A giveaway to the rich, disguised as school choice

  Our leaders call Alabama’s effective voucher program the CHOOSE Act. There’s some grim irony in that.

  Of course, you can choose to pay for private school tuition, whatever your reasons may be.

  But it’s not my choice. Or what the families of 730,000 Alabama students want. We pay taxes to support the teachers educating our children in public schools. And we want teachers and staff to have the resources they need to help students thrive.

  Yet our leaders plan to divert that money from classrooms into the pockets of wealthy families, in the form of $7,000 tax breaks. More if they have more than one kid enrolled in a private school.

  Yes, yes. Under this law, the credit could cover something besides a non-public academy. But considering that two-thirds of the initial applicants to the program are already in private school or homeschooled, it’s not hard to predict how the program will operate.

  You might also note current eligibility is limited to those making 300% of the poverty level. That sounds a lot more restrictive than it is.

  The cap is almost $80,000 a year for a family of three and around $96,000 for a family of four. Alabama’s median household income is $62,212 a year. So we’re already letting those making more than half the households in the state into the program.

  That mild regulation goes away in 2027. Which means the 1% will get in. And that you will be paying private school tuition for people who don’t need the help.

  That’s not how one sells a voucher program. Instead, you preach “choice” to families and educators locked in a public education system built on discrimination.

  “The CHOOSE Act will provide an opportunity for students to learn and thrive in an environment that best meets their needs, which could be a public school,” said Rep. Danny Garrett (R-Trussville), the sponsor of the law, during House debate last year.

  Even U.S. Sen. Katie Britt gets into it, claiming that her own federal version of this is OK because “your zip code shouldn’t determine your opportunities.”

  Nor should dead racists, the main reason why some zip codes have a lot more opportunity than others. But even if we accept Garrett and Britt’s premises, the CHOOSE Act isn’t going to help poor kids. Seven thousand dollars won’t get a student struggling with poverty to a private school. Not when the average private school tuition in Alabama is $8,298 a year.

  One gets an image of a person in an Armani suit walking into a cell block and proclaiming freedom to the inmates while holding a $7,000 check in one hand and a $8,298 key in the other.

  Freeing our schools from the prison of Jim Crow means trusting local communities with school funding; ending tax breaks to elite Alabamians that drain public services, and spending money on students.

  The CHOOSE Act sort of acknowledges that. Implicit in the law is the premise that any private school in Alabama is superior to any public school.

  Why?

  Because many private schools invest far more money in their students than the $13,461 per pupil our state does, a number that would be even lower without the 18% the federal government kicks in. Altamont in Birmingham charges over $30,000 a year for high school. Montgomery Academy asks for $19,000 for students in grades 10-12.

  Just think what we could achieve if Alabama spent $30,000 a year on a public school student. Or $24,000, which gets Massachusetts nation-leading results on standardized tests. Or $17,277, the average per-pupil spending in the United States.

  The CHOOSE Act has to nod at the fact that school spending works. But it also operates within the worldview of a state government that promotes private privilege over public welfare. Money can only go to people who already have it. Not the undeserving poor.

  And a lot of that money is about to head out the door. The 2026 education budget originally included $100 million to fund the CHOOSE Act. Sen. Arthur Orr (R-Decatur), the chair of the Senate’s education budget committee, increased that to $135 million due to “overwhelming, large applicant numbers” for the program.

  Expect that number to grow even more as the caps come off the program. Public school funding will suffer. Arizona in 2022 expanded an existing voucher program along the lines of what Alabama has just implemented. It proved far more expensive than they anticipated, and it’s contributed to budget problems in the state. That could happen here, and public school students will pay the price.

  The key to public school improvement is obvious: collecting more taxes from the wealthy — who pay less to the state government in percentage terms than the poorest 20% — and investing them in public education. Making the system better for everyone.

  But Alabama legislators have signaled they’d much rather assist children who don’t need the help.

  The rest of us have no choice in that.

  About the author: Brian Lyman is the editor of Alabama Reflector. He has covered Alabama politics since 2006 and has worked at the Montgomery Advertiser, the Press-Register, and The Anniston Star. A 2024 Pulitzer finalist for Commentary, his work has also won awards from the Associated Press Managing Editors, the Alabama Press Association, and the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights.

  This article was published by Alabama Reflector, which is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.