Alabama Legislature snubs charter schools

By Staff
--The Montgomery Advertiser
Other states have used charter schools as a way to address a myriad of education problems.
They have been used as a way to reduce the dropout rate, a serious issue throughout Alabama, including in Montgomery County. They have been successful in closing learning gaps between poor students and other students, which also is a challenge that Alabama faces.
But charter schools aren't in Alabama's immediate future because the Legislature has rejected an effort to open the way for the state's local school systems to create such schools.
Charter schools are public schools, but their charters can allow them to bypass some of the bureaucratic rules other schools follow. In exchange, the schools are held accountable for producing specific and measurable results.
Last week the House Education Appropriations Committee voted 13-2 to indefinitely postpone a bill that would allow state and local school systems to start charter schools. On Wednesday, the Senate Finance and Taxation-Education Committee voted 13-4 to kill a Senate version of the legislation. The two committee votes effectively kill any chance of charter schools being used soon in Alabama.
That's a victory for the Alabama Education Association, which opposed the legislation, but a significant loss for the state's public school children.
The rejection of charter schools also could place Alabama at a disadvantage in competing with other states for federal Race to the Top funds. Because the Obama administration favors charter schools as an innovation to improve learning, the Legislature's action makes it more difficult for Alabama to compete for up to $180 million in federal grant money.
Thirty-nine states, including most Southern states, already have laws that allow charter schools, and others are considering them. But not Alabama.
Caroline Novak, president of the A+ Education Partnership, made a strong case for charter schools in an Alabama Voices guest column in the Montgomery Advertiser . She wrote: "Charter schools must follow the same course of study and pass the same state assessments as other schools. But for charter schools, failure to fulfill the mission of educating children brings consequences — they can be closed if they don't succeed."
Novak also noted that public charter schools have a proven track record with poor and minority students.
"That's an important factor, especially here in Alabama, where more than 50 percent of our students are low-income," she wrote. "On average, those children are 30 points behind their more affluent classmates."
The Legislature did a great disservice to Alabama's school children by rejecting charter schools. The state's voters should demand to know why their lawmakers did not fight more aggressively for this effective reform.