NAACP on charter schools: Separate and unequal is still wrong

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Since 1909, the NAACP has worked with parents, educators, and administrators to ensure a better education for all children. Whether it is suing New Jersey to force them to provide quality, equitable education to its students or supporting the firing of teachers at a consistently failing school in Rhode Island, we have always fought, and will always fight, for the rights of children. The lawsuit we filed against the New York City Department of Education is firmly embedded within that tradition.

Our lawsuit is a direct response to the New York City Department of Education’s failure to comply with state law or the court orders issued from our successful lawsuit from last year. Our goal, consistent with New York law, is to require the city to: (1) notify and involve parents before shutting down their neighborhood public schools; (2) create, fund, and implement plans to improve low performing schools; and (3) ensure that where charter and public schools share the same space, it is done so equitably.

Instead, reports from parents and students described serious inequities taking place in schools where public and charter students share space. While under the same roof, charter students enjoyed new classrooms, new textbooks, and working toilets while public school students were taught in hallways or basements using old textbooks and restricted access to working toilets.

No one seriously contends that this is the lesson we want to teach children at school. As Karen Finney, MSNBC commentator wrote in a recent column, “we should consider the message it sends to the child who looks down the hall to an educational oasis she can see but not touch.”

The NAACP is not faulting charter schools or their operators, but rather, a system that has failed to serve all of the children. Where efforts to resolve these issues failed, the lawsuit has everyone focused on taking the action to rectify this unacceptable situation.

The NAACP has a long history of standing up and speaking out against inequity, particularly where education is at issue. Here, we are trying to raise the profile of an issue whose constituents are too young to fight alone. Rather than pitting parent against parent or student against student, we need to get to the heart of these issue and correct the unfairness and comply with the law.

We are hopeful that the new New York City Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott recognizes the problem and will do the right thing to equitably and expeditiously address these issues. “Education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom,” according to George Washington Carver. Generations later, the NAACP continues to fight so that a new generation of New Yorkers has access to the key.

Kim Keenan is the General Counsel of the NAACP