NAACP seeks to mount shakeup in US education - SFGate:

NAACP seeks to mount shakeup in US education

By SUZANNE GAMBOA, Associated Press

Updated 2:52 p.m., Thursday, December 6, 2012

WASHINGTON (AP) — The NAACP is going on the offensive on education, deploying volunteers across the country in its biggest push for a public education overhaul since the nation's classrooms were ordered desegregated in 1954, the civil rights group said Thursday.

The volunteers, who have been trained for the past two years, will lobby at the state and county levels for four educational priorities:

— Extended school hours and years in school

— Improved teacher training

— Improved preschool programs

— Better targeting of spending to the neediest of students

Such changes for all children, not just minorities, are the only way to ensure an educated American workforce and a thriving economy, said NAACP president and CEO Ben Jealous.

"We will always play defense on Brown (vs. Board of Education)," Jealous said, invoking the 1954 Supreme Court decision that ended legal school segregation and became a civil rights milestone. "We will always play defense when folks who are disproportionately disciplining