"School Choice"

  

   
     The State of Alabama is front and center in an article posted at TheDailyBeast.com over the weekend.

 "Today advocates of “school choice” routinely use the language of civil rights to argue that federal and state governments should finance largely unregulated private schools through the use of vouchers."

"The first formal Southern state plan to block desegregation after 1954 was in Alabama, where segregationists proposed a “freedom of choice” plan without regard to race. It provided for “parent choice” within a public-private system of education, funded by state revenues and guided by a state policy to “promote the education of its citizens in a manner and extent consistent with its available resources, and the willingness and ability of the individual student.” This quoted phrase, in fact, meant that Alabama eliminated a right of education of all children from its state constitution and made the education of state’s children subject to what segregationists considered to be “available resources” and the “ability” of different children to learn."

   Only four of the largest private schools in one list are in Montgomery. Mobile seems to be the state center for private schools, with eleven on the list of 35.