Alabama is a deep red state. The governor and the legislature are Republican.
Yet this past spring, they rejected charter legislation, and the governor announced that he would not raise the issue in the next session.
What happened?
Veteran political observer Larry Lee explains it here.
Although charters have their strongest appeal to conservatives, they contain a contradiction.
The ALEC model legislation for charters says that the state should have a charter board that can override local control.
The idea of eroding local control for the sake of charters didn’t sit well with Alabama Republicans.
Also, every education group in the state opposed the legislation.
But at the end of the day, Alabama Republicans decided not to abandon local control of their public schools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
How will the “Blue States” justify this?
FIRE DUNCAN! Hire Ravitch!
Good for Alabama.
Would very much like to see that ALEC model legislation on charter schools. Washington state is running its 4th charter school initiative. Would be useful to know how the language compares with ALEC models.
It might be an idea to get past the red-blue thing
Rahm Emanuel isn’t running a Chicago in a way that’s especially teacher friendly, Duncan wasn’t loved by the teachers when he was there- and he’s a big fan of Parent Trigger
In Florida VP Joe Biden’s brother stands to make a ton of money off his Maverick Charter Schools if the law passes– Funny; after all the stuff Joe Biden has said about the Bush Family, Jeb’s working his tail off to make Biden’s Brother rich
Jeb Bush and Barack Obama take money from Bill Gates, I haven’t checked to see if Pearson contributes to Obama or not.. I’d be surprised if they don’t RTTT represents a potentially endless source of revenue for the company.
It was becoming so obvious Bush isn’t much more than a high priced salesman for the company so he took them off his official list of donors. I’m sure the money will still get to Jeb’s wallet, just by a different route,
Both political parties are beholden to neoliberal interests on this issue, the economy, jobs, and many other issues. There really isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between the two on issues of importance anymore.
Yep
The only thing that may eventually peel back NCLB and RTTT is the Republican respect for local control, and their fear of big government. That’s just one of the reasons why I don’t believe those who say Romney will be worse for education than Obama. I don’t like Romney, and I could spend the whole evening listing the things about him that make me nervous, but I’m hoping he unseats Obama.
Local control has been huge in Alabama ever since the Civil Rights Movement. It is probably the biggest local control state in America because it was the ultimate hotbed of the movement. Then it was called States Rights. I would not want to be in bed with Republicans, but if Catholics, Baptists, and Mormons can work together against gay rights, why can’t educators work with the far right to save the schools? That is how we got rid of Roy Barnes in Georgia as governor. Both the teachers and the flaggers came up against him. (Flaggers are conservatives who wanted to keep the confederate battle flag on the state flag despite the fact that it could have destroyed tourism.)
Local control is huge EVERYWHERE and will become a sticking point for conservatives eventually. They will not want to cede control to outsiders nor will they like, as Louisiana conservatives saw, that giving out vouchers to religious schools means ALL religions.
I think the idea of states and districts and local control may be the tipping point for ed reform.
All charter school proposals are not created equal. For instance, I-1240 allows local school districts to be authorized to oversee and approve public charter schools, a feature that provides the same level of local oversight as the traditional schools in the public system with the additional incentive for public charters — which are independently managed — to respond directly to the parents of enrolled students.