Summary:
Fosters, Alabama, is served by a single school, Myrtlewood Elementary School, which educates students in grades PK through 4 and is part of the Tuscaloosa County district.
For parents considering this school, the most important takeaway is that Myrtlewood Elementary shows a clear strength in English Language Arts, where it consistently outperforms both district and state averages. In the most recent school year, 4th-grade English proficiency reached 69.23%, compared to 56.18% for the district and 59.53% for the state. However, the school presents a mixed picture in other subjects. In Math, it outperforms the district but lags behind the state in 3rd grade (38.78% vs. 44.89%), while in 4th grade it nearly matches the state average. Science performance is notably volatile, dropping from 50.94% proficiency to 42.31% in just one year, falling below the state average. The school also has a positive school climate indicator with a low chronic absenteeism rate of 8.5%, significantly better than the district (11.8%) and state (12.0%).
A key concern is the school's steady decline in its state ranking over three years, dropping from the 68th percentile to the 51st percentile, even though it has maintained a 3-star rating. This suggests the school is not improving at the same pace as others in Alabama. With nearly half of students (46.07%) receiving free or reduced lunch, the school serves a significant low-income population, yet its English scores remain commendable. The student-teacher ratio is a favorable 14:1, and per-student spending was $10,065 (though this data is from 2018-2019). Overall, Myrtlewood Elementary is a school with strong literacy outcomes but clear opportunities for improvement in math and science, and its declining relative ranking is worth monitoring.
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