NAACP members call for ban on privately managed charter schools

Lesser of two evils. Black communities in the U.S. are in a tough situation: one party is openly hostile and racist, and the other props up teachers&#x27; unions and failing school districts (not to mention &quot;think of the children&quot; tough-on-crime policies) that do tremendous real damage too.<p>In D.C.--a city where student performance continues to be abysmal despite nearly double the per-capita funding of surrounding &quot;rich&quot; counties--some of the most well-regarded schools in heavily-minority neighborhoods are charters. Indeed, D.C. charters educate about 45% of the students and are outperforming the district schools, despite having poorer students and less funding: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.usnews.com&#x2F;opinion&#x2F;knowledge-bank&#x2F;2015&#x2F;10&#x2F;05&#x2F;washington-dc-shows-why-charter-schools-are-taking-off;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.usnews.com&#x2F;opinion&#x2F;knowledge-bank&#x2F;2015&#x2F;10&#x2F;05&#x2F;wash...</a> <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.washingtonpost.com&#x2F;local&#x2F;education&#x2F;more-dc-students-are-attending-highest-performing-charter-schools-ratings-show&#x2F;2014&#x2F;11&#x2F;13&#x2F;3d0a4cf0-6b57-11e4-a31c-77759fc1eacc_story.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.washingtonpost.com&#x2F;local&#x2F;education&#x2F;more-dc-stude...</a><p>Educating kids in poor minority neighborhoods is hard enough. There is no reason to hamstring the process--indeed, to make it intractable--by running schools like General Motors circa 1960.

I don&#x27;t understand why a prerequisite for other types of schools is a lack of privately managed charter schools. Inner city schools are such a disaster, it seems like the last thing we should be doing is blocking any new ideas -- privately managed or not.

Here comes a system that threatens to give some more power to lower income families, and the suggestion is that those systems should be abolished because it gives some parents&#x2F;families more power than others. That is utterly insane. To disallow these other systems from existing is to perpetuate the idea that poor -- and usually black families -- need the state to decide what is best for them and their children. THAT is the really racist point of view.<p>There is this alarming trend in our politics which seems to have decided that the poorer and blacker you are, the less you ought to be trusted with your and your own family&#x27;s livelihood. It&#x27;s amazing for me to see all of the teachers that I know (I work in the ed. industry) speak often about trying to get into better placements in other schools and whatnot, but at the same time, when it comes to choice and mobility for lower income families, somehow then the &quot;obvious&quot; decision is to force them to be in the system that has systematically underserved them for decades.<p>If the arguments about needing to put money into public schools is real, and that the exit of certain students to charter schools serves to further undermine the quality of public education, then let&#x27;s really go all out: Let&#x27;s forbid charter schools from developing and let&#x27;s strictly enforce the publicly-funded neighborhood school. But then, let&#x27;s do the same with administrators, teachers, and staff: Let&#x27;s have them all be assigned to a school, without any possibility of re-assignment.<p>See how well teachers&#x2F;unions&#x2F;NAACP like that policy...

Disclosure: I work for Success Academy Charter Schools. I&#x27;m a software developer on the Data Science team here, and I&#x27;m obviously biased.<p>We were specifically called out in the article for having a board composition that is not diverse and also not representative of parents. It&#x27;s not clearly stated but is implied that this combination of elements cannot lead to good outcomes for the students involved, and the NAACP is specifically saying that charter schools in general are bad for minorities.<p>I don&#x27;t know the education landscape well enough to argue that charter schools are, in general, a good thing for society.<p>But I do know specifically about what we are doing and how we are doing it and how effective we are at it.<p>State testing results were released a couple of weeks ago, and we scrambled to make sense of the numbers. Results are here:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.successacademies.org&#x2F;results&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.successacademies.org&#x2F;results&#x2F;</a><p>I can&#x27;t speak for charter schools as a class, but I can talk about ours. We do outperform public schools consistently and by a wide margin.<p>There is no spin to these results. We--as a data science team--are ruthlessly and brutally honest with ourselves and with the organization and with the public about how we are performing.<p>Our organization is guilty as charged in the article of having a board full of mostly white, male, wealthy individuals. Facts are facts, after all.<p>What doesn&#x27;t get mentioned is that we target our schools to the areas in NYC that are served the worst by public education. And we are out-performing not only the public schools that are closest in proximity but almost <i>all</i> public schools in NYC and NY state.<p>The kids that go to our schools are overwhelmingly minorities, overwhelmingly in poor socio-economic circumstances, and overwhelmingly beating the odds and getting one of the best possible educations that&#x27;s available anywhere. And they are getting that education as close to home as possible or, if they choose, as close to where they would like to be. That&#x27;s the data that can&#x27;t be argued with.<p>The personal anecdotal information that has no bearing on this situation is what I see on the subway day in and day out. I see kids in little SA uniforms with their little SA backpacks on the subway with each other or with a parent, talking about what they learned in school today, what they are excited about learning tomorrow.<p>None of this represents the official stance of SA, by the way. I&#x27;m just a guy writing code and posting on HN. But my opinion is that quality of education is one of the major factors driving inequality in this country right now. I think that we--Success Academy--are a positive influence.<p>I think that the NAACP stance as stated in the resolution would hurt us, our mission, and the students that we teach every day. I&#x27;m not an expert on education in general, and I&#x27;m not an expert on race-relations or equality. And I will happily accept critiques about how we can do things better and how we should.<p>But the NAACP ban on charter schools isn&#x27;t something that helps the situation. As I see it, the situation is bad. Public schools are not getting the job done. Reform isn&#x27;t working. We need innovation in this space, and that can&#x27;t happen within the strictures of the DOE and unionized teachers.<p>This country needs a better, more equitable education model. And we are trying to find that model. And we are doing it with a data-centric attitude. Every decision we make is based on data. From where to open the next school to how we use technology in the classroom to how we decide to skip or hold back a student.<p>The article makes it sound like it&#x27;s impossible for an organization run by wealthy white males to do anything other than make life better for other wealthy white males. It makes an implicit assumption that we are all incapable of working toward a goal of better for everyone. That is clearly not true. The real data does not support that at all.<p>To be very squishy and not data-centric about it, I devote my life to making the world a better place for minorities. I work hard on my nights and weekends to make life a little better for kids I don&#x27;t know. Kids who probably wouldn&#x27;t have a chance in the world if they went to a public school.<p>Everyone at SA does that. A blanket judgement that all charter schools are bad is wrong in at least one instance.

The recommendations at the end of the article sound pretty reasonable. Choice is great, but the switching costs are pretty high when schools mistreat students and parents. Transparent representation for students and parents seems required for good outcomes.

This has nothing to do with fairness, the schools, the teachers, nor anything else they throw into the argument.<p>Most of the &quot;bad&quot; schools get the same (or even more) amount of funding, resources, coursework&#x2F;material, as the &quot;good&quot; schools.<p>The difference that separates the two categories are the students (and their parents).<p>Charter schools simply don&#x27;t have to put up with the same destructive students - and are able to create a productive environment for learning for the constructive students.<p>The problem is they tend to also not follow the NAACP approved racial demographics&#x2F;splits.

So, less about the advancement of colored people, and more about being lock-step with the Democratic party (which in this case means the teachers&#x27; union).

Any organization which still refers to people of African and Middle Eastern descent as &quot;colored people&quot; should come under scrutiny before any of their causes are taken seriously.