Earlier this month, the NAACP Board of Directors voted for a moratorium on charter schools, essentially stripping educational control from both parents and students. The organization came to the conclusion despite dozens of African-American leaders imploring them not to.
Jacqueline Cooper, president of The Black Alliance for Educational Options blasted the decision in a new statement this week.
Cooper acknowledges charter schools aren't perfect, but the good ones deserve to be supported. To deny future charter schools to black children, she argues, will "widen the achievement gap.""We are absolutely stunned that the NAACP voted to put distortions, lies and outdated ideologies about charter schools above what is in the best interest of our children. It is inexplicable to me that such a storied organization, responsible for leading a powerful civil rights movement to tear down barriers for generations of Black people, would erect new ones for our children."
"Low-income and working-class Black families deserve more choice, not less."
Parents are just as disappointed. In an op-ed for The Houston Chronicle, an African-American working mother named Rosezina Williams explained why charter schools have been a blessing. She describes how her son has a disability and was bullied in public school. She put her son on a waiting for a charter school and found one that fit. Now, she said her son is treated like an individual and receives the education he needs.
Charter schools give more choice to the individual instead of the government. Apparently that is too dangerous of a concept for the NAACP.