Rachel Blackmon Bryars: Four myths to dispel during Alabama School Choice Week
Gov. Kay Ivey recently proclaimed this “Alabama School Choice Week” and thousands of families are celebrating reforms created by the Alabama Accountability Act, including scholarships so low-income parents can transfer their children from under-performing schools. Critics of the program, however, will likely respond by repeating some of the many myths about the law. Here are four you’ll probably hear: Myth #1: Scholarships steal money from public schools The Alabama Accountability Act “has directly siphoned more than $140 million from Alabama’s cash-strapped K-12 classrooms,” wrote the Alabama Education Association in a September 2018 edition of the teacher’s union magazine. But public school systems aren’t actually losing money. They are now collecting more money to educate fewer students with the biggest budget in a decade. Overall, the state’s multi-billion dollar education trust fund has grown since the scholarships were first offered, even while enrollment has steadily decreased. Last year alone, tax revenue that funds the education budget grew by nearly half a billion dollars– about three times as much as the scholarship program has spent in six years combined. Also, it costs roughly $9,500 annually to educate a student in public school, according to budget data. But it only costs about $6,500 to educate the same child in private school, which includes the costs of administering the scholarships, according to Warren Callaway, executive director of Scholarships For Kids, one of the largest scholarship granting organizations in the state, and a member of the recently formed Alabama Accountability Act Coalition. “It’s a great deal for taxpayers,” Callaway said. “They’ve given us $146 million and we’ve provided $200 million in education. The cost of education is not fixed because [public schools] don’t have to educate the child we have taken off their hands.” Myth #2: Even high performing schools that don’t have any students transferring out on scholarship still “lose money” “The highest performing school districts lose revenue at the same rate as all other districts,” according to the teachers’ union article. “It does not matter if you have no failing schools in your district. It does not matter if you have no scholarship recipients in your district. All school systems are still penalized under the [program].” Callaway says this is “bogus.” “The AEA tells Mountain Brook City, arguably the best system in the state, that they’ve lost $834,956 due to the Accountability Act,” Callaway said. “That’s hogwash. They haven’t lost a dollar.” Callaway examined state budget data showing Mountain Brook enrollment has largely been static, while state spending on students has gone up. In effect, they’ve received more money than years prior despite the AEA’s claims they’ve lost money. Myth #3: A University of Alabama study proves school choice doesn’t work A state-commissioned study conducted by the University of Alabama’s Institute for Social Science Research found that students using the scholarships performed about as well, on average, as their public school peers. Critics believe this proves school choice doesn’t help students improve academically. But advocates claim this indicates a huge achievement since research shows poverty strongly correlates with poor academic performance – a fact highlighted by the recent release of this year’s failing schools list. “In 72 of the 76 [failing] schools, more than nine out of 10 students are in poverty,” reports Al.com’s Trisha Powell Crain. “Even in the other four, more than half of the students are poor. In every one of the nine K-5 and K-6 elementary schools on the list, every student is poor. The University of Alabama study also showed low-income scholarship students often did better academically than their low-income public school counterparts. “We’ve taken kids who you would predict would be on the bottom side of the bell curve of achievement and we’ve gotten them to the mean,” Callaway said. “I would put the headline of that study, instead of ‘They scored average, ho-hum,’ I would say ‘They scored average, exclamation point!’” Myth #4: The program should be repealed because not all scholarship recipients are zoned for failing schools Students zoned for failing schools are awarded the scholarships first, and any remaining funds are then given to other disadvantaged families in schools that are generally close to the bottom 6th percentile — the state’s definition of a failing school. “Would you want to send your child to a 7th percentile school or an 8th percentile school?” Callaway asked. “The answer is no. Those are still low performing schools.” Overall, there’s a lot about education besides school choice that Alabamians can celebrate this week. Our recently released state report card revealed district and school improvement last year, with more As, Bs and Cs than the year before. Our First Class Pre K program continues to succeed and draw national attention. And Montgomery will open its first charter school this year. None of these achievements, including school choice, would have happened without new ideas and reform. “The Accountability Act wasn’t an initiative to take the place of public education, it was just intended to show there is an alternative way of doing things and to upset the status quo,” Callaway said. No doubt the families celebrating their life-changing opportunity this week thank God that it did. ••• Rachel Blackmon Bryars is a senior fellow at the Alabama Policy Institute. Email her at Rachel@alabamapolicy.org or connect with her on Instagram @rbryars.
