The new speaker of the Alabama House of Representatives believes the state can build on its gains in national education rankings and said making that happen is the most important job for lawmakers as they begin a four-year term.

Rep. Nathaniel Ledbetter, R-Rainsville, talked about his priorities in an interview last Tuesday as he prepared to lead the House into the annual session, which starts March 7.

Alabama enters the year with an unusual $2.7 billion surplus for the education budget and with an economy strengthened by record low unemployment.

“If you look at where we’re at in Alabama, we’re blessed right now,” Ledbetter said. “Our budgeting is better than it’s probably been, maybe ever, in state history. Our economy is going at a pace I’ve never seen in my lifetime with where we are producing automobiles and ships and airplanes. But the thing we’re lacking in is helping to improve our education.”

Alabama fourth graders rose from 49th place to 39th among states in reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, considered the nation’s report card, on results released in October. The previous rankings were from 2019. In math, Alabama fourth graders improved from 52nd place to 40th. Alabama’s rankings improved because its test scores rose despite the disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic. Nationally, there was an overall decline in scores.

Alabama eighth graders remained 49th in reading but improved from 52nd to 47th in math. Alabama eighth graders’ scores were lower than in 2019 but did not drop as much as eighth graders’ scores nationally.

“We are beginning to move up,” Ledbetter said. “I’ve heard people say it’s because of the pandemic; nobody else moved up. Well, good, if that’s the case, we moved up more than they did, right? So, I think we’ll continue that path. I really do. We’ve got people that’s really dedicated to see it done.”

Ledbetter’s focus on education aligns with the message from Gov. Kay Ivey, who set a goal during her inauguration speech in January to raise Alabama into the top 30 in national rankings in reading and math by the end of her term in 2027.

During the Legislature’s organizational session in January, the 105-member House elected Ledbetter speaker without opposition. Ledbetter replaced Mac McCutcheon, who had been speaker since 2016 and did not run for another term. Ledbetter, who had been House majority leader under McCutcheon, was first elected to the House in 2014.

Ledbetter worked for more than 30 years for Sand Mountain Electric Cooperative. He and his wife are the former owners of the Mountain Valley News newspaper in Rainsville. He a former mayor and city council member in Rainsville.

On improving education, the speaker has not endorsed specific bills but said he expects lawmakers to hear and explore many ideas.

“We’ve got to get everybody at the table,” Ledbetter said. “We’ve certainly got to get the people that’s involved in it on a daily basis. Both administrative, both in the classroom, and let them give us ideas on what they think can move the needle.”

Among the proposals expected is a bill for “school choice,” a term that generally means using taxpayer dollars to help children attend private school or a public school in a district outside where they live. Last year, lawmakers proposed a “Parent’s Choice” bill to establish educational savings accounts, or ESAs, to allow parents to use state funds to pay for private school or tuition and fees at participating public schools. The amount was about $5,500 annually per child, a figure based on the per pupil state funding for public schools. The bill won approval in a committee but then stalled.

Ledbetter said school choice legislation has potential but that the benefits would vary depending on where students live. For example, he said it would not be as useful in mostly rural, poor counties with limited choices for parents.

“I know there is a lot of conversation about it,” Ledbetter said. “But we’ve got to be realistic about it too and see what approach we need to take. There’s certain parts of the state that school choice is probably not going to affect. They really don’t have a choice.”

Ledbetter said demand for school choice options would vary depending on how satisfied parents are with the schools in their districts. On the other hand, there are areas, such as inner cities, where he believes there could be strong demand.

“So I think it’s probably a tool in the toolbox and we’ve got to use it,” he said. But the details matter. “We can’t just take a shotgun and shoot it because it’s a good catch phrase,” he said.

EdChoice, a nonprofit organization that promotes and tracks school choice programs, said in a report last year that eight states have laws allowing ESAs. About 31,000 students are using ESAs in all eight states combined.

Alabama lawmakers have approved school choice measures before, including the Alabama Accountability Act, which passed a decade ago and provides private school scholarships funded by donors who receive a credit on their state income taxes. Alabama also has charter schools, which the Legislature authorized in 2015. Charter schools are publicly funded but operate with more autonomy than traditional public schools under terms set in their charters.

