New Schools for Alabama CEO Tyler Barnett Shares the Promise of Charter Schools

President Chuck Redden with Tyler Barnett and Rotarian Dennis Hinton

This week the Rotary Club of Birmingham welcomed Tyler Barnett, New Schools for Alabama CEO. He provided an overview of how charter schools work, offering choice and opportunity to students irrespective of their zip code, family income or any other consideration. Barnett discussed how Alabama’s passage of a school choice bill in 2015 has resulted in nine new charter schools throughout the state with strong demand and promising results. He explained how his organization supports the schools from inception through opening and ongoing operation. Barnett discussed that charter schools are not the only answer to improved access to quality education, but they are part of the solution, particularly in consistently underperforming areas.

“We don’t believe that zip code and income level should determine the quality of a child’s education,” Barnett said. “We don’t believe that school choice should just be for the affluent. The goal of charter schools is to provide access to high quality school choice specifically for those families who may not be able to afford it on their own.”

About Tyler Barnett
Tyler Barnett is the CEO of New Schools for Alabama, which is a nonprofit organization designed to support the charter school movement in Alabama. He began his career as a high school English teacher in Memphis, Tennessee through Teach For America, and he subsequently served in the Office of Educator Quality at the Missouri Department of Education and the Office of Innovation at the Illinois State Board of Education. For three years, he was the chief charter school development strategist for the Walton Family Foundation in Little Rock, Arkansas, and prior to founding New Schools for Alabama, he was the State Policy Director for the KnowledgeWorks Foundation. Tyler is an alumnus of the University of Kansas and the University of Missouri School of Law, and he was recently selected as a 2022 Pahara Fellow at the Aspen Institute. Tyler lives in the Oak Mountain area with his wife, Lydia, who is a Birmingham native, and their two daughters, Audrey and Lois.