My, how things have changed.
In 1964, a decade after the Supreme Court declared segregated public schools unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education, Mississippi refused to comply. The NAACP fought back with an inside-out strategy — vehemently lobbying for the full implementation of Brown, while simultaneous launching dozens of privately funded “freedom schools” across the state. Its efforts ignited a national education-reform movement that founded Head Start.
Now, in 2011, the NAACP has entered another fight over education — this time, seemingly on the wrong side of history. Last month, the NAACP’s New York chapter joined the United Federation of Teachers in a lawsuit against the city Department of Education. And today they’re joining in a rally on the issue.
Their goal: prevent the opening of every new “co-located” public school (mostly charters) approved for the 2011-12 school year (including the one I lead). Co-location is the sharing of open space between a new and an existing school. It’s vital for charters — which, unlike other public schools, receive no funding for facilities.
If this lawsuit succeeds, the 7,000 students registering with 19 schools will have no space this coming school year. Such a monstrous turn of events, facilitated by the venerated civil-rights organization, would destroy high-quality educational opportunities for several thousand of the most disadvantaged black and brown students in the country — the very children the NAACP purports to serve.
Indeed, how things have changed.
Let me be clear: I am not against unions (though I oppose the UFT), nor do I speak for every charter school (though I stand with those serving their students well).
I’ve loved the NAACP all my life. As a young black boy in deep poverty in North Philadelphia, I was raised on a steady diet of the NAACP’s storied battles to change a world that resisted Brown every step of the way. Today — as a teacher, lawyer and school leader — I am the product of public education, a direct beneficiary of Brown.
It is shocking to see the NAACP now stand with the multibillion-dollar UFT, and condemn a publicly funded implementation of the very strategy it pioneered.
The NAACP asserts that charter schools should be banned because they only serve a few of the black and brown children who desperately need them, thus somehow fostering a return of segregation. This is preposterous. The NAACP’s freedom schools only served about 3,000 black students, out of the hundreds of thousands who needed them — and that in no way diminished their importance
I am astonished that the NAACP would stand with the UFT — an organization that is an accomplice to an education system that prepares less than 10 percent of black and Latino students to attend college and less than 17 percent to read by 8th grade. This is indefensible.
Even so, I did not attend last week’s protest in Harlem. As a charter school founded and led by people of color, we have no interest in participating in the media arms race of empty sound bites at the expense of nuanced and sincere discourse, pitting black versus black and brown versus brown. This mutual destruction benefits only the UFT and its allies, not our children.
Instead, we’re focused on fighting to serve as many students and families in our community as we can. I’m confident our school will lead to transformative education for millions, like those freedom schools in 1964.
Although it isn’t too late, the question remains: Will the NAACP reverse course and stand with the people it was founded to serve? Will it finish what it started nearly 50 years ago, using every arrow in the quiver (charter schools, traditional schools, freedom schools, whatever works) to bring about the realization of Brown’s promise: a world-class education for all?
History will tell us . . . one way or another.
Rafiq R. Kalam Id-Din II is founder & managing partner of Teaching Firms of America-Pro fessional Preparatory Charter School in Bedford-Stuyvesant.