Fact Sheet

FACT: Washington bureaucrats are telling us how to run our local schools.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is using his experience as the Superintendent of Chicago Public Schools to "federalize" his Chicago model in every state, using federal pressure to force states like Alabama to create alternative charter schools.

FACT: Charter schools don't work, and they drain money away from local public schools.

A comprehensive Stanford University study found that more than a third of charter schools perform worse than nearby public schools, and about half do about as well as public schools. That is 83 percent of all charter schools nationally doing worse or no better than traditional public schools. Only 17% of charter schools outperform public schools, meaning for every one charter school doing better, there are two doing worse than a regular local public school.

At the same time, charter schools are having a disproportionate negative impact on funding for local public schools, and bring on new problems such as graft and corruption with public education dollars.

FACT: Federal bureaucrats may withhold critical funds from Alabama if the state does not create charter schools.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and the bureaucrats he has hired have tried to tilt the playing field toward states with charter schools for competitive Race to the Top (RTTT) funds. While Duncan has since said a charter school law does not "make or break" Alabama's competitiveness, Gov. Riley has used RTTT to try and ramrod a charter law. Riley and other charter supporters go along with the effort to put federal control ahead of local and state control in the decision making process of how our local schools are to operate.