Jefferson County
Huntsville's Chronic Absenteeism Is Now Lower Than Before COVID: A Rare Success Story
Huntsville City Schools brought chronic absenteeism below its pre-pandemic level in 2024-25. Among Alabama districts with comparable published records, 55 of 137, or 40%, were at or below their 2018-1...
Montgomery County Cut Chronic Absence in 2024-25 but Remained Above 25%
Correction: An earlier draft described the observed reporting span as the last four school years. This version names the years and treats 2024-25 as the most recent published data.
Mobile County Cut Chronic Absenteeism by More Than Half in Two Years
In 2022-23, nearly one in three Mobile County students was chronically absent. Two years later, in 2024-25, it was closer to one in eight.
Alabama Still Enrolls More Kindergartners Than Seniors, but the Margin Is Narrower
Correction: This article was rewritten before publication to remove unsupported projections and externally sourced numbers. The revised analysis treats the 2025-26 grade counts as planning signals, no...
One in Three Alabama Districts at All-Time Enrollment Lows
The four largest school districts in Alabama have never enrolled fewer students than they do right now. Mobile County, Jefferson County, Montgomery County, and Birmingham City all hit record lows in 2...
One in 14 Alabama Students Is Now an English Learner
In Tarrant City, a district of 1,221 students wedged between Birmingham and its northern suburbs, more than one in three students is classified as an English learner. A decade ago, it was one in 25. T...
Alabama Is 32,000 Students Below Its Pre-COVID Trajectory
Alabama's public schools enrolled 740,118 students in 2019-20. That was roughly where they had been for half a decade: fluctuating within a narrow band, never gaining or losing more than a percentage ...
28 Alabama Districts Have Recovered to Pre-COVID Enrollment. Four in Five Have Not
Five years after the pandemic emptied classrooms across Alabama, the students have not come back. Of 138 districts with comparable enrollment data from before COVID through 2025-26, just 28 have retur...