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Friday, October 14, 2016

Schools Matter: Moral Necessity and the NAACP Charter Moratorium, Part 1

Schools Matter: Moral Necessity and the NAACP Charter Moratorium, Part 1:

Moral Necessity and the NAACP Charter Moratorium, Part 1

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Principal Jondré Pryor of KIPP South Fulton Academy (KSFA) is just one among many corporate education reform schoolers who are wringing their hands over the NAACP's 2016 decision to support a strongly-worded resolution calling for a moratorium on the spread of privately-operated charter schools (see resolution at bottom of this page).  

Rather than accepting the possibility that NAACP members have read and heard about too many child abuse cases at "no excuses" charters to remain silent any longer, Mr. Pryor claims the problem is simply a matter of NAACP delegates suffering from an overload of "misinformation.  Pryor says,


I came to understand the NAACP’s position a little better when I attended a panel on education with several of my KIPP colleagues and when I talked one-on-one with several delegates. It became clear that misinformation was the basis for their opposition. They had heard stories about a few bad charter schools, and they were using that to judge all 6,800 schools in the movement. There have been some terrible stories about charter schools, just as we’ve all read terrible stories about traditional public schools and private schools. Those are unfortunate, embarrassing, disheartening exceptions.
"Embarrassing, disheartening exceptions?"  How about Mr. Pryor's own KIPP school, where he has been principal for the past eight years?  Mr. Pryor could have mentioned in his October 9 essay published by theAtlanta Journal-Constitution that his first year at KSFA was marred by news stories of student mistreatment and abuse, which resulted in at least seven parents yanking their children from his school:Schools Matter: Moral Necessity and the NAACP Charter Moratorium, Part 1: