Dear editor,

Sen. Hank Sanders recently wrote a letter to the editor of this newspaper entitled, “Attacks on Public Education Are Mounting in Alabama.” To Sen. Sanders, I’d like to respond:

The purpose of my letter is to respond to your criticism of the efforts by conservatives in the Alabama Legislature to improve educational opportunities for the children in this state.

First, your support of the AEA for the past 30 years may have improved the salaries and retirement benefits for teachers, but where is the evidence that your support of the AEA has helped students from your district be able to compete in our global economy?

You and Paul Hubbert single-handedly ran the education budget for decades. Your law partner, J. L. Chestnut, once stated on your radio station that you were the most powerful man in state government, and he was correct. So how can you, the senator whose jurisdiction includes the city of Selma, criticize conservative efforts to improve the educational opportunities for our young people, when just last year, the Alabama State Department of Education voted unanimously to take over the Selma public schools for failing to investigate misconduct by one or more teachers, failing to enforce graduation requirements, and failing to monitor standardized test procedures? Who was hurt by those failures? Who was protecting the needs of the students?

Second, you mention the benefits of having public education available to you in the 1950s and 1960s even if, as you say, they were separate and unequal. I think you will agree with me that those public schools that you and I attended were taught by teachers who cared more about the students than the cost of their health insurance premiums.

Most of those teachers passed a difficult certification test and earned the right to be in the classroom.

That certification test was thrown out by one of Jimmy Carter’s appointed federal judges in the 1980s who ruled that it was too difficult for some college graduates. Even members of the AEA became concerned about the number of  incompetent teachers flooding the classrooms in the years which followed.

Third, you say the recently enacted Alabama Accountability Act is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, designed to devour public education, and does nothing to help children in so-called failing schools.  Senator Sanders, the public schools here are failing the students.

The math, science, and reading proficiency of students in Selma and Dallas County public schools is indefensible.

If the schools were doing their job, there would be no need for the Accountability Act, which allows black and white parents alike an opportunity to have their children educated in a better school, regardless of their income or zip code.

You incorrectly state that only a few of the students who took advantage of the Accountability Act transferred from failing schools. For the 2014-2015 academic year, of the 2800 students whose parents elected to send their children to a better school, 1400 transferred from failing schools.

That is not a few! It’s hard to understand your continued opposition to school choice efforts, like the Accountability Act, despite representing an area with a highly disproportionate number of failing schools.

Fourth, you criticize the charter schools bill and claim it is an unregulated scheme to promote separate, unequal and reduced education for our children. That is not true. Under the new law, a charter school will not be certified unless the standards for each school are approved by the governing agency. The law approving charter schools does not allow commercial establishments or for-profit groups to operate the schools.

Most importantly, the law dictates that if a charter school fails, it will be shut down — unlike the multitude of failing schools in the public system which are allowed to remain open, unable to fire incompetent teachers and unable to change their failing strategies.

Fifth, you say that teachers are the core of public education without mentioning the poor performance of the students in our public schools. You also note that teachers haven’t received but one raise in seven years and pay more for health insurance.

Everyone is paying more for health insurance because of the president you supported who railroaded through Congress the Affordable Care Act. You also complain that the AEA is under attack.

You have been in the political arena for so long that you see any challenge to the failed programs you have supported as being an attack on the AEA. School choice initiatives are an attack upon the failed systems you promote, but they are not an attack upon our children. The debate over the effectiveness of public education has been ongoing for decades.  It is true that public school systems face many tough challenges, including competing for scarce financial resources, the added expense of special education needs, the cost of transporting students to school and schools having to comply with burdensome federal and state regulations.

However, after years of protecting the status quo while lagging behind the innovation and educational results of other states, the majority of legislators have agreed that it’s time to try something different.

That doesn’t mean they have found the perfect solution, it simply means decades of failure justify trying something different.

That’s a good thing. Our schoolchildren deserve better. One thing is certain, real improvement will not be achieved by opposing every attempt at changing a system that is failing. In closing, I honestly believe that you want what is best for the children of this area, unfortunately your allegiance to your own political party will simply not allow you to support the changes that are needed.

 

B. Kincey Green Jr.

Selma