http://wbhm.org NPR News and Classical Music en Copyright 2005, wbhm.org webmaster@wbhm.org http://www.wbhm.org/pics/smalllogo.gif http://www.wbhm.org WBHM 90.3 FM The Alabama legislature begins its 2010 regular session tomorrow. Legislators will be meeting in the midst of a weak economy with lower tax receipts. It's also an election year. Birmingham-Southern Political Scientist Natalie Davis previews the session with WBHM's Andrew Yeager. http://wbhm.org/News/2010/legislature.html Alabama is one of only ten states that don't allow charter schools. Many states, including Texas, adopted charter schools in the 90s. Today, more than 113-thousand Texas children attend charter schools. http://wbhm.org/News/2010/tx-charter.htm This week on WBHM we're exploring Charter Schools: how they operate, whether they're effective, and what political forces shape the debate over legalizing charter schools in Alabama. Friday (3/12) at noon on WBHM we discuss all this and more during On The Line: Charter Schools. http://wbhm.org/News/2010/charterschools.html Our weekly segment features The Birmingham News columnist John Archibald, discussing the city politic (and county and state politic too). Instead of being unplugged as he is in the newspaper, we offer him a bullhorn. Sort of. http://wbhm.org/News/2010/archibald.html Advocates of charter schools in Alabama are getting a do-over. A bill to authorize such schools has been reintroduced in the state legislature after lawmakers killed a similar proposal last month. But if the topic of charter schools weren't controversial enough, mixing it with Alabama politics makes for a potent combination. WBHM's Andrew Yeager continues our look at charter schools by examining the political context. http://wbhm.org/News/2010/charterschools-politics.html There are nearly 5,000 charter schools across the country. They educate more than 1.5 million students. And President Obama wants more. But do they work? There are a handful of charter schools in wealthy communities and, perhaps not surprisingly, they tend to have high test scores. But most charter schools are in low-income, often minority neighborhoods. How do they fare? WBHM's Tanya Ott has our report. http://wbhm.org/News/2010/charterschools-efficacy.html A bill to authorize charter schools in Alabama is dead in the state legislature, but don't expect the debate to die down anytime soon. President Obama is pushing charter schools, and several of the gubernatorial candidates say they support the idea as well. But just what is a charter school? They've been around for more than a decade in some other states, but here in Alabama there seems to be a lot of confusion. http://wbhm.org/News/2010/charterschool101.html