Alabama last week received a new list of failing schools, a two-page memo slipped under the door without explanation from the educators who prepared it.

What does it mean? Why these 76 schools? Why "failing"?

The measure is straightforward. These are the state's lowest ranking schools on state tests of reading and math.

The larger meaning, the one that defies any safe bureaucratic commentary, is that Alabama continues to fail to educate black students who are schooled in relative isolation.

Look at the numbers. There are just under 37,000 children in failing schools in Alabama. More than 34,000 of those children are African American.

These 76 "failing" schools are the modern face of a legacy of segregation followed by desegregation followed by white flight followed by resegregation.

At three of the schools, every single child is African American this school year. Most of the schools are predominantly black. What's predominantly mean? At Hatch High in Perry County, 688 of the 689 students are black. At Hudson Middle in Selma, 465 of the 469 students are black.

There are no exceptions. Goodwyn Middle is the by far most "diverse" school on the list, and its student body is 72 percent African American.

All of these schools also serve poor families.

At half of the "failing" schools, three quarters or more of the children qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. At all of the schools, more than half of the students get subsidized lunch.

To spell that out plainly, every single one of the newly announced "failing" schools is both majority black and majority poor.

The point of it all is not so plain.

The current accountability rules label as "failing" any school scoring in the bottom 6 percent on standardized tests for reading and math. That means Alabama lawmakers have guaranteed that the state will always have "failing" schools, same as in a football division. Someone has to finish last.

There are more useful options. The state could control for poverty levels to see which schools do the best with the students in their zone. This would be a better way to evaluate and principals and staff.

Or the state could look at how students progress from year to year. Are they improving while attending a certain class with a certain teacher? This might help parents understand what is happening inside a school. And this measure is being considered in Montgomery already.

Or if the state were interested in bringing up those left behind, the state could look at achievement gaps, same as happened under No Child Left Behind. For instance, if you looked at gaps on state tests between white and black students, you'd see a very different sort of list.

In eighth-grade reading last year, the largest racial achievement gaps in the state were at Georgiana Middle in Butler County, the Academy for Academics and Arts in Huntsville, and Leroy High in Washington County.

The largest racial gaps in eighth-grade math were at Homewood Middle, Rock Quarry Middle in Tuscaloosa, Pizitz Middle in Vestavia Hills and Whitesburg School in Huntsville.

Most of these schools are safe from ever being declared "failing," yet they are failing some of their students.

Education is complicated. There needs to be transparency. Without public accountability there will be no change.

But the Alabama Legislature oversimplified things in 2013. Many educators, who were left out of the planning process, distanced themselves from the ranking approach. Today they comply with the law, but only just and without fanfare.

In part, that's because recent state history shows those "failing" schools ranked at the bottom will remain separated by race and class. The results weren't much different under state warnings of "academic alert" in the 1990s.

African American children today account for just one third of the 731,000 students in public schools across the state. Yet last week they accounted for 92 percent of the students in failing schools.

But now that lawmakers have mandated this annual expose of racial isolation and inequities within the public system, what are they going to do about it?