February 19, 2026
Read it and weep (or repeat)
Alabama offers three tricks to fix poor urban schools
Read-or-repeat lifts Birmingham, but commenters say blue city did work while red state takes bows
TLDR: Adjusted for poverty, Southern states like Alabama are rising, thanks in part to Birmingham’s rule requiring third-grade reading to advance. Commenters bicker over who deserves credit—blue city vs red state—and note eighth-grade scores still lag, mixing applause with skepticism and a dash of paywall snark.
Alabama’s schools are suddenly on the glow-up list, with southern states adjusted for poverty now outpacing the rest. But the crowd didn’t crack confetti—first comment was just “Paywall”, setting the tone. Praise rolled in for Birmingham finally “doing something right,” even as locals couldn’t resist the city’s ongoing water board drama. Then came the main fight: is this Alabama’s win, or one blue city’s hustle while the red-state governor claims the spotlight? The comments turned into a tug-of-war over credit and headlines.
The hottest policy chatter: Alabama’s big move is a “read-or-repeat” rule—kids must read at a third-grade level to make fourth. One user called it “common sense,” but others side-eyed the results: fourth-grade reading jumped to around the 30th percentile, yet eighth-grade scores still lag. Cue the “great, you learned to read, now what?” memes. For receipts, one commenter dropped the data source from Urban Institute: States’ Demographically Adjusted Performance. The vibe? A mix of cautious claps, snark about politicians taking victory laps, and recurring paywall jokes. Alabama may have “three tricks,” but the crowd only sees one big lever—and they’re not sold on the long game just yet.
Key Points
- •Adjusting for student poverty changes state-by-state comparisons of academic performance.
- •Southern states, including Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas, have risen in national rankings since the pandemic.
- •Six years ago, Democratic-led states appeared to perform better on reading and math tests.
- •The current analysis emphasizes reading and mathematics as key benchmarks for comparing states.
- •Findings suggest a reordering of state performance patterns in the post-pandemic period when accounting for socioeconomic factors.