The Patriot Post® · NAACP Votes to Keep Students Enslaved
Charter schools are one of the few bright areas of America’s otherwise floundering education system. Sadly, that’s one of the reasons they are also the subject of fierce opposition. The Left’s utter hostility to school choice was on full display this weekend when the NAACP agreed to ratify “a resolution … adopted by delegates at its 2016 107th National Convention calling for a moratorium on charter school expansion and for the strengthening of oversight in governance and practice.” The board listed four conditions that must be met in order for it to retract its position on charter schooling:
> (1) Charter schools are subject to the same transparency and accountability standards as public schools (2) Public funds are not diverted to charter schools at the expense of the public school system (3) Charter schools cease expelling students that public schools have a duty to educate and (4) Cease to perpetuate de facto segregation of the highest performing children from those whose aspirations may be high but whose talents are not yet as obvious.
The response from lower-income Americans should be nothing short of outrage. For many children — particularly minorities — charter schooling offers one of the few options they have of escaping the systemic problems associated with inner city public schools. But it seems leftists are more concerned with eliminating all options that don’t include public schools than they are on fixing the problems of their own making. As The Wall Street Journal editors put it, “If these gentry progressives are waiting for urban schools to reform without competition from charters or vouchers they are consigning generations of children to diminished lives.”
Another person who seems willing to cosign generations of children to diminished lives is Hillary Clinton, who columnist John Goodman says “has been inching ever closer to the teacher union view of the world” even though the evidence points to significant improvement in charter schools. According to Goodman:
> A Stanford University study found that charter schools significantly improve the performance of children in urban areas and this is especially true for black, Hispanic, low-income and special needs students in math and in reading. Even the very liberal New York Times editorial page endorses charter schools. Yet I have seen no mention of how charter schools benefit students in Clinton emails so far. Oh, but of course. The kids don’t get to vote.
No, but parents can. And they “vote for charters with their feet when spaces are available,” the editors at WSJ write. At the rate the NAACP is going, there’s going to be a lot more stomping in the months and years to come.