In the average Black Belt county, just 11 percent of K-12 students scored well enough on state assessments to be considered ‘proficient,’ a measure used to determine whether a student is ready for the next step after graduation. That’s less than half the math proficiency rate of non-Black Belt counties, according to data released today by the Education Policy Center at the University of Alabama.
And just 22 percent of Black Belt students were considered proficient in science, compared to 36 percent of non-Black Belt students.
The Education Policy Center released a brief Tuesday on the issue of STEM education in the Black Belt as part of Black Belt 2022, an ongoing series on issues facing the region.
According to the brief, there are some counties in the heart of the Black Belt with scores even lower than the region’s average. In Lowndes and Bullock counties, both of which border Montgomery, less than 1 percent of students were considered proficient in math. And just over 5 percent of student sin Perry County were proficient in science.
“The scores, they are dismal,” said Julie Swann, a long-time educator in the Black Belt and Alabama Education Association UniServ Director of District 31, who spoke at a press briefing on the issue held by the Education Policy Center on Monday.
The STEM field is a particularly important one going forward. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates STEM jobs in Alabama will increase by 10 percent by 2030, significantly faster than other jobs. And STEM jobs pay roughly double those in other fields, on average.
“It puts our children at a disadvantage,” Swann said. She spoke of her own daughter, who attended public school in the Butler County, part of the Black Belt. Swann said her daughter needed tutoring throughout college to compete with students from other, wealthier parts of the state. Her daughter is now in med school, but she’s put in a lot of work to get there, Swann said.
“She’s still playing catch up.”
And it’s not just an issue of funding. The Education Policy Center found that the average Black Belt County actually spends more per student than non-Black Belt counties.
CAUSES AND SOLUTIONS
Persistent poverty and a lack of qualified teachers are two huge driving forces behind this issue, according to the Education Policy Center and Swann.
“The teacher shortage is real in Alabama,” Swann said.
It’s a problem affecting all fields, but qualified math and science teachers are particularly hard to come by. According to data provided by the Education Policy Center, many Black Belt counties are forced to rely on emergency certified teachers - that is, teachers with a bachelor’s degree but no formal training in the field they teach. That puts teachers without science or math expertise in classrooms teaching those subjects.
“The biggest challenge we face in our Black Belt counties if qualified math and science teachers, and relying on people who are on emergency certification who are teaching math and science who don’t have a background in math and science,” Swann said.
The result is students with worse test scores, who aren’t as prepared for college or STEM careers, according to the Education Policy Center.
Overall, more than 7 percent of Black Belt teachers fall under this emergency certification umbrella, compared to just 2 percent in non-Black Belt counties. But the problem is worse in the STEM field specifically, and more so in certain counties. For instance, in Perry and Marengo counties, approximately 80 percent of math and science teachers were emergency certified in 2018.
The issue is recruiting qualified teachers to the area. A lack of high pay and amenities make that difficult, Swann said, but the state has already taken steps to try and help. The legislature passed the Teaching Excellence and Accountability in Math and Science bill, she said, to help teachers get fully certified and get higher salaries.
And there are programs in place from the federal government, like offering student loan forgiveness for teachers who work in low-income areas.
But it’s not enough, Swann said.
“Student loan forgiveness, that’s huge. And that’s been around for a long time,” she said. “We’re going to have to see more loan forgiveness from our federal government.”
Swann said schools systems in her district and others are getting creative to address the issue, installing STEM classrooms adding robotics teams, but ultimately, in order to fix this problem, Alabama has to find ways to recruit qualified teachers to the region, and then keep them there.
The other issue is poverty. Persistent poverty has been linked to poor education outcomes, according to the Education Policy Center. And the Black Belt is by far Alabama’s poorest region. The area’s poor performance on standardized testing makes it hard not only to get into college, nearly impossible to earn scholarships. For a region as poor as the Black Belt, that’s a huge issue, Swann said.
“When you look at these proficiencies, they translate over, sadly, into the ACT, which is your indicator of getting into college, your indicator of scholarship dollars,” she said. “These students need as much money as they can to go to college.”
This results in a cycle, where poverty in the region leads to bad test scores and no scholarship money, which means students can’t gain access to high paying STEM jobs in the future.
“We must collectively find a way to close the achievement gap or systemic poverty will continue to exist in these areas,” Swann said.
Reducing poverty in the Black Belt isn’t something that can happen overnight. The Education Policy Center will release a future issue brief addressing poverty in the Black Belt later in the series.
This data is part of Black Belt 2022, a new series from the Education Policy Center focusing on problems in the Black Belt, and attempting to find solutions.
©2022 Advance Local Media LLC. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
