Alabama's Governor Signs Education Bill Allowing School Choice

[Redfairen]

Source: NPR

Alabama's Gov. Robert Bentley has signed a sweeping education bill that gives tax credits to parents who want to transfer their children from a failing public school to another public or private school. The bill became law one day after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that a lawsuit against it was premature.

The controversial Alabama Accountability Act was adopted by the Republican-controlled Legislature in a loud and contentious vote on Feb. 28. Democrats and teachers' groups say the bill underwent massive changes during a late visit to a conference committee, transforming it from a measure allowing flexibility to school districts into a school-choice bill.

After announcing on Twitter that he had signed the bill, Bentley tweeted his support for it, saying, "For the first time ever, we're giving all public schools the flexibility they need to better serve their students."

The bill more than doubled in size when it emerged from the committee for a final vote, leading education leaders to withdraw their support and spurring Democrats to accuse their colleagues of underhanded tricks.

Read more: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/03/14/174297267/alabamas-governor-signs-education-bill-allowing-school-choice

[Third Doctor]

1. Segregation has just gotten

worse in my state.

[Hoyt]

2. More schools in the basement of Baptist churches.

[dixiegrrrrl]

3. and paid for by our tax dollars!

[LizW]

4. Shouldn't stand up to even the most cursory court challenge

But who knows? This is Alabama.

It is a horribly written bill. Whoever wrote it didn't do ANY homework at all. It completely ignores the rather complex state school funding formula that came about after the 1993 Equity funding lawsuit. It ignores the federal desegregation orders that remain in effect for some 40 system in Alabama. It requires "failing" school systems to fund buses to take children around to the "non-failing" public school of their choice. (Say you have an apartment building zoned to a "failing" school and there are 5 elementary school aged children there and each of the five families chooses a different "non-failing" public school, the "failing" school system has to provide bus transportation to the school of choice. Tell me how that's supposed to work.)

But all you hear down here is how the Republicans have "finally destroyed the teachers' union." People here are nuts. School superintendents, who were intentionally kept in the dark about this, are just shaking their heads.

[Smilo]

5. So you have a choice of sending

your child to

a school that uses books that say dinosaurs and man co-existed

or

a school that is unable to buy books because of under funding.

And the world continues to laugh at America.