Commentary: BALTIMORE— National Education Association Vice President Becky Pringle provided the following reaction to today’s report from the NAACP’s Task Force on Quality Education:
“America’s educators stand in solidarity with our students of color. As the NEA declared earlier this summer, handing over students’ education to privately managed, unaccountable charters jeopardizes student success, undermines public education and harms communities. For more than a century, the NAACP has fought for racial justice in America. The civil-rights organization’s work to protect students from the harm of predatory, unaccountable, charter schools is a fitting addition to that legacy.”
In July, the 7,000 delegates to the National Education Association Annual Meeting overwhelmingly approved a fundamental shift in policy on charter schools.
The new NEA Policy Statement on Charter Schools boosts the NEA’s forceful support of state and local efforts to limit charter growth, increase charter accountability and slow the diversion of resources from local public schools to charters. Meanwhile, the policy allows the NEA to continue organizing charter school educators who want to provide all students, no matter where they live, with the opportunity for a great education, and are standing up for better, more accountable charter schools.
NEA last approved a charter school policy in 2001. Since then, the number of charter schools in the U.S. has risen dramatically, outstripping the ability of states and school districts to hold them accountable to the same basic safeguards and standards as public schools. Many are privately managed charters whose financial operations and student performance are hidden from parents and taxpayers, and whose existence increases racial and economic segregation of students.