Education Week - October 22, 2014 - 17

Major Push Underway in Alabama to Adopt Charter Law
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1
working together to pass charter
legislation and counter fierce opposition
from the state teachers' union.
They include a pro- school-choice organization
that advocates for better
schooling for black children, business
groups, and GOP lawmakers.
"In my opinion, we have the greatest
chance that we've ever had of
passing charter school legislation
the next session," said Del C. Marsh,
the Republican president of the Alabama
Senate. His optimism is echoed
among some school choice advocates
at the national level.
Of the eight states that still don't
allow charters, most are heavily
Republican, rural, and have been
equally resistant to other schoolchoice
efforts, such as taxpayerfunded
vouchers for private schools.
Besides Alabama, Kentucky, and Nebraska,
the other holdouts are Montana,
North Dakota, South Dakota,
Vermont, and West Virginia. Among
their common traits is their largely
rural population, with less demand
for new schools.
"If you have a conversation in Kentucky
about charters, people think
about it as only a solution for kids
in Louisville," said Todd M. Ziebarth,
the vice president for state advocacy
and support at the Washington-based
National Alliance of Public Charter
Schools. "I think there's a mischaracterization
that charters are only for
cities."
That perception, Mr. Ziebarth said,
exists among school choice advocacy
organizations as well, with many
focusing efforts on low-income communities
in densely-populated urban
areas. If constituents and advocates
aren't clamoring for charters, neither
will lawmakers, Mr. Ziebarth said.
And perhaps contrary to popular
perceptions, states with large numbers
of Republican voters and elected
leaders are not guaranteed supporters
of charter laws.
The Alabama Example
In Alabama's case, however, the coalition
pushing to pass a charter law
has players from both major political
parties. The Black Alliance for Educational
Options, or baeo, a nonpartisan
organization, is leading the effort
along with StudentsFirst, the education
advocacy group founded by
former District of Columbia schools
chief Michelle Rhee; the Business
Counsel of Alabama; and the Alabama
Coalition for Public Charter
Schools, which is headed by the former
education policy director for Gov.
Robert J. Bentley, a Republican.
The coalition has backing from
high-profile Republican members of
the statehouse such as Mr. Marsh.
House Speaker Mike Hubbard, also
a Republican, supported a 2012 attempt
to enact a charter school law.
Even Duncan E. Kirkwood, the Alabama
state director for baeo, is surprised
by his allies in the legislature.
"You would think that the Democrats,
the black legislators, would be the
ones to lead the charge on this social
justice movement for poor people, for
black people," he said. "Our graduaDuncan
E. Kirkwood, state director
of the Alabama chapter of the
Black Alliance for Educational
Options, talks to local media after
a town hall event in support of
charter schools in Montgomery,
Ala., last week. The group is
leading a statewide campaign
to pass a charter school law.
tion rate for black boys in Alabama
is 54 percent."
So far, he said, a handful of black
Democrats expressed tentative willingness
to support a charter bill, compared
to dozens of GOP lawmakers
who are fully on board.
Mr. Kirkwood said the pro-charter
coalition has been in overdrive to
convince state residents that charter
schools could help improve the grim
graduation rates for African-American
students, and help empower
parents to make schooling choices
for their children. They've been lobbying
legislators, holding town hall
meetings, and taking parents and
community leaders to visit charters
in Georgia and Tennessee.
The group is hoping to outflank the
organizing prowess of the statewide
teachers' union, which has helped
block previous efforts to pass charter
legislation.
The Alabama Educators Association,
an affiliate of the National
Education Association, doesn't
have collective-bargaining rights,
but wields considerable political
influence. The aea has opposed previous
charter bills-among other
things, it spent millions in the
state primary to unseat Republican
lawmakers-especially in the face
of reductions to the state's budget
for K-12 schools in recent years.
"We find it hard to expect children
to excel at the same rate of other
states when you continue to chip
away at the funding source," said
Gregory T. Graves, the aea's associate
executive secretary. "Charter schools
have been shown to resegregate, discriminate,
and they have been shown
to put financial restraints on the existing
public schools."
Some studies have shown that
charter schools, on average, serve
fewer students with special needs
than regular schools.
Despite aea's efforts, Alabama's
legislature has taken small steps
toward embracing school choice. It
passed a law last year that created
ways for the state to channel money
to eligible families to use for tuition
at a public or private school of their
choice, which is being challenged in
court.
Midterm Elections
The midterm elections probably
won't have much effect in Alabama
since the most competitive races in
the heavily GOP state took place
in the June primary, but they
could alter the charter landscape
in other states-Kentucky among
them. There is no governor's race in
Kentucky this year, and observers
expect the state Senate to remain
Republican.
"But the [House of Representatives]
is controlled by Democrats,
and it's about 50-50 whether they'll
be able to maintain control," said Mr.
Ziebarth. If the GOP captures the
House, there's a good chance the state
can pass a charter law next year with
bipartisan support, he said.
Nebraska is the other state where
advocates say midterm elections are
EDUCATION WEEK | October 22, 2014 | www.edweek.org | 17
likely to create a friendlier place for
charters. Gov. Dave Heineman, a
Republican, can't run again because
of term limits. The GOP candidate
running to succeed him, businessman
Pete Ricketts, has been a strong
supporter of charter schools, Mr. Ziebarth
said. And South Dakota might
also see a push from its large Native
American community to create charters
in that state.
Although many school choice
advocates see charter laws in all
states as inevitable, some experts
are skeptical.
Christopher A. Lubienski, a professor
of education policy at the University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,
is one of them.
"We've seen this rapid growth
[in charter laws] and then it really
plateaued despite these pressures
from the federal government and
resources from places like Gates,"
Mr. Lubienski said, referring to
the federal Race to the Top grants,
which encouraged states to adopt
various school-choice policies, and
the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,
a large funder of charter
school initiatives.
He said these final eight states
might be holdouts for reasons
that run deeper than union power
and the political makeup of their
statehouses -a strong, anti-Washington
culture being one.
"For better or for worse, charters
have been associated with Washington
think tanks, and the federal government,"
said Mr. Lubienski, who
again pointed to the fact that many of
these states are largely rural."People
take a lot of pride in their community
schools."
Coverage of parent-empowerment issues
is supported by a grant from the
Walton Family Foundation, at
www.waltonfamilyfoundation.org.
Education Week retains sole editorial
control over the content of this coverage.
Tamika Moore for Education Week
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Education Week - October 22, 2014

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