State officials point to strong summer-program attendance, Harvard partnership and $30M in continued funding

Jeff Norris, director with the Office of Extended Learning, told the Governor's Commission on Teaching and Learning that Alabama’s summer- and afterschool-learning efforts have sustained high participation and steady funding.

Norris said the statewide daily attendance rate last summer was about 74% and credited outreach to families for sustained participation. He also described a new partnership with Harvard’s Center for Educational Policy Research, which will analyze Alabama’s summer-learning data and support a two-year strategic data fellowship inside the state department.

The fellowship will be filled by a current state department employee who will be assigned to the Harvard cohort and help translate analysis into program design and expansion. “They are working on that report,” Norris said of the Harvard team, with publication expected in the fall. He added that the state asked districts to submit FY25 expenditure reports by the end of September and that his office will summarize results for the state board later in the year.

The Office of Extended Learning also described current funding levels: a $30 million supplemental appropriation for K–12 summer and afterschool programming (level funded from the prior year) and a $17 million ASAP grant pool that supported 192 awards this past cycle. Norris said the supplemental funds broadly support district-run K–12 summer and afterschool programs and that, operationally, much of the spending has been concentrated on salaries and personnel.

Commissioners pressed for clearer evaluation practices. Marcus Morgan of ACES (the newly established legislative office) urged the commission to adopt pre-analysis plans and formal evaluation standards so the expanded data collection can answer whether programs drive outcomes—not just participation. “How are we going to measure success? What metrics are going to be coming in? How are we going to use that data to analyze it?” Morgan asked, urging the commission to define measures and success criteria now.

Norris and other presenters said aligning reporting categories and testing platforms across programs would improve comparability; Norris noted the office is asking districts to match expenditure categories to enable statewide tracking. The commission agreed to circulate a more detailed report after district post-season reporting is complete and to reconvene as needed to address data standards and analysis plans.

Next steps: the office will publish district-level expenditure reports after FY25 submissions and the Harvard analysis is expected later this fall; commissioners discussed follow-up work on pre-analysis standards at a planned late-August meeting.