2026 State Test Score Results Data Series
The 2026 State Test Score Results Data Series is published by the Education Data Center and is designed to provide updates on 2026 state assessment data.
What to expect: Our goal is to provide high-level insights on ELA and math state summative assessment outcomes for students in grades 3-8. We will publish overviews as State Education Agencies (SEAs) publicly release assessment results and/or as we receive aggregate results via public records requests.
For additional information about each state assessment, please see the end of this post. All available 2026 assessment data used for this data series will be published by the EDC in December.
Questions, comments, or suggestions? Let us know at info@eddatacenter.org!
Trends Over Time
In mid-August, the Alabama State Department of Education (ALSDE) released 2026 ACAP results for students in Grades 3-8 (we exclude Grade 11 ACT results here).
We present the result below with two caveats. First, there are a few changes that affect comparability over the last eight years: both ELA and math set a new baseline in 2021 with the transition from the Scantron Performance Series to the ACAP Summative, and the ELA baseline was reset again in 2023. The trends below are presented with this in mind. Second, ALSDE has not released 2026 tested counts as of this date; our figures combine published 2026 grade-level percentages using 2025 grade-level tested counts.
In 2026, both ELA and math had small gains, after sharper increases in more recent years.
ELA: Approximately 60.2% of students in grades 3-8 reached proficiency on the ACAP, up from 59.8% in 2025. This is the fifth year of ELA growth, but the gains this year are a fraction (one-tenth) of last year’s (+3.8pp). In 2026, gains are led by Grade 8 (+4.1pp) and Grade 5 (+2.1pp), while the remaining grades either remained flat or had small drops of 1.4 or less. Though the overall proficiency rate moved only marginally, the share of students at the top of the distribution (Level 4) rose from 26% to 29%.
Math: At 35.4% proficiency in 2026, students in Alabama have reached the highest math proficiency rate since the ACAP Summative was introduced in 2021, with gains across more grade levels than we see in the ELA results. Math gains were led by Grade 8 (+1.8pp) and Grade 6 (+1.3pp), with small dips in Grade 3 (-0.6pp) and Grade 5 (-0.2pp). Alabama’s math proficiency drops as students age: 45% of students in Grade 3 are proficient in math, compared to about 26-27% of students in Grade 8. On the positive side, the share of students at the top of the distribution in math (Level 4) rose across every grade level.
School districts Mountain Brook City and Vestavia Hills City lead the state in both ELA and math performance in 2026. Meanwhile, Sheffield City demonstrated the largest ELA gains between 2025 and 2026 (+10pp), followed by Alexander City (+8pp). Notably, Sheffield City and Butler County were the only two of the top five ELA growth districts that had ELA growth across all six tested grade levels. In math, three districts each saw gains of about 7.5 percentage points: Thomasville City, Opp City, and Calhoun County.
Results by Achievement Level
A Closer Look at 2026
State Assessment Background
Assessment Name: Alabama Comprehensive Assessment Program (ACAP), 2021-2026; Scantron series, 2018-2019
Additional Information:
General ACAP assessment resources can be found here: https://www.alabamaachieves.org/assessment/acap/
2026 ACAP results are available here (under “2025-2026 Proficiency”): https://www.alabamaachieves.org/reports-data/school-performance/
The ALSDE 2026 summary of preliminary results can be found here (delivered to the State Board of Education on July 15, 2026): https://www.alabamaachieves.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/SBOE_20260715StudentAssessmentDataPP_v1.pdf; these results differ slightly from results posted in August 2026.
Data presented here are specific to this state’s assessment and are not comparable to assessments administered by other states. For questions, please reach out to info@eddatacenter.org.
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