Alabama public school grades released, find yours here

Grades for Alabama's K-12 public schools are in and there are few surprises. Scroll down to see grades by district, and by school.

Of the 1,247 schools that received grades, there were 137 A's, 352 B's, 437 C's, 217 D's, and 104 schools earned an 'F,' according to the method Alabama education officials chose to use.

Of the 137 school districts, the distribution of grades is similar, except that no districts earned an 'F.' Statewide, there were 12 A's, 52 B's, 54 C's, and 19 D's.

This is the first report card for schools in over a decade and has been six years in the making.

Grades typically correlated with the wealth of a district, but there were some schools that earned higher grades in spite of having a lot of students in poverty, and AL.com will be digging in to those in the coming days and weeks.

The Alabama State Department of Education web site has the complete breakdown of grades, and allows for a comparison of schools.

In Birmingham City schools, 22 of the 43 schools in the district earned an 'F.' Montgomery had the next highest number of 'F' schools with 17, Huntsville City schools had 12, and Mobile County had 7.

Grading schools has been a controversial issue.

Proponents of letter grades say the simple rating is more easily understood by parents and communities. Opponents say education is too complex to reduce performance to a single letter grade.

Regardless of which side you're on, school grades are starting conversations across Alabama, which proponents say is the whole point of grading schools.

Some district officials shared detailed information about their schools beyond the measures the grade is based on, ahead of Thursday's release, to help their communities understand they are "more than a score."

Alabama's grading system is primarily based on student achievement as measured by test scores from the spring 2017 administration of the ACT Aspire in the 3^rd through 8^th and 10^th grades.

For schools without a 12^th grade, test results count for 90 percent of the grade. Fifty percent comes from a measure incorporating improvement from one year to the next, and 40 percent comes from how many students come close to or reach proficiency. The other 10 percent comes from the percentage of students who miss 15 or more school days, regardless of whether the absences are excused or unexcused.

For districts and for schools with a 12^th grade, improvement counts for 20 percent and how many students reach proficiency counts for 30 percent. Graduation rates count for 30 percent, college and career readiness indicators and chronic student absences each account for 10 percent of the overall grade.

The ACT Aspire will no longer be used, however, because the state board of education ended their contract for the test last June due to concerns over whether the test was aligned with what teachers are teaching and the cost to perform an independent alignment study that federal education officials said is required.

Alabama's law requiring letter grades for schools was first passed in 2012 but is only now being implemented after an extended period of development due in part to a change to the ACT Aspire in 2013.

The change in tests necessitated a change in how growth would be measured, ultimately delaying the release of the state report card.

Report card grades currently are not tied to any sanctions or punishments, but there is a system of monetary rewards for schools who improve their performance from year to year.

Fourteen states, including Alabama, currently use A through F grading systems.

The table below shows grades by system.

To see all schools and systems, with the breakdown of each grade, go to the Alabama State Department of Education web site.

The table below is in system, then school order.

This post will be updated.