Alabama has a solid Republican majority in its legislature.
Yet, Larry Lee reports, an effort to expand the number of charters in the state was overwhelmingly defeated.
Alabama has a lot of small towns and rural districts, represented by Republicans. They know the public school is part of the fabric of their community. They don’t want charters, though they are fine with opening them in Birmingham. Not all Republicans are free market zealots. Some are old-fashioned conservatives who want to conserve their community, not disrupt it.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Schools are the fabric of a community. Hah, I always knew that one of the deformers objectives is to destroy communites. This is called: DIVIDE and CONQUER.
Glad Alabama Charter Bill crashed and burned. Charter schools and vouchers are just about MONEY anyway.
Schools in the rural areas must be protected because they the “fabric of the community,” while schools inside the inner city may be repeatedly blown up and invaded because surely inner city people have no concept of community?
Poor minority communities have suffered unfairly under market based education schemes, many of which have been unsuccessful. No wonder many social justice groups have called for a moratorium on charter expansion!
There is something conservative in a good way about wanting to keep local control of public education. More communities have come to realize that “solutions” do not come from the market, just chaos and waste. Some have called it “creative disruption,” but there is nothing creative about it. I prefer to call markets in education “targeted instability” because that is the impact on the students and community.
The phenomenon you are describing is called “creative destruction”. The term was first postulated by economist Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950). It is the free market’s messy way of delivering progress.
see this link
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/CreativeDestruction.html
Automobiles caused the demise of blacksmiths and carriage makers and livery stables. Netflix killed video rental stores.
And you are quite correct, there is something conservative about keeping control of local education with local people. Many conservatives (myself included) want to see the phase-out of the federal department of education, and the return of public education control to states and municipalities.
Charles,
Children are not made of clay or metal. They should not be subjected to “destruction” of any kind. It is certainly not “creative.”
Diane, No one is saying that children are made of clay/metal. Children are not destroyed. Automobiles “destroyed” livery stables and blacksmiths. Airplane travel “destroyed” passenger rail service.
This is part of the reason that economics is called “the dismal science”.
see
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/12/why-economics-is-really-called-the-dismal-science/282454/
I’m proud to say I work for the Alabama Education Association and we vehemently oppose charter schools. I’m the product of a small school system and I represent small and large school systems who will be negatively affected by charter schools. Public education should be an equalizer between the rich and poor.
Good.