving schools to start bridging that gap," Board chairman Eric Wilson said. "This is a perfect indication of where this system is - a system for every student and every school and every parent."

The top scorers led off the discussion, as principals Laura Jockisch and Constance Pewee Childs discussed what it took to make sure Rock Quarry Elementary and Tuscaloosa Magnet School Middle earned a 99 and a 98 respectively on the 2024 report cards.

"I think it starts in our Pre-K classes, it doesn't start in third grade, fourth and fifth grade where you begin to see this data," Jockisch said. "We recognize the importance of having a strong foundation so when those children do get to third grade, the task is not easy but it's much easier if they children coming into third, fourth and fifth grade do have that strong foundation."

She also said is never satisfied with results and even the 97 Rock Quarry earned in 2023 left room for improvement to this year's 99.

Pewee Childs saw TMSM's score climb from 95 to 98.

Of course, expectations are high for a Magnet School, but Pewee Childs said no external expectations could exceed her own.

"When we got a 95 last year, I knew it my heart it was tough to beat that and we were going to have to really work our butts off, but my faculty, they all believe in it. They want to see us at the top," she said. "But we're not satisfied until we get 100. This year, we're a 98. That's not the highest score you can have, so that means that some kids were not where they need to be, and in our building, our goal is to meet all the kids' needs. Until we get the other two percent, we didn't meet the mark. We've got work to do."

The news on the other end of the academic spectrum is also spectacular in Tuscaloosa. Scores at Westlawn Middle rose 10 points, Woodland Forrest climbed 15 points and Southview Elementary skyrocketed from a score of 62 in 2023 to 81 in 2024 - a 19-point swing.

Teresa Croom Bivens, the first-year principal at Woodland Forrest, inherited a D+ score last year.

"I am so proud of our team because we rallied together to create an action plan that focused on five components: we talked about effort, commitment, application, consistency as well as evaluation. Through those components, we were able to see the growth from our students and faculty," she said. "Everybody became a part of the school - it was not just my students or my grade level. It was all about our students. Everybody pulled together and through that, it one year, we were able to grow from a 68 to an 83, and we are so excited about the continuation of growth we'll see this year."

Ronika Amerson, the principal at Southview, said upgrading outdated tools played a big role in her 19-point jump. Her school bought electronic mice for students who were struggling to use the aging touchpads on their Chromebook laptops and provided sturdy headphones to those who needed them - steps she said were simple but necessary in modern academia.

Their low score was also caused in part by too many absences, and Amerson said she began a personal campaign to make sure students were at school each morning.

Darlene F. Atkins is the principal at Westlawn Middle, where scores climbed by 10 points this academic year.

"When you start at a school where historically, the norm has been to be an underperforming school, but that's not in you or a part of who you are, then you realize there is a challenge and an uphill battle, but it can be done," Atkins said. "I think, for Westlawn, the biggest missing piece to our puzzle was truly getting the right people in the building. Sometimes, if you've been in a building for a long time, that mindset inevitably becomes your own and so you just expect your students to underperform, you expect them to not show up, you expect them to misbehave."

"You have to have people in the building who want to see the successes of every single student in the building every single day. Once you're able to stack your team with those committed individuals, it starts to make the work a little bit less challenging and less of a burden because now everybody is taking a sense of ownership of the data, everybody's taking a sense of accountability and it makes a world of difference," she continued.

The elephant in the room eventually emerged, and board members and Daria discussed how to keep this positive momentum moving forward even after citizens voted against a property tax increase which would have replaced disappearing COVID-era federal funds the system has received and spent the last few years.

That vote's failure will lead to fewer students taking summer learning classes, fewer reading interventionists and more, and Daria and his team will have to navigate how to keep improving even as their budgets demand widespread financial cuts.

"It's going to be a challenge, but the people around this table and every one of our teachers are committed to educating every child in our system using every resource," Lucas said. "Even before we had those ESSER funds, every principal can tell you of a teacher who would pay of their own money and go out and make purchases themselves just so a child could have what's needed. That [tax] funding didn't come through, but we're going to be looking for grants and every other resource we can to make sure we continue moving forward toward that A grade. There is no way we're going to let funding stop our progress."

For more coverage of education and other issues in west Alabama, stay connected to the Tuscaloosa Thread.