Birmingham City Schools elementary students show increase in scores on standardized testing

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (WBRC) - On Sept. 7, Birmingham City Schools announced that its elementary students showed a significant increase on their ACAP scores. District officials are pleased, especially given learning loss and other pandemic classroom challenges.

Among other improvements, the district saw a 37 percent increase in students scoring at the highest level of growth in mathematics and a 41 percent in literacy arts.

The increase follows a deep dive, or re-constructing how teachers deliver instruction. The focus was shifted to achievement and exposing students to what they’ll be tested on from the beginning of instruction.

Dr. Melvin Love is the principal at Oxmoor Valley. He said in a way, the pandemic made them stronger.

“It gave us an opportunity to plan and know that we would have those students that were struggling and those students that were on grade level, but we made sure that we were intentional with making sure that we provided the professional development for different graded instruction and how we would help those students in the tiers they came in,” said Love.

Superintendent Dr. Mark Sullivan said the district has a long way to go, but he plans to use this success as motivation for this spring’s standardized testing.

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