Inside The NAACP’s Fight To Stop Betsy DeVos From Expanding Charter Schools
The nation’s oldest civil rights organization is gearing up for a bigger battle with education reformers.
President Donald Trump may call education the “civil rights issue of our time,” but just weeks before he was elected, the nation’s oldest civil rights organization strongly rejected the very type of schools he loves to champion.
In October, the NAACP voted on a controversial resolution calling for a moratorium on the growth of charter schools, which exist in 43 states. Over six decades after the organization fought to eliminate school segregation through the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education, leaders said charter schools were perpetuating the very same segregation they fought so hard to stop. Not only that, but charter schools also divert resources away from traditional public school systems.
Charter school activists opposed the move. So did some of the very people the NAACP seeks to serve, like the hundreds of thousands of black families that choose charter schools for their children every year.
The controversial stance threw the nation’s oldest civil rights organization into the spotlight during a time when they were fighting for relevancy. In the months since, a task force of a dozen NAACP leaders has traveled the country, listening to both charter school advocates and opponents, parents and teachers, about what steps the organization should take next.
Next month the NAACP will release a report detailing what the task force found. HuffPost, through conversations with several task force leaders, received a glimpse into what these findings might look like.
After spending time in seven cities, NAACP Task Force on Quality Education chair Alice Huffman says she is more convinced than ever that the call for a moratorium was the correct decision. The election of Trump, and his subsequent appointment of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, has given the issue specific urgency. DeVos, a notorious champion of school choice, would like to see more charter schools, and her department’s Inside The NAACP’s Fight To Stop Betsy DeVos From Expanding Charter Schools | HuffPost:
