GreatSchools.net  is a  nonprofit  organization  sponsoring an excellent site which provides school information including: 1.  Stanford 9 test results for grades 3 through 11 in language arts, math and reading. 2.  Quick facts including the school's, enrollment, student/teacher ratio, address and phone number. 3.  Socioeconomic Status of the student body  (percentage of students on free/reduce lunch plan). 4.  Student Body Ethnicity by pie chart and number data table.

The first responsibility of any school is to provide a safe environment for learning to take place.  If your children do not feel safe in school then learning becomes a secondary function.  I would not have felt safe in sending my children to some schools in our local area.

YAHOO! The school report  provides information by county along with general information and includes percentage of Seniors Receiving High School Diploma and number of Seniors planning to go on to "higher education".  Site provides mostly information on public high schools.

A large number of welcome package request add "need good schools".  From kindergarten to sixth grade the teacher is more important than the school.  A good teacher in a bad school is better than a bad teacher in a good school. Parents should involve themselves in what ever way they can to insure their child has a good teacher.  In Junior High School and High School the student does not have only one teacher but many over the school year therefore the school they attend becomes important.   Two ingredients (in my estimation) help to make a school good.  First, the leadership of both the county and school administration.  Better teachers gravitate to schools with better principals and staff. Second and most important, parental involvement. Schools where parents are involved will always raise the level of education.  Maybe their involvement in the school is also an indication of their involvement in their children.

The Alabama Department of Education's  web site  has a number of school reports. Reports by School Systems and by individual Schools School Accountability Reports by year State Map with Information on each County Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) with a plethora of information

The following are my editorial comments on school choice,  I think vouchers are GREAT! ALL parents or guardians should have some choice. Competition in my view always encourages a better product! Currently only those with the means to afford the cost have the luxury to choose. Why the National Education Association does not support vouchers. The better argument from the Friedman Foundation,  The Best Possible Education FAQ And in a Heritage Foundation paper titled "How Members of Congress Practice Private School Choice" dated September 4, 2007, author Evan Feinberg states in his conclusion:   "Parents, the public, and Members of Congress have shown that they value allowing parents to choose a safe and effective education for their children. According to a 2007 survey conducted by The Heritage Foundation, 37 percent of U.S. Representatives and 45 percent of U.S. Senators sent their children to private schools—roughly four times the rate of the rest of the population."  "Regrettably, many families—unlike Members of Congress—simply do not have the financial means to send their children to private schools, especially after paying taxes to support public education. Members of Congress should support policies that give all families the opportunity to choose the best school options for their children."

"The U.S. Department of Education sponsors  the National Center for Education Statistics which is the primary entity for collecting and analyzing data related to education in the United States."  The site may have valuable data to the end consumer but with so much data it is hard to assimilate and analyze.

In the local area, the  Montgomery county school board maintains a website which provides local school information and also names the schools which support a particular address.  In Alabama, schools are a function of the county.  County property taxes support the county schools.  You may make a decision to live in a neighborhood because of the schools but the school districts are not carved in stone and change as new schools are built and population patterns shift.

Montgomery  Public  Schools  WebSite Transportation Department school zoning  information.   (Street Address  provides supporting schools)

Autauga County Schools WebSite

Elmore County Schools WebSite

Three choices are available to educate children; public schools, private schools and becoming more popular, home schooling.   Where there is some information available on public schools,  not much on the web can be found comparing private schools.  I categorize private schools into three types,  academic, church sponsored, and other.  Other, became an outgrowth of forced school busing and may have a very limited diversity of students within the student body and faculty.  Overlapping of these types can and do occur.  In the lower grades there are any number of church sponsored schools. And, Montgomery has some excellent, although expensive, private academic schools. Home schooling is a growing phenomena in our country and if the national competitions are any indicators (spelling bees, geography competitions etc.) they are producing in some cases excellent results.

Jon's Home school Resource Page perhaps the oldest and largest collection of home school resources on the Web - started June 14, 1994  and claiming 1.3 megabytes of information. Home school World  The official web site of Home schooling magazine. A Beka Home School  A ministry of Pensacola Christian Academy,  Glenda (wife) used their materials when teaching Donna 1st grade (1978?) while we were living in Italy. MORE: (just for starters) The Home School Legal Defense Association has a number of pages providing information on what is "legal" in each state (Alabama State Laws) and provides additional information discussion of the law.. Maxwell Area Home Educators (MAHE) is a local area support group which provides great information and meets on Maxwell which pretty much requires some type of access to the air base.  It is my understanding that their web site is a product of one of their students. A plethora of sites can be found on Home Schooling in Alabama. and lastly  Alabama Church Cover Schools link page provides a number of "cover" schools (see Alabama State Laws above).

The Internet is having an impact on the amount of information that is available and the means to access that information.  Schools are jumping on the band wagon and are sponsoring their own web sites. Library's are providing access to the Internet and more and more students are turning to the Internet to perform their research.  Alabama students are encouraged to access the Alabama Virtual Library (AVL). The AVL is a service to all citizens of Alabama and is funded by Alabama State funds (taxes).  When students are not in school they can access the AVL at home by means of an assigned password obtained from their school with permission of their parents.

ALABAMA  SCHOOLS  ONLINE

Kindergarten through College public schools  web sites.

We began this page with a few thoughts on funding and schools in Alabama. What has not been discussed are the number of private, corporate, foundations, along with government and individual contributions which so generously provide many of the needs of our state supported schools.  When researching information for this page I found many examples.  To name just one, Alabama Reading Initiative (ARI) is a voluntary program designed to significantly improve reading instruction and ultimately achieve 100 percent literacy among public school students.  The programs funding is from a number of sources. One small program where most people can participate is the "Helping School Tags". This program provides car owners who pay a premium with distinctive state license plates with participating counties receiving funds for their schools.