A+ Addition

Introducing the A+ Policy Portal & COVID School Spending Tracker

Corinn O’Brien, Vice President of Policy, A+ Education Partnership

As a former math teacher and assistant principal, I know how important education policy decisions are for our schools. When I began my new role at A+ Education Partnership as the Vice President of Policy, one of my main goals was to increase both the transparency and accessibility of the education policy process for everyone. As the first step in this goal, our advocacy team has been working on an innovative way to bring education policy and budget decisions directly to stakeholders.

A One-Stop Shop for Learning About Education Policy in AL

With schools continuing to navigate the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2022 regular legislative session in full swing, accessible information on evidence-based education policy has never been more important. That’s why A+ Education Partnership is excited to launch our newest project, the A+ Policy Portal - https://policy.aplusala.org.

A+ is urgently working to ensure that all Alabama children, regardless of their race or economic status, have access to great schools. To make this a reality, our communities must be informed and engaged in the education policy and budget process. Our Policy Portal (linked in the QR code below) is a one-stop-shop for accessible information about education policy solutions that will help make this vision a reality.

The portal highlights evidence-based education policies that have demonstrated a significant impact on student outcomes and improved educational equity. Each issue that is selected and highlighted fits into our larger policy framework, which is a highlevel overview of what we believe will ensure all of Alabama’s children are prepared for school, college, career, and life.

Each policy issue page features the “Big Idea” about the issue (for those seeking to understand why a policy solution is important), a “Quick Facts” one-pager (for those looking for a short overview of the topic) and a longer policy brief (for those who are interested in the details), along with additional reading and news stories. More policy issues will be added regularly, including the upcoming additions of student mental health and first grade readiness.

To ensure stakeholders have an easy access point to the legislative process, the portal will also house our 2022 Legislative Agenda along with a new bill tracking capability. These additions will help you keep up with legislation and budgetary decisions made during the 2022 Legislative Session - and each session to come.

A Way to Track State and District COVID School Relief Spending

As we all know, the historical influx of federal funds in Alabama’s schools are a chance to both support schools as they navigate the pandemic and to make important investments in students that will improve their achievement for years to come. In March, A+ will be launching another exciting tool for advocates and stakeholders, Alabama COVID Spending Tracker. This tool will be housed on the A+ Policy Portal and allow you to see the way each Alabama public school district is spending federal COVID relief aid allocated through ESSER I, ESSER II, and ARP ESSER. A+ will also track student outcomes through ACAP proficiency data to monitor if this spending is having a measurable impact on students year over year.

Lastly, if you are interested in emerging best practices in COVID student recovery and tangible resources on implementing them in your school, check out our everevolving “COVID School Spending” blog series. So far, the series has covered highimpact tutoring, high-quality instructional materials, data-driven instruction, and more.

Access the A+ Policy Portal using this code:

A+ Policy Portal Flowcode

A+ Education Partnership