Tuberville Pushes For Major Reform In Education
Alabama Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville has made it clear that education reform in Alabama will be a key mission of his administration if he is elected governor. He has also lobbied for the dismantling of the U.S. Department of Education and has backed Gov. Ivey's push for school choice in Alabama.
Critics argue Tuberville and Ivey's school choice initiatives, including vouchers and charter schools, undermines public education by diverting necessary funds, increasing segregation, and offering little to no academic improvement over traditional public schools.
Tuberville, in a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee hearing focused on expanding school choice blasted public education, "I'm getting ready to hopefully be governor of Alabama. We're fixing to change everything in education. We need to change our education system, K-12, higher education. We need to get back to teaching and stop this ideology, get away from tenure, fire the bad people that don't do their job, and get back to doing what's right in this country and help our kids. We're stealing from the American taxpayers in a lot of ways, but this is one of them. They're losing their money because they're not getting their money's worth."
The Alabama CHOOSE Act provides refundable tax credits ($7,000 per student) for approved educational expenses. The program, in its second year, is in high demand: The program saw nearly 37,000 applications for the initial year, prompting, legislators to increase the scholarship funding by $85 million in its first year, and $530 million over the first three years.
Organizations like Alabama Arise and the Alabama Education Association fear the CHOOSE Act will erode public education in Alabama just as the state has started to see gains. In an AEA online article, Executive Director Amy H. Marlowe wrote, "Let’s call it what it is: SCHOOL CHOICE = VOUCHERS!"
Marlowe went on to describe school choice as a scheme. "These people want to take money from your already underfunded local schools and give it to private schools for, in the overwhelming majority of cases, children already attending those private schools. When Arkansas implemented its new voucher program this past year, 95% of the students who received the vouchers were already in private schools. A similar story played out in Florida."
New Schools for Alabama, an organization that supports public charter schools, claims two-thirds of Alabamians want school choice. Polls taken by the Republican party of Alabama reveals school choice is overwhelmingly popular with Republicans, popular with independents and far less popular with Democrats.
During the HELP committee hearing Tuberville closed the proceedings by claiming, "Choice should make public schools compete and get better." To that, critics question how that can be true if money is being removed from public schools and given to private and charter schools.
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