Alabama Legislature Rams Through School Choice/Flexibility Bill

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Summary: An Alabama Legislative Conference Committee transformed an 8-page education reform bill into a 27-page "bombshell" bill that has now passed both Houses and awaits the Governor's signature. This new bill includes the following provisions:

1. Parents of children in "chronically failing" schools will be allowed to either (a) move into a different (non-failing) public school; or (b) take 80% of the school's funding associated with their child as a tax credit and apply that to enrollment in a private school. This is effectively a modified 'school voucher' program.

2. Tax credits will be allowed for businesses who support private school education.

The speed at which this occurred led to 'shouting' in the Alabama Senate yesterday (i.e., this is a Democrat nightmare scenario - Republicans doing what was done to them in times past). Juicy details in the links below:

We have fairly nice schools here.
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Your schools, and their curriculum, policies, textbooks and **worldview** are GODLESS. Simply by attending children **will** learn to think and reason godlessly. They must just to cooperate in the godless classroom. And...They risk learning that religious beliefs are to be private and left in the trash can at the door of their public life. ( This is not “fairly nice”.)

Your government owned and run government schools are **NOT** religiously neutral because no education can be. It is impossible. All schools must choose between either a God-centered worldview or a godless worldview and neither is religiously neutral in its content or consequences. ( This is not “fairly nice”.)

Your government owned and run schools are **forcing** citizens to pay for the NON-neutral GODLESS indoctrination of its children. ( This is not “fairly nice”.)

Your government schools are the very definition of a socialist and single-payer entitlement. By attending children risk learning that the voting mob has the power to give them tuition-free schooling. Well? If the voting mob can give them tuition-free school, why not use the voting mob to get **lots** of other “free” stuff? ( This is not “fairly nice”.)

Your government's socialist-entitlement and godless schools likely have many so-called “Christians” working in these godless indoctrination camps. When did Christ ever teach that Christians should support, work for, and establish indoctrination centers that teach children to think godlessly and be comfortable with stealing ( socialism)? At some point, and on some level, children may likely determine that their prison-like schools are in contradiction to Christian principles that so-called Christian teachers are promoting and supporting. The Barna Foundation reports that 85% of children from highly active evangelical homes fail to be active in their faith 2 years after graduation from their godless government schools. Maybe it is because the kids can't stand the Christian hypocrisy of their so-called “Christian” jailers ( oops! “teachers”). ( This is not “fairly nice”.)

In many ways the government in your county's schools treat children (whose only crime was to be born) like prisoners. Every First Amendment Right in government schools is trashed ( speech, press, assembly, expression of religion, and godlessness is imposed on them by law). The children risk learning to be comfortable prisoners of the state. ( This is not “fairly nice”.)

Very thoughtful essay. Good Job!

It was a compilation of things I've been saying on FR for over ten years. While it is too long, it's still better material and strategy than anything I've seen out of Hillsdale, Cato, Reason, or the Manhattan Institute.

Have you posted it as a vanity here on Free Republic?

I might do a substantial excerpt, but given that the page was done with style sheets, reformatting the whole thing for FR is an amount of work for which I don't have time. Too busy rewriting the second book.

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