FIGHTING FOR CHARTERS: Black education reformers are speaking out against a call by the NAACP and the Movement for Black Lives, a group within the Black Lives Matter movement, to halt charter school expansion.
When the NAACP called for a moratorium on charter schools and the Movement for Black Lives, a sub-group within the Black Lives Matter movement, announced its opposition to charter schools, some African-American supporters of both groups found themselves perplexed. Among the most vocal about their strong disagreement are community leaders and education reformers who say moving backward on school choice will hit hardest at the minority students those groups claim to represent.
Derrell Bradford, executive director of NYCAN, told Watchdog.org that not only does the opposition make no sense politically, it is counterproductive in fulfilling what the NAACP and Black Lives Matter say they stand for.
“Black Lives Matter is a protest movement, so I don’t understand why they’d be against charter schools,” said Bradford. “What is picking charter if not an act of protest? When you’re anti-charter you’re anti a parent’s right to resist. Anti their right to pressure. Anti their right to break it all. If you want a revolution about the treatment of black people in this country, chartering is one of the most powerful tools at your disposal.”
A resolution the NAACP is considering calls for a moratorium on new charters and stricter oversight of existing schools of choice. The organization approved a resolution at its national convention last month. The national board is expected to meet next month to give it final approval.
“The NAACP’s position would be sad if it wasn’t just straight up shameful,” said Bradford. “They can call it a pause or a moratorium, but they’re really just selling out black children and parents across this country who are filling up charter waiting lists in droves in search of great education.”
According to Stanford University’s Center for Research on Educational Outcomes (CREDO), middle-class black children attending charter schools in 41 cities gain an average of 29 additional days of learning in reading and 43 days in math compared with students in traditional public schools. Black children in low-income families attending charters gain an additional 44 days in reading and 59 days in math learning, the study says.
So what gives?
Critics of the call for a moratorium say follow the money.
“NAACP has long been a recipient of American Federation of Teachers and National Education Association largesse, collecting $151,700 from both unions last year, according to filings by the two unions with the U.S. Department of Labor,” RiShawn Biddle, editor and publisher of Dropout Nation, told Watchdog.org in an email.
The NAACP also has strong ties to the American Federation of Teachers, and teamed with the local New York affiliate in 2011 on an unsuccessful lawsuit to block the city from renting space in its school buildings to charters. The Florida NAACP teamed up with the Florida Education Association in an unsuccessful challenge to that state’s voucher program.
Biddle said the actions of the NAACP and the Movement for Black Lives are tantamount to “educational genocide.”
He also suggested that opposition from the Movement for Black Lives is “reflective of the tendency of school reformers to do badly in forming coalitions beyond education policy.”
“Because some reformers have been reluctant to consider the role of schools in contributing to the overuse of out-of-school suspensions problems being addressed by Black Lives Matter activists, some focused on criminal justice reform have run to teachers unions for support,” he said.
They haven’t always found it — many teachers and their unions are not on board with the idea of reducing suspensions, especially for violent behavior by students.
“Even as the AFT affiliates such as New York City’s UFT have fought against efforts to reduce suspensions, some Black Lives Matter activists have found that they have nowhere else to turn for allies,” Biddle says.
Close ties between the NAACP and teachers run deeper than just temporary alliances of convenience, though.
“This isn’t to say that these groups are merely following teachers’ union marching orders,” Biddle said. “For NAACP, in particular, teachers working in traditional districts make up a large portion of its older, more-influential membership. For these teachers, many of whom are strongly tied to NEA and AFT despite the racism they faced within both unions, charter schools are an anathema. These teachers, along with other school district principals and other employees (many of whom also contribute to NAACP), view the expansion of choice as a danger to their own finances. They can end up being more-concerned about their paychecks and pensions than about the futures of black children.”
Howard Fuller, founder and director of the Institute for the Transformation of Learning at Marquette University, says school choice is a must for minority students to have increased opportunities.
“The number of black families who choose to send their children to charter schools only grows,” Fuller said in a statement. “Over the past five years, nearly 200,000 additional black families have enrolled their children in charter schools. At 27 percent, black enrollment in charter schools is approaching double their enrollment in traditional public schools (16 percent). Today, about one in 10 black students who attends a public school in this country attends a charter school. Many of the 1 million names on waiting lists to get into a charter school are black children. Black parents continue to vote with their feet to enroll their children in a charter school for good reason.”
Just as the African-American community at large is not monolithic, says Biddle, neither are the groups that are fighting charters.
State-level chapters of the NAACP boast many who are dissenting from the national organization’s official line. The same is true for others.
“For every Movement for Black Lives opposing charters,” says Biddle, “there are leaders in Black Lives Matter such as Deray McKesson and Brittany Packnett who are champions for charters and the children who attend them.”