Summary:
Empower Schools of Alabama is a single-school district in Bessemer, AL, serving grades K-4 at Empower Community School Lower School, with 201 students and a predominantly low-income population (71% free/reduced lunch).
For parents considering this school, the most important takeaway is that academic performance is currently very low, but there are signs of a potential turnaround. In the 2024-2025 school year, only 2.78% of 3rd graders were proficient in math (state average: 45.47%) and 19.44% were proficient in English (state average: 65.34%). This places the school in the bottom 11% of Alabama schools (ranked 606 out of 684) with a 1-star rating. However, the district projects dramatic improvements for 2025-2026: math proficiency is expected to jump to 18.52% and English to 40.74%. While still below state averages, this projected +15.7 point gain in math and +21.3 point gain in English suggests a major intervention or curriculum overhaul is underway.
One positive standout is attendance: the school's chronic absenteeism rate is just 7.3%, which is better than both the district average (9.8%) and the state average (12.0%). This means students are showing up consistently, so the academic struggles are not due to truancy. The English proficiency gap (45.9 points below state) is slightly wider than the math gap (42.7 points), indicating literacy is a particular challenge. Notably, the school's rank (606/684) is higher than its district's rank (136/139), suggesting it may be one of the better-performing schools within its own district. A key missing data point is the student-teacher ratio, which would help clarify whether class sizes are contributing to the low scores. Overall, this is a high-need school with strong attendance but significant academic hurdles, though the projected test score improvements offer a glimmer of hope for the coming year.
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