Instead of Building More Charter Schools for the Few, Improve Public Education for All
Roland S. Martin is a journalist and the host and managing editor of TV One’s News One Now. For years he has promoted market-based school choice. He recently moderated a town hall, “Is School Choice the Black Choice?” at Howard University. All the while Martin has been promoting school choice, Dr. John Jackson and the Schott Foundation for Public Education (of which John Jackson is the President and CEO) have instead made the case for closing opportunity gaps in the public schools as the responsibility of a just society. Here in a short, two-minute video from the Howard University town hall, is John Jackson, challenging Martin’s “false narrative” that public schools have failed the African American community. I urge you to watch the short video.
The town hall at Howard University followed the adoption last month of a resolution by the NAACP, the nation’s oldest civil rights organization, demanding investment in improving the public schools that serve the majority of children in our nation’s poorest schools and a moratorium on the expansion of charters until:
- “Charter schools are subject to the same transparency and accountability standards as public schools.
- “Public funds are not diverted to charter schools at the expense of the public school system.
- “Charter schools cease expelling students that public schools have a duty to educate.
- “(Charter schools) 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.”
Back in 2011, John Jackson was part of another panel moderated by Roland Martin. On that Instead of Building More Charter Schools for the Few, Improve Public Education for All | janresseger