The speaker said the state has a chance to build on education initiatives started over the last few years. Those include the Literacy Act, passed in 2019 to put more people and resources into reading instruction in the earliest grades, and the Numeracy Act, passed last year, which emphasizes math in the earliest grades. Ledbetter said he’s talking to House education budget chairman Danny Garrett, R-Trussville, lawmakers on the House Education Policy Committee, and others about what should come next.

“What we’re doing is starting to work,” Ledbetter said. “I think we’ll see some more ideas. We’ll have meetings going forward. I’ve talked with Chairman Garrett at length about a lot of ideas he’s got that I think are positive. And certainly the systems are talking to the members and trying to come up with good ideas to move education forward.”

For years, lawmakers have steadily increased funding for the state’s pre-kindergarten program, First Class Pre-K, which has received top ratings in quality from the National Institute for Early Education Research for more than a decade but is still available to only about half of the state’s 4-year-olds.

The state pays 80 percent of the cost of a First Class Pre-K class. But Ledbetter said some school districts have not been able to take advantage of that because they don’t have the matching funds or don’t have facilities. Ledbetter said the state should consider covering 100 percent in some districts to increase access to pre-K, especially in areas with failing schools.

Ledbetter said he is exploring ideas about how to make superintendents and principals more accountable for how well students are learning. He said there’s no bill on that yet.

“If we’ve got failing schools and you’ve got a superintendent or a principal that’s been there over a period of three years and are not making any changes, then we need to change it out,” Ledbetter said. “We need somebody else in there.”

Last year, the House passed an intensely debated bill to prohibit the teaching of “divisive concepts” related to race, sex or religion in K-12 schools, colleges, and state agencies. The bill came as part of a national outcry about critical race theory, a viewpoint of history that says racism is systemic in America. CRT became a national target of Republican politicians who said it indoctrinated students.

The Republican majority passed the “divisive concepts” bill after cutting off a filibuster from Democrats who opposed it. Supporters said the bill was to prevent kids from being taught to hate each other and to hate America. Democrats who opposed it said it would inhibit discussions of difficult issues like the influence of racism. The bill died in the Senate.

The sponsor, Rep. Ed Oliver, R-Dadeville, has pre-filed a similar bill for this year’s session and has 21 Republican co-sponsors. Asked about the prospects for the bill, Ledbetter said he would prefer to see the Senate pass its version of the bill first, since Oliver’s bill died there last year after the House passed it. Ledbetter said he did not want the House to spend a day on debate and a likely filibuster only to see it die again in the Senate.

“If we can’t get it out of the Senate there’s no use in us visiting it in the House,” Ledbetter said.

As for that $2.7 billion surplus, Ledbetter said he expects substantial support to return some of that to taxpayers through a rebate. The surplus is available because the state took in $10.4 billion in tax revenue for the Education Trust Fund in the 2022 fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30. Lawmakers budgeted $7.7 billion in spending from the ETF.

Ledbetter said a rebate, a one-time benefit for taxpayers, is more likely than a permanent tax cut, because the conditions that caused the surplus were temporary. It is partly the result of billions in federal dollars that Congress sent to households, businesses, and state and local governments through COVID-19 relief plans like the American Rescue Plan Act. Ledbetter said revenues flowing to the ETF are slowing down, reinforcing the point that the surplus won’t be recurring.

“I’m not saying there won’t be some type of tax cut,” Ledbetter said. “I think there is a possibility. But people have a tendency to forget. Eight years ago we didn’t have enough money to pay our bills. What we don’t want to do is get the state back in that situation. So we’ve got to be very cautious about what we do because we are going to see a downturn.”

Other priorities Ledbetter mentioned for the 2023 session:

• Updating the Alabama Jobs Act, the state’s main law to provide economic incentives to recruit industry.
• Allocating the remaining $1 billion share in federal funds from the American Rescue Plan Act, a COVID-19 relief package approved by Congress.
• Passing a bill to impose stiff mandatory minimum sentences for selling or knowingly possessing fentanyl, which is the leading cause of overdose deaths in the state.
• Passing a bill to revise the state law governing adoptions because of problems that Ledbetter said make it harder to move children into permanent homes.