Less than a week after the Jackson-Olin High School principal instructed every teacher at the school to devote one-third of all classroom time to ACT preparation, the Birmingham City Schools superintendent's office reversed that plan.

On Feb. 5, Jackson-Olin Principal Janice Drake sent a mass email to teachers, instructing them to designate more than 30 percent of students' time inside the classroom to ACT preparation.

"Use 30 minutes of your 90 minute instructional time for ACT and add it to your lesson plan," Drake wrote in the email.

Multiple attempts to reach Drake for comment were unsuccessful. AL.com obtained the email on Monday and reached out to the superintendent's office for comment. By Thursday, less than a week after Drake sent the email, Birmingham City Schools Superintendent Kelley Castlin-Gacutan reversed the plan.

"The 30 minutes of ACT Prep during instructional time at Jackson-Olin High School has not been implemented as originally planned," Castlin-Gacutan wrote in a statement. "Teachers will continue to maximize instructional time each day by teaching college and career readiness standards."

Earlier this week, Jackson-Olin was one of 18 Birmingham City Schools designated as "failing" by the Alabama State Department of Education. The criteria used for that designation is the ACT Aspire test, which is given annually to students in grades 3-8 and again in 10th grade.

If schools fall within the bottom six percent of scoring, they are designated as failing. Parents of students at those schools can then choose to transfer their children to a comparable, non-failing school in the same district. If there are no comparable or non-failing schools in the same district, parents may transfer their children to a comparable school in another district or a private school.

Parents may also become eligible for a state income tax credit to help pay the costs of transferring to a private school or a better public school.

At Jackson-Olin, it is unclear whether the planned test preparation was for the ACT Aspire test or the general ACT college readiness test. Education professionals, though, were critical of the original plan to devote one-thirds of students' classroom time on test prep.

"This is not a sound practice, despite the undoubtedly good intentions of the principal and administrators," said Karen Spector, associate professor of secondary education language arts at University of Alabama. "It's short-sighted at best. I don't see how, if you've done the research, how you'd think this was a good strategy."

Jeremy Zelkowski, associate professor for secondary mathematics education at University of Alabama, spent years researching block scheduling and its impact on students' ability to learn. He said that if the ACT prep time focused on mathematic problems associated with the regular class lesson, it could be effective.

However, he speculated teachers in the ACT prep time would use problems not tied to the lesson.

"This likely is nothing but an attempt to increase ACT scores some, but research has shown that just practicing problems without good discussion and making connections means kids will learn little and score maybe even less depending on how significant the instruction is for the 50-60 minutes being used," Zelkowski said.

The ACT prep plan was implemented by Drake just days after she returned from more than one month of administrative leave.

Drake, who has been principal at Jackson-Olin since 2011, was placed on administrative leave in early December 2015 while the Alabama State Department of Education investigated allegations that she had committed academic fraud.

It is unclear at this time exactly what those allegations entailed, but Birmingham City Schools spokeswoman Chanda Temple confirmed the Alabama State Department of Education conducted the investigation.

District officials said this week that Drake was cleared of any wrongdoing.