You remember Henny Penny, better known as Chicken Little, right?
Henny Penny was a chicken who believed the world was coming to an end.
“The sky is falling! The sky is falling!” He would scream in agony.
According to Wikipedia, that phrase “has passed into the English language as a common idiom indicating a hysterical or mistaken belief that disaster is imminent.”
Our story today doesn’t have a Henny Penny, but we do have a Henry Mabry — head of the Alabama Education Association (AEA), the public school employees union.
Mabry and other members of Alabama’s education establishment began screaming “The sky is falling!” the evening of Feb. 28, when Republicans in the Alabama legislature passed a bill creating a way for students in habitually failing schools to transfer to good schools in their area.
The logic was simple: why should any child, regardless of their race or socioeconomic background, be stuck in a failing school? Every parent deserves a choice, and every child deserves a chance.
But that’s not how the defenders of the status quo saw it.
The education establishment warned that students would flood out of public schools and into private schools.
Mabry called it “insanity.”
The sky is falling!
“The people of Alabama will not forget about this,” House Minority Leader Craig Ford said ominously.
The sky is falling!
“They know it’s wrong, the people know it’s wrong,” Mabry added.
The sky is falling!
Only it wasn’t.
According to an AL.com article posted yesterday, only 52 students in the entire state left their failing public school to attend a nearby private school. 33 of those students were in Montgomery County, so only 19 students across the rest of the state took advantage of the tax credits offered by the Accountability Act to attend a private school.
Meanwhile, almost 700 students were rescued from their failing public school and transferred to a successful public school in their area.
Throwing a lifeline to even one child would make all of this worth it. But this year over 700 Alabama children will receive a quality education, in places where they didn’t previously have access to one.
“It’s encouraging to see so many children taking advantage of the opportunity to leave a failing school in favor of a better education thanks to Alabama’s school choice law,” Sen. Del Marsh, President Pro Tem of the Alabama Senate, told Yellowhammer today.
“All schools are now held accountable to provide the best education possible for all students,” Rep. Chad Fincher, the Accountability Act’s House sponsor added.
The Accountability Act is not a silver bullet. We should not stop considering reform measures until every single son and daughter of our state has access to the highest quality education.
But the sky is most definitely not falling.
As a matter of fact, it’s looking a lot brighter now than it did in years past, especially for the children and families taking advantage of the opportunities provided to them by the first school choice reform Alabama has ever seen.
Follow Cliff on Twitter @Cliff_Sims
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