Rachel Blackmon Bryars: Alabama board of education member says school choice is trying to ‘destroy a whole race of people’
Alabama board of education member Ella Bell, D-Montgomery, spoke out during a work session Thursday claiming that Alabama’s landmark tax credit scholarship program for low income families was part of an effort to “destroy a whole race of people.” “They took money from the poorest counties in the state to send kids to private school,” Bell claimed, after accusing the program of “stealing” from the state. “That’s just awful.” Trouble is, that’s just not true. The small yet popular program created by the Alabama Accountability Act only amounts to one half of one percent of the state’s multi-billion-dollar education trust fund – a fund that has grown well beyond the minuscule cost of providing the scholarships, according to state budget data. And more than 80 percent of the parents who received scholarships last year from the two largest providers are minorities, according to a report. All made at or below 185 percent of the federal poverty level when they applied, as required by law, which is also the eligibility requirement to receive free or reduced priced lunches. Disabled veteran Dalphine Wilson of Montgomery, who is African-American, is one of those parents. The single mother of two uses the scholarships to send her children to private school instead of the city’s troubled public school system. Wilson’s children dropped to one knee in protest during a recent Montgomery County School Board meeting after its members approved a resolution demanding a repeal of the scholarship program. Her daughter wept after the meeting, afraid she’d lose her scholarship. Her son asked if they could leave Alabama. “Parents deserve a choice,” said Wilson, 44, who applied for scholarships after seeing what she described as the “overwhelming” and chaotic culture in her daughter’s elementary school classroom. “And your choice should not be, ‘Gosh, I really hope my child can get into a magnet school, and if they can’t, their only option is this failing school that is under state intervention.’” She said if anyone is stealing, it’s those who want to take away the scholarships. “Why rob us of a choice?” Wilson asked. Ryan Cantrell, a school choice advocate in Montgomery who was an aide in the State Senate when the act passed in 2013, said the program was specifically designed to provide parents like Wilson with a choice that was once only available to higher income families. “We’re talking about families who absolutely had no other option,” he said. “For the life of me, I don’t understand how an elected official could consciously vote to take that away from a low-income child. It boggles the mind.” Cantrell said the “heart of the problem” is that opponents of the scholarship program are primarily concerned with the public education system itself, not the students it was established to serve. “We are so focused … on the adults in the room, and our education system is not built to serve adults,” he said. “Our education system is built to serve students, and whatever it is that works for kids ought to be what we’re doing.” Cantrell also disproved Bell’s claim that the program has been “stealing” from public school systems. On the contrary, he said, public schools have more funding and less students now than when the scholarship program began. Montgomery’s school system, for example, has seen its funding increase by more than $8 million, up 5 percent since 2014, even while the overall student population has decreased by more than 7 percent, according to Cantrell. During the board meeting, Bell also said the program “is absolutely horrifying to me because already I’m black and I grew up in Montgomery County 70-years ago and I know all the tricks.” But the scholarships aren’t a trick. They’re a lifeline, a choice, for thousands of kids who otherwise wouldn’t have one. Alabama shouldn’t allow that choice to be taken away because of past wrongs. The plain fact today is that the Alabama Accountability Act is a tiny fraction of our state’s education budget, it gives low-income families a sometimes life-altering choice, and almost all of the students receiving scholarships are minorities. We should all be proud of that. Because in the end, this is about what we believe education dollars are for – the system or the student. Please call your state legislator and local school board member today and let them know what you think. ••• Rachel Blackmon Bryars is a senior fellow at the Alabama Policy Institute. Contact her at rachel@alabamapolicy.org.
