Alabama school safety

In the 2021-22 Civil Rights Data Collection, 856 of Alabama's 1,566 schools filed records complete enough for us to publish a safety score. The rest show none. That is the method working rather than a hole in it — we publish a score only when we believe the report behind it.

Here is what the score rests on. Each school is compared with roughly 1,500 schools nationally that are closest to it in enrollment and teach the same grade levels. Among those peers, we look only at schools that reported something, and take the 25th percentile of their incident rate — a deliberately low bar. A school reporting less than a quarter of what that bar implies for its size has not given evidence of safety. Grades A and B are records we believe, and only those carry a published score. C means a school reported almost nothing but is small enough that a genuine zero is common: not evidence of safety, but not implausible. D and E mean schools of the same size normally report several incidents, or ten or more, and this one reported almost none.

In Alabama, 199 schools fall into D or E. That is 12.7% of the state's schools, against 11.3% nationally. The difference is small, and it is a difference in recordkeeping, not in danger. A doubtful grade means we cannot verify what a school submitted. It does not mean the school is unsafe, and nothing on this page should be read that way. The comparison is also not adjusted for state, on purpose: gaps between states in this collection reflect how states report, not how children fare.

Districts

Alabama has 181 school districts, and 48 of them have enough scoreable schools to rank. A district drops out of the ranking when too few of its schools submitted records we can score — the ranking would be measuring paperwork, not the district.

Among the 48, Albertville City ranks safer than 98% of ranked US districts, with 5 of the 6 schools in its scored set complete enough to score. Jasper City is safer than 97%, with all 5 of 5. Phenix City is safer than 93%, with 10 of 11. Bessemer City is safer than 92%, with 6 of 7. Athens City is safer than 89%, with 5 of 8 — a thinner base, and worth keeping in mind when you read it.

Safest ranked cities in Alabama

Percentile is against all ranked U.S. cities (higher = safer). Only cities with ≥5 trustworthy-data schools are ranked. Home value is Zillow's ZHVI.

Safest ranked districts

Every Alabama city with schools

Every Alabama school district