Larry Lee is a native of Alabama who has taken a great interest in community schools. A few years ago, he was the lead author of a report about ten outstanding rural schools in Alabama. If you read it, you may find yourself crying when you learn how hard parents, teachers, principals, and communities are struggling to educate the children of poor rural communities. He wrote about the importance of creating a culture of expectations and building trust among parents and the community. He wrote about schools that “build a sense of family.” Larry, who is a member of the board of the Network for Public Education, was not a supporter of the Alabama Accountability Act. He didn’t see how it would help build the trust and community support that he knew was crucial to these rural schools that were struggling to do their best against the odds. When he read an article in the Alabama press written by Beltway insiders Chester E. Finn, Jr., and Michael Petrilli, he was not at all pleased. He wrote a letter.
Dear Mr. Finn,
You and Michael Petrilli recently had an op-ed piece on al.com that stated in the lead paragraph….
Cotton State conservatives are rightfully proud of the brand-new Alabama Accountability Act, which will allow thousands of students to escape failing public schools starting this fall, and take publicly-funded scholarships to the private schools of their choice. Experience from other states indicates that these scholarships will provide a lifeline to the children in the 79 failing schools recently identified by state superintendent Tommy Bice.
Since I live in Montgomery, Alabama, and spend a great deal of time staying abreast of education issues in this state, I would like to comment on your op-ed.
Obviously you have little knowledge of the Alabama Accountability Act, and even less knowledge of Alabama and the “failing” schools identified. (which are 78, not 79 as stated in your article.)
School began here on aug. 19, the day your article appeared, so those students from “failing” schools who are availing themselves of the opportunity to transfer have largely done so by now.
and you might be interested in knowing that rather than the “thousands of students” you predict will escape, the number as of thursday afternoon was 6. as in SIX. that’s right, out of nearly 30,000 kids who attend these 78 schools, only six (as of the afternoon of aug. 22) were transferring.
After all the chest pounding and grand standing by those legislators who passed this law and boasted that they made sure no one in education knew what they were doing, after all the work done by the state department of education and the revenue department to come up with data, to reprogram computers, to come up with new rules, to set up new units to deal with this law, after more than $50 million was set aside from this coming fiscal year’s education trust fund budget to offset the impact of this law—it is a HUGE FAIL.
It is the Hindenburg of Alabama legislation. and I’ve been watching for a long time since I am older than you are.
The numbers never worked. It was no more than a fairy tale. It defied logic. It ignored reality.
Rather than asking two very important questions 1) why are these schools failing and 2) what can we do to help them, it instead twisted the old adage “if you are in a hole you need to stop digging,” into “if you are in a hole, you need a bigger shovel.”
My hope and prayer is that if we learned just one thing from this very expensive and pointless exercise, it is that anytime this state sets out to develop education policy, professional educators should be at the table.
Larry Lee
334-787-0410Education precedes Prosperity
334-787-0410Education precedes Prosperity
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