It might be too soon but . . .

If you were confused about Madison Prep and feeling a little liberal white guilt about not supporting it, well, there is good reason for the confusion (you’ll have to decide on the liberal white guilt). But take heart, if you were against, you have the NAACP on your side. (Sorry for the assumption that my readers are white, I know not all of them are, but they are the large majority – this is still, after all, Madison and the surrounding area.)

Yup, Urban League vs. NAACP. Here’s the NAACP official national position on Charter Schools. (Link here) The position is just a little over a year old.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is the nation’s oldest, largest and most widely-recognized grassroots based civil rights organization. Formed in 1909 by a multiracial group of progressive thinkers, the NAACP is a nonprofit organization established with the objective of ensuring the political, educational, social, and economic equality of people of color. For over 102 years, the NAACP has challenged this nation to uphold its promise of equal opportunity toward the goal of eliminating racial prejudice and removing all barriers of racial discrimination through democratic processes.

In a process established by the NAACP Constitution, this resolution was adopted by the delegates to the 101st Annual Convention in Kansas City, Missouri, during the legislative session in July, 2010. It was subsequently ratified by the NAACP National Board of Directors at its meeting on October 15, 2010. This resolution is now the policy of the Association, and is “binding on the Board of Directors, the Executive Committee, the Officers, and all units.”

Charter Schools

WHEREAS, charter schools are public schools which were originally designed to explore new approaches to educate students; and

WHEREAS, in some cases, charter schools have become a school model that is used to segregate students; and

WHEREAS, charter schools have too seldom informed the education community regarding innovative instructional strategies that accelerate academic achievement in the general population of students; and

WHEREAS, the Center for Research in Educational Outcomes (CREDO) which examined charter school data in fifteen (15) states and the District of Columbia confirmed that only 17% of the charter school students in the study outperformed their peers, while 46% performed no better and 37% performed worse; and

WHEREAS, charter schools operate more autonomously than traditional public schools in the use of funds, adherence to state laws and school policies, selection and removal of students, and the selection and removal of staff, thus creating separate and unequal conditions for success; and

WHEREAS, charter schools draw funding away from already underfunded traditional public schools; and

WHEREAS, the NAACP recognizes that at best, quality charter schools serve only a small percentage of children of color and disadvantaged students for whom the NAACP advocates relative to said population left behind in failing schools; and

WHEREAS, the NAACP recognizes the urgent need to provide quality education for all children, not only those fortunate enough to win lotteries to attend existing quality charter schools; and

WHEREAS, the NAACP is committed to finding broad based, effective solutions for immediate implementation to improve the quality of public education for all children.

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the NAACP will strongly advocate for immediate, overarching improvements to the existing public education system; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the NAACP rejects the emphasis on charter schools as the vanguard approach for the education of children, instead of focusing attention, funding, and policy advocacy on improving existing, low performing public schools and will work through local, state and federal legislative processes to ensure that all public schools are provided the necessary funding, support and autonomy necessary to educate all students; and

BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED, that the NAACP will urge all of its Units to work to support public schools throughout the nation to educate all children to their highest potential.

There is no doubt that this is controversial and divisive and some of it locally may have more to do with tactics and personality than ideology. What sort of haunts me about it is how to we pick up the pieces, come together as a community and find a way to address what everyone agrees is a problem, our minority achievement gap. I’m afraid that instead of moving forward, for the next few months until the election is over we won’t be focusing on solving the problem, but instead more personality politics. So far, Mary Burke couldn’t buy a charter school with $2.5M. Perhaps buying a seat on the Madison School Board might work out a little better for her. Kinda makes me sick that good people have backed out of running because of the threat of her money. And it disgusts me that she might just be able to buy what she wants and many people won’t see a problem with that – that’s politics right? Or can Madison do this better? And, worse yet, meanwhile, what happens to the kids in our schools